MY FIRE. 321 



ino-s and aims with which Newton and Goethe respectively approached 

 Nature were radically different, but they had an equal warrant in the 

 constitution of man. As regards our tastes and tendencies, our plea- 

 sures and pains, physical and mental, our action and passion, our sorrows, 

 sympathies, and joys, we are the heirs of all the ages that preceded us ; 

 and, of the human nature thus handed down, poetry is an element just 

 as much as science. The emotions of man are older than his under- 

 standing, and the poet who brightens, purifies, and exalts these emo- 

 tions, may claim a position in the world at least as high and as well- 

 assured as that of the man of science. They minister to different but 

 to equally permanent needs of human nature ; and the incompleteness 

 of which I complain consists in the endeavor on the part of either to 

 exclude the other. There is no fear that the man of science can ever 

 destroy the glory of the lilies of the field ; there is no hope that the 

 poet can ever successfully contend against our right to examine, in 

 accordance with scientific method, the agent to which the lily owes its 

 glory. There is no necessary encroachment of the one field upon the 

 other. Nature embraces them both, and man, when he is complete, 

 will exhibit as large a toleration. 



-***- 



MY FIRE. 



Bt Professor F. W. CLAEKE. 



WITHIN my grate a cheerful blaze 

 Lights up the room with ruddy rays. 

 That blunt the winter's sharpest stings 

 With bygone summer's offerings. 

 I sit and watch the leaping flame, 

 In wonder whence its beauty came ; 

 And trace it back to days of old, 

 When Earth's hard crust was scarcely cold, 

 And tropic trees in arctic zones 

 Taught the north-wind those subtile tones, 

 Which, now and then, its weary blast 

 Seems to regather from the past, 

 To murmur in a mystic song 

 The secret-keeping pines among. 

 And, as I gaze, I somehow see 

 Strange things that long have ceased to be : 

 The sooty carbon seems to glow 

 With memories of long ago, 

 And in the flickering lines of gold 

 The story of its past is told. 



VOL. XVII. 21 



