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THE LOVER’S OFFERING, 
Or, breathing on the callous icicles, 
Bid them with tear-drops nurse ye ?— 
—Tree nor shrub 
Dare that drear atmosphere : no polar pine 
Uprears a veteran front; yet there ye stand, 
Leaning your cheeks against the thick-ribbed ice, 
And looking up with brilliant eyes to Him 
Who bids you bloom unblanched amid the waste 
Of desolation. Man, who, panting, toils 
O’er slippery steeps, or, trembling, treads the verge 
Of yawning gulfs, o’er which the headlong plunge 
Is to eternity, looks shuddering up, 
And marks ye in your placid loveliness— 
Fearless, yet frail—and, clasping his chill hands, 
Blesses your pencilled beauty. ’Mid the pomp 
Of mountain summits rushing on the sky, 
And chaining the rapt soul in breathless awe, 
He bows to bind you drooping to his breast, 
Inhales your spirit from the frost-winged gale, 
And freer dreams of heaven. 
Mss. Sigourney. 
THE ROSE. 
This precious flower, whose “Paradise of leaves ” 
has been sung with all the attributes of surpassing 
loveliness by the poets of every country on which 
it is bestowed, has perhaps never been more beauti¬ 
fully described than by Bishop Jeremy Taylor, 
