The New Pythagorean, Chapter IV [pp. 289-291]

Eureka.-The N Pta aa Chapter Fourth.
end approaching, in the joyful exclamation of the
apostle'the night is far spent,-the day is at
hand,' the bright and beautiful morning of eternity!
"If we should regard it as an evil, still it is
wisdom's part to -look steadily upon it, for all
evils may be mitigated by foresight and preparation. It is true that we may not avert this; it is
the certain, the inevitable doom of all; we may
each apply to ourselves the simple lines of the
poet
'To think of Summer yet to come,
That I shall never see;
To think a weed is yet to bloom,
From dust that I shall be.'
And we may take an enlarged view of it, we
may see the mighty hand of our Maker brushing
away from the face of the earth an entire generation, and then, calling out to the succeeding
race,' Come again, ye children of men;' and so
shall wave after wave of mankind roll on, and
roll away, until its last heave is lost in the bosom
of Eternity!
EUREKA.
BYl MARY G0. WELLS.
"I have found it!" quoth the child
With a merry, ringing shout,
Catching what his feet beguiled
The gay, painted butterfly,
And behold-the insect dies
In his grasp, before his eyes!
In the evening's gentle hush
"I have found it" breathes the maiden,
With a softly stealing blush;
"Love, life's sweetest bliss is mine:"
Fleeting joy;-she weeps alone
And her faithless lover's gone!
The flush of triumph on his brow,
"I have found it!" cries the bard,
"And what shall deprive me now
Of an everliving fame Of the laurel-wreath 1 crave?"
Lo,'tis laid upon his grave!
"I have found it!" cries the king,
With a proud exultbig smile,
As he clasps the signet ring
And the sceptre to his heart,
And his forehead feels the crown,
Which, alas, shall weigh it down!
"I have found it!" says the sage,
And uplifts his care-dim eyes
From the quaint, black lettered page
He has scanned for live-long years;
Man! thy lore avails thee not,
Thou must share the common lot.
VoL. XV-37
"I have found it!" with a sigh
Cries the weary of the world,
And my aching head shall lie
On the lap of mother earth, He speaks, and mighty death
Bears away his feeble breath.
"I have found it!" he can say
Who is near the narrow tomb,
Who beholds the final day
Disclosing heaven to his view,
And "Eureka!" he alone,
May exclaim with joyous tone.
Philadelphia, Feb. 1848.
THE NEW PYTHAGOREAN.
CHAPTER FOURTH.-DELOS.
If Athens was, as the great bard called it, the
eye of Greece, the little island of Delos may,
with quite as much justness of metaphor, be called the heart of Greece. Not that its soil was the
richest of Greece, or its people the most warlike,
its fortresses the most impregnable, or its citadel
the most defensible. But that island, "longe
clarissima, cycladum media, temple Apollinis et
mercatu celebrata," was the organ, as it were, of
some of the strangest social feelings of the Athenian confederacy with which it was joined. It
was their treasury, their Congressional city, the
Bethlehem of their purest deities, the Mecca
of their pilgrimages; the spot which they purified when their fortunes were, and their deities
seemed, adverse; the altar to which they sent
their most sacred and mysterious offerings by
their fairest and noblest messengers; the port
from which the sacred bark must return before
even such enemies as Melitus and Lycon and
Anytus would compel the hemlock to the lips
even of so dangerous a prisoner as Socrates;
the sacred isle which Cicero tells us, was safe
without walls-sine muro nihil timebat when the
pirates were swarming in the Greek and Italian
seas, which Polycrates of Samos spared when
he was irresistible on the ocean, and which even
the Persians themselves dared not violate in a
war which laid Athens in ruins. That island
we would see, in whatever sense the vision may
be won. Yet a vision of Delos as it lies in the
past is the only one which is worth having. As
the island now is, there is no voice of glory
heard in it save the voice of the memory of far
remote centuries. Like Milton's Eden after the
deluge, it is but "the haunt of seals and or"s,
and seamew's clang." The whole islamd has
-St