HEREAFTER.

"To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,

And blown with restless violence round about

The pendent world." - Measure for Measure.

THE eternal breath of God that whirls around

The swift-revolving world speaks through the groves,

And echoes from each granite-walled abyss

Of mountain-passes, "Immortality."

Unheeded on our deadened ears it falls

Unmeaning, for we will not trace the voice

Articulate which tells of wider spheres

For our activity; but, like a barge

Upon a stream beneath the noonday sun,

We lazily float on.

At times a parcel of this animus

Is prisoned in the shackles that it scorns,

And struggles with the slavish element

That holds it bound; anon it shakes the world

With voice and words which speak of godlike birth,

Which murmur with the rustling of the trees,

Which echo with the echoing of the hills,

Which clamor with the thundering of the seas;

Then we, fond dreamers, lift our drowsy heads

And wonder at the thickening of the storm.

Alas! Cassandra-like he stands alone,

While only nature understands his cry,

Seeming to weep repentance from the clouds,

And with the bending trees in penitence

To bow beneath his sternly uttered threat.

Then once again the mighty wind returns

And sweeps away the shackles round his soul,

To gather him unto his kindred breath,

Mingling the tuneful music of his voice

In harmony with the majestic psalm

Chanted by the pure spirit through all time.

Our crumbling dust is likewise swept away

And lost for aeons by the whirling wind.

Now like the helpless falling in a dream,

Now like the upshot lava from a mount;

Now racked and tortured with the endless change

Of form and life and motion to and fro.

But ever still is echoed from the worlds

The chorus thundered by the rushing wind;

An immortality of activeness,

Of life in fullest consciousness of power,

With an infinitude of space and spheres

To whirl about and hurl forever on,

Were thine, hadst thou but learned in thy short life

To make the smallest effort of thine own.

z.THE ninth annual dinner of the "Harvard Alumni Association of New York" took place at Delmonico's on Friday evening, February 19. About a hundred graduates were present, and in many respects this dinner was the most successful event in the history of the Association. President Eliot was present, and responded to the first toast of the evening, "Alma Mater" Hon. John Bigelow replied for "American Literature"; and in response to the toast in honor of the Bench, Judge Holland mentioned a long list of Harvard graduates who had attained high judicial positions.

An ode, written for the occasion by Charles H. Gage, was afterwards sung; and this was followed by old college songs, which were kept up to a late hour.

The ode was as follows: -

TUNE: "Fair Harvard."Fair Harvard, thy sons on thy festival night,

When they gather in honor of thee,

In the food and the flowers, in the wine flowing bright,

Some type of thy bounty may see;

But these joy-bringing gifts can but faintly recall

How the soul by thy largess is fed,

For the feast never ends in thy plenteous hall,

And forever thy tables are spread.

These flowers will not stay: like the days that are flown,

Like the swift passing thought of a tune,

They are gathered and lost. For dust claimeth its own

In the quick-fading roses of June.

But we know of a flower that can nevermore die,

By our mother't was blest at its birth;

'T is friendship, immortal, that opens on high

The petals once closed upon earth.

Each glass, fill it up! Let the wine for our toast

Overflow like a generous spring,

Like hearts filled with love, for such gifts are loved most,

By that mother whose praises we ring;

And though years passing by have unsteadied the hand

That was firm in our jubilant days,

Yet the strength never fails when this toast doth demand,

Fair mother, we drink to thy praise.