The Phenix

THE WIND.

"All—from the evening's plaintive sigh,

That hardly lifts the drooping flower,

To the wild whirlwind's midnight cry,

Breaths forth the language of his power."

There is a grandeur in the reckless upheaving of the ocean when the tempest arouses its secret depths; there is a terror in the convulsive throes of the earth-quake when its mysterious energies shake the globe; and a beauty in the calm sunshine, when it sheds its mantling glory over field and mountain, lake and river, that lifts the soul aloft with enthusiasm, or depresses it with fear, as—their many and various phenomena appear;

but there is another of the great and living intelligences of nature, that claims a more extended dominion, and awakens a separate and untaught feeling. It is the viewless, yet mighty wind; whether in the gentle air of summer, or swelling in the strivings of the winter storm; whether it lightly stirs the leaf on the boughs of the forest, or tears the oak from its ancient bed, alike it tells of majesty and power, and goes forth amid the works of creation, mingling with the elements and moving them at its will. We feel it in the faint hues of twilight fanning the cheek with its airy wings, and soothing the anguish of the troubled bosom; and when the fierce tornado comes bounding over the hills, crushing the tall trees, and bringing desolation upon the peaceful valley. we mark the devastation of its awful footsteps, and are led to think of that being, "who rides upon the whirlwind and directs the storm." It wafts the mariner gently onward to his destined home and heaven, while the smoothly undulating sea sparkles in the sunbeams and dances beneath his power; or changed to the wrathful hurricane it booms along the surface of the waters, and bows the gallant ship by his stormy pinions. And who is insensible to its emphatic language? who can listen to its tones when he stands upon the mountain top, and hears them wail around him, and not receive the impress of the saddened feeling they seem articulately to express? or when the light breeze freshens and springs up like a warrior armed for battle; when the rushings resemble the boundings of the war-horse as it comes careering by him, who does not catch a stirring impulse, and respond to the thrillings of patriotic ardour?