Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four

In the ELSON READERS selections are grouped according to theme or authorship. This arrangement, however, is not intended to fix an order for reading in class; its purpose is to emphasise classification, facilitate comparison, and enable pupils to appreciate similarities and contrasts in the treatment of like themes by different authors.

To give variety, to meet the interests at different seasons and festivals, and to go from prose to poetry and from long to short selections, a carefully planned order of reading should be followed. Such an order of reading calls for a full consideration of all the factors mentioned above. The Course here offered meets these ends but may easily be varied to fit local conditions.

This book is designed to furnish reading material of choice literary and dramatic quality. The selections for the most part are those that have stood the test of time and are acknowledged masterpieces. The groupings into the separate parts will aid both teachers and pupils in the classification of the material, indicating at a glance the range and variety of the literature included.

Part One deals with poetry, and it is believed the poems offered in this group are unsurpassed. No effort on the teacher's part will be needed to arouse the enthusiasm of pupils who read the series of famous rides with which this group opens. The thrill of delight which children feel as they read of "A hurry of hoofs in a village street," or "Charging an army while all the world wondered," may lead to the stronger and more enduring emotions of patriotism and devotion. "John Gilpin's Ride," which has furnished amusement for generations of old and young, finds a place here. The rhythmic movement of these poems makes a natural transition to those selections especially designed as studies in rhythm. The series of nature poems and selections from Shakespeare complete a group of choice literary creations. Part Two is given to a study of the great American authors, and no apology is needed either for the choice of material or for the prominence given to this group. It is especially suited to parallel and supplement the work of this grade in American history. Part Three contains patriotic selections and some of the great orations. These are lofty and inspiring in style, within the grasp of the pupils, and are especially helpful in developing power of expression.

It is not expected that the order of selections will be followed. On the contrary, each teacher will follow the order which will best suit her own plans and purposes. While there is much material in the book that will re-enforce lessons in history, geography, and nature study, yet it is not for this that these selections should be studied, but rather for the pleasure that comes from reading beautiful thoughts beautifully expressed. The reading lesson should therefore be a study of literature, and it should lead the children to find beauty of thought and imagery, fitness in figures of speech, and delicate shades of meaning in words. Literature is an art, and the chief aim of the reading lesson is to discover and interpret its art qualities. In this way children learn how to read books and are enabled to appreciate the literary treasures of the race. The business of the reading book is to furnish the best available material for this purpose.

It is worth while to make a thorough study of a few well-chosen selections. Through the power gained in this way children are enabled to interpret and enjoy other selections without the aid of the teacher. If the class work is for the most part of the intensive kind, the pupils will read the remaining lessons alone for sheer pleasure, which is at once the secret and goal of good teaching in literature. Moreover, they will exercise a discriminating taste and judgment in their choice of reading matter. To love good literature, to find pleasure in reading it and to gain power to choose it with discrimination are the supreme ends to be attained by the reading lesson. For this reason, some selections should be read many times for the pleasure they give the children. In music the teacher sometimes calls for expressions of preference among songs: "What song shall we sing, children?" So in reading, "What selection shall we read?" is a good question for the teacher to ask frequently. Thus children come to make familiar friends of some of the stories and poems, and find genuine enjoyment in reading these again and again.

Good results may also be obtained by assigning to a pupil a particular lesson which he is expected to prepare. On a given day he will read to the class the selection assigned to him. The orations are especially suited to this mode of treatment. The pupil who can read one selection well has gone a long way toward being a good reader. The teacher who said to her pupils, "I shall read to you tomorrow," recognized this truth and knew the value of an occasional exercise of that kind. Good pedagogy approves of a judicious use of methods of imitation in teaching reading.

The biographies are intended to acquaint the children with the personal characteristics and lives of the authors, making them more interesting and real to the children, giving them the human touch and incidentally furnishing helpful data for interpreting their writings. In this connection, the authors have, by permission, drawn freely from Professor Newcomer's English and American Literatures. "Helps to Study" include questions and notes designed to stimulate inquiry on the part of pupils and to suggest fruitful lines of study. Only a few points are suggested, to indicate the way, and no attempt is made to cover the ground adequately; this remains for the teacher to do.

While placing emphasis primarily on the thought-getting process the formalities of thought-giving must not be overlooked. The technique of reading, though always subordinate and secondary to the mastery of the thought, nevertheless claims constant and careful attention. Good reading requires clear enunciation and correct pronunciation and these can be secured only when the teacher steadily insists upon them. The increase of foreign elements in our school population and the influence of these upon clearness and accuracy of speech furnish added reason for attention to these details. Special drill exercises should be given and the habit of using the dictionary freely should be firmly established in pupils. The ready use of the dictionary and other reference books for pronunciation and meaning of words, for historical and mythical allusions should be steadily cultivated. Without doubt much of the reading accepted in the public schools is seriously deficient in these particulars. The art of good reading can be cultivated by judicious training and the school should spare no pains to realize this result.

Professor Clark, in his book on "How to Teach Reading," sets forth the four elements of vocal expression--Time, Pitch, Quality and Force. We quote a few of the sentences from his treatment of each of these elementary topics.

"I. TIME. Time, then, refers to the rate of vocal movement. It may be fast, or moderate, or slow, according to the amount of what may be called the collateral thinking accompanying the reading, of any given passage. To put it another way: a phrase is read slowly because it means much; because the thought is large, sublime, deep. The collateral thinking may be revealed by an expansive paraphrase. For instance, in the lines

"Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note
As his corse to the rampart we hurried,"

why do we read slowly? The paraphrase answers the question. It was midnight. There lay our beloved leader, who should have been borne in triumphal procession to his last resting place. Bells should have tolled, cannon thundered, and thousands should have followed his bier. But now, alas, by night, by stealth, without even a single drum tap, in fear and dread, we crept breathless to the rampart. This, or any one of a hundred other paraphrases, will suffice to render the vocal movement slow. And so it is with all slow time. Let it be remembered that a profound or sublime thought may be uttered in fast time; but that when we dwell upon that thought, when we hold it before the mind, the time must necessarily be slow. If a child read too rapidly, it is because his mind is not sufficiently occupied with the thought; if he read too slowly, it is because he does not get the words; or because he is temperamentally slow; or because, and this is the most likely explanation, he is making too much of a small idea. To tell him to read fast or slow is but to make him affected, and, incidentally, even if unconsciously, to impress upon him that reading is a matter of mechanics, and not of thought-getting and thought-giving."

"II. PITCH. By Pitch is meant everything that has to do with the acuteness or gravity of the tone--in other words, with keys, melodies, inflections and modulations. When we say of one that he speaks in a high key, we should be understood as meaning that his pitch is prevailingly high; and that the reverse is true when we say of one that he speaks in a low key. While it is true that the key differs in individuals, yet experience shows that within a note or two, we all use the same keys in expressing the same states of minds. The question for us is, what determines the key? It can be set down as a fixed principle, that controlled mental states are expressed by low keys, while the high keys are the manifestation of the less controlled mental conditions. Drills in inflections as such are of very little value, and potentially very harmful. Most pupils have no difficulty in making proper inflections, so that for them class drills are time wasted; for those whose reading is monotonous, because of lack of melodic variety, the best drills are those which teach them to make a careful analysis of the sentences, and those which awaken them to the necessity of impressing the thought upon others. We have learned that when a pupil has the proper motive in mind and is desirous of conveying his intention to another, a certain melody will always manifest that intention. The melody, then, is the criterion of the pupil's purpose. The moment a pupil loses sight of a phrase and its relation to the other phrases, that moment his melody betrays him."

"III. QUALITY. Quality manifests emotional states. By Quality we mean that subtle element in the voice by which is expressed at one time tenderness, at another harshness, at another awe, and so on through the whole gamut of feeling. The teacher now knows that emotion affects the quality of tone. Let him then use this knowledge as he has learned to use his knowledge of the other criteria. We recognize instinctively the qualities that express sorrow, tenderness, joy, and the other states of feeling. When the proper quality does not appear it is because the child has no feeling, or the wrong feeling, generally the former. There is but one way to correct the expression, i. e., by stimulating the imagination."

"IV. FORCE. Force manifests the degree of mental energy. When we speak in a loud voice, there is much energy; when softly, there is little. Do not tell the child to read louder. If you do, you will get loudness--that awful grating schoolboy loudness--without a particle of expression in it. Many a child reads well, but is bashful. When we tell him to read louder, he braces himself for the effort and kills the quality, which is the finer breath and spirit of oral expression, and gives us a purely physical thing--force. Put your weak-voiced readers on the platform; let them face the class and talk to you, seated in the middle of the room, and you will get all the force you need. On the whole, we have too much force, rather than too little. Let the teacher learn that we want quality, not quantity, and our statement of the mental action behind force will be of much benefit in creating the proper conditions."

To discriminating teachers it will be apparent that this book is not the usual school reader. On the contrary it differs widely from this in the cultural value of the selections, in the classification and arrangement of material, in the variety of interest to which it appeals, and in the abundance of classic literature from American authors which it contains. It aims to furnish the best in poetry and prose to be found in the literature of the English-speaking race and to furnish it in abundance. If these familiar old selections, long accepted as among the best in literature, shall be the means of cultivating in pupils a taste for good reading, the book will have fulfilled its purpose.

For permission to use valuable selections from their lists, acknowledgment is due to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Charles Scribner's Sons, and The Whitaker and Ray Company.

Grateful acknowledgment is also made to those teachers who have given valuable suggestions and criticisms in the compilation of this book.

FAMOUS RIDES, SELECTIONS FROM SHAKESPEARE
AND OTHER POETS, AND STUDIES IN RHYTHM

"We live in deeds, not years, in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial."

    He said to his friend: "If the British march
    By land or sea from the town tonight,
    Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
    Of the North Church tower, as a signal-light,--
    One if by land, and two if by sea;
    And I on the opposite shore will be,
    Ready to ride and spread the alarm
    Through every Middlesex village and farm,
    For the country-folk to be up and to arm."

    Then he said "good night," and with muffled oar
    Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
    Just as the moon rose over the bay,
    Where, swinging wide at her moorings, lay
    The Somerset, British man-of-war:
    A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
    Across the moon, like a prison-bar,
    And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
    By its own reflection in the tide.

    Meanwhile, his friend through alley and street
    Wanders and watches with eager ears,
    Till in the silence around him he hears
    The muster of men at the barrack-door,
    The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
    And the measured tread of the grenadiers
    Marching down to their boats on the shore.

    Then he climbed to the tower of the church,
    Up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
    To the belfry-chamber overhead,
    And startled the pigeons from their perch
    On the sombre rafters, that round him made
    Masses and moving shapes of shade,--
    Up the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
    To the highest window in the wall,
    Where he paused to listen and look down
    A moment on the roofs of the town,
    And the moonlight flowing over all.

    Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead
    In their night-encampment on the hill,
    Wrapped in silence so deep and still,
    That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
    The watchful night-wind, as it went
    Creeping along from tent to tent,
    And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"
    A moment only he feels the spell
    Of the place and the hour, the secret dread
    Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
    For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
    On a shadowy something far away,
    Where the river widens to meet the bay,--
    A line of black, that bends and floats
    On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

    Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
    Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride,
    On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
    Now he patted his horse's side,
    Now gazed at the landscape far and near,
    Then impetuous stamped the earth,
    And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
    But mostly he watched with eager search
    The belfry-tower of the old North Church,
    As it rose above the graves on the hill,
    Lonely, and spectral, and sombre, and still.
    And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height,
    A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
    He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
    But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
    A second lamp in the belfry burns!

    A hurry of hoofs in a village-street,
    A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
    And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
    Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:
    That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
    The fate of a nation was riding that night;
    And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
    Kindled the land into flame with its heat.

    He has left the village and mounted the steep,
    And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
    Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
    And under the alders, that skirt its edge,
    Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
    Is heard the tramp of the steed as he rides.

    It was twelve by the village-clock
    When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
    He heard the crowing of the cock,
    And the barking of the farmer's dog,
    And felt the damp of the river-fog
    That rises after the sun goes down.

    It was one by the village-clock
    When he galloped into Lexington.
    He saw the gilded weathercock
    Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
    And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
    Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
    As if they already stood aghast
    At the bloody work they would look upon.

    It was two by the village-clock
    When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
    He heard the bleating of the flock,
    And the twitter of birds among the trees,
    And felt the breath of the morning-breeze
    Blowing over the meadows brown.
    And one was safe and asleep in his bed
    Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
    Who that day would be lying dead,
    Pierced by a British musket-ball.

    You know the rest. In the books you have read
    How the British regulars fired and fled,--
    How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
    From behind each fence and farmyard-wall,
    Chasing the redcoats down the lane,
    Then crossing the fields to emerge again
    Under the trees at the turn of the road,
    And only pausing to fire and load.

    So through the night rode Paul Revere;
    And so through the night went his cry of alarm
    To every Middlesex village and farm,--
    A cry of defiance, and not of fear,--
    A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
    And a word that shall echo forevermore!
    For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
    Through all our history, to the last,
    In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
    The people will waken and listen to hear
    The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
    And the midnight-message of Paul Revere.

Read an account of the battle of Lexington and observe how nearly this poem is true to history.

Does this poem call your attention chiefly to the horse, the rider, or the message?

    "the fate of a nation was riding that night"
    "gaze at him with a spectral glare"
    "the spark struck out by that steed in his flight
    kindled the land into flame with its heat"
    "sombre"
    "red-coats"
    "fearless and fleet"

    Such was the Kyrat's wondrous speed,
    Never yet could any steed
        Reach the dust-cloud in his course.
    More than maiden, more than wife,
    More than gold and next to life
        Roushan the Robber loved his horse.

    In the land that lies beyond
    Erzeroum and Trebizond,
        Garden-girt, his fortress stood;
    Plundered khan, or caravan
    Journeying north from Koordistan,
        Gave him wealth and wine and food.

    Seven hundred and fourscore
    Men at arms his livery wore,
        Did his bidding night and day;
    Now, through regions all unknown,
    He was wandering, lost, alone,
        Seeking, without guide, his way.

    Suddenly the pathway ends,
    Sheer the precipice descends,
        Loud the torrent roars unseen;
    Thirty feet from side to side
    Yawns the chasm; on air must ride
        He who crosses this ravine.

    Following close in his pursuit,
    At the precipice's foot
        Reyhan the Arab of Orfah
    Halted with his hundred men,
    Shouting upward from the glen,
        "La Illáh ilia Alláh!"

    Gently Roushan Beg caressed
    Kyrat's forehead, neck and breast;
        Kissed him upon both his eyes,
    Sang to him in his wild way,
    As upon the topmost spray
        Sings a bird before it flies.

"O my Kyrat, O my steed,
    Bound and slender as a reed,
        Carry me this peril through!
    Satin housings shall be thine,
    Shoes of gold, O Kyrat mine,
        O thou soul of Kurroglou!

    "Soft thy skin as silken skein,
    Soft as woman's hair thy mane,
        Tender are thine eyes and true;
    All thy hoofs like ivory shine,
    Polished bright; O life of mine,
        Leap, and rescue Kurroglou!"

    Kyrat, then, the strong and fleet,
    Drew together his four white feet,
        Paused a moment on the verge,
    Measured with his eye the space,
    And into the air's embrace
        Leaped as leaps the ocean surge.

    As the ocean surge o'er sand
    Bears a swimmer safe to land,
        Kyrat safe his rider bore;
    Rattling down the deep abyss
    Fragments of the precipice
        Rolled like pebbles on a shore.

    Roushan's tasseled cap of red
    Trembled not upon his head;
        Careless sat he and upright;
    Neither hand nor bridle shook,
    Nor his head he turned to look,
        As he galloped out of sight.

    Flash of harness in the air,
    Seen a moment, like the glare
        Of a sword drawn from its sheath;
    Thus the phantom horseman passed,
    And the shadow that he cast
        Leaped the cataract underneath.

    Reyhan the Arab held his breath
    While this vision of life and death
        Passed above him. "Allahu!"
    Cried he. "In all Koordistan
    Lives there not so brave a man
        As this Robber Kurroglou!"

    "phantom"
    "verge"
    "caravan"
    "abyss"
    "garden-girt"
    "cataract"

    Half a league, half a league,
        Half a league onward,
    All in the valley of Death
        Rode the six hundred.
    "Forward, the Light Brigade!
    Charge for the guns!" he said:
    Into the valley of Death
        Rode the six hundred.
    "Forward, the Light Brigade!"
    Was there a man dismay'd?
    Not tho' the soldier knew
        Some one had blunder'd:
    Theirs not to make reply,
    Theirs not to reason why,
    Theirs but to do and die:
    Into the valley of Death
        Rode the six hundred.

    Cannon to right of them,
    Cannon to left of them,
    Cannon in front of them
        Volley'd and thunder'd;
    Storm'd at with shot and shell,
    Boldly they rode and well,
    Into the jaws of Death,
    Into the mouth of Hell
        Rode the six hundred.
    Flash'd all their sabres bare,
    Flash'd as they turn'd in air
    Sabring the gunners there,
    Charging an army, while
        All the world wonder'd;
    Plunged in the battery-smoke
    Right thro' the line they broke;
    Cossack and Russian
    Reel'd from the sabre-stroke
        Shatter'd and sunder'd.
    Then they rode back, but not,
        Not the six hundred.

    Cannon to right of them,
    Cannon to left of them,
    Cannon behind them
        Volley'd and thunder'd;
    Stormed at with shot and shell,
    While horse and hero fell,
    They that had fought so well
    Came through the jaws of Death
    Back from the mouth of Hell,
    All that was left of them,
        Left of six hundred.

    When can their glory fade!
    Oh the wild charge they made!
        All the world wondered.
    Honor the charge they made!
    Honor the Light Brigade,
        Noble six hundred!

Biographical And Historical: Alfred Tennyson was born in that memorable birth year, 1809, which brought into the world a company of the greatest men of the century, including Darwin, Gladstone, Lincoln, Poe, Chopin, and Mendelssohn. He was one of twelve children who lived together a healthful life of study and sport. Gathering the other children about him he held them captive with his stories of knightly deeds--tales drawn partly from his reading and partly from his fertile fancy. They lived again the thrilling life of joust and tournament. Past the house in the village of Somersby, in Lincolnshire, where his father was rector, flowed a brook, in all probability the brook that came "from haunts of coot and hern... to bicker down a valley." He was a student at Cambridge, where he met and became deeply attached to Arthur Henry Hallam, whose death not long afterward inspired the poem "In Memoriam." In 1850, upon Wordsworth's death, Tennyson was made poet laureate and the poem commemorating the heroic charge at Balaklava in 1854, "The Charge of the Light Brigade," shows how he adorned this office. In 1884 the queen raised him to the peerage, and from that time he was known as Lord Tennyson. He lived as much in retirement as was possible, part of the time making his home in the Isle of Wight. He died in 1892 and was buried in the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

The event which this poem describes occurred at Balaklava in the Crimea, October 25th, 1854. Of six hundred seven men only about one hundred fifty survived. The order to charge, bearing the signature of Lord Lucan, was delivered by Captain Nolan to the Earl of Cardigan, who was in command of the "Light Brigade." Nolan was killed in the charge while Cardigan survived. The death of Nolan made it impossible to determine whether the signature to the order was genuine or forged.

It was in this war that Florence Nightingale rendered such noble service as hospital nurse. She arrived at Balaklava ten days after this charge.

    "Valley of Death"
    "half a league"
    "the mouth of Hell"
    "the jaws of Death"
    "dismay'd"
    "volley'd and thunder'd"

    John Gilpin was a citizen
        Of credit and renown,
    A trainband captain eke was he
        Of famous London town.

    John Gilpin's spouse said to her dear,
        "Though wedded we have been
    These twice ten tedious years, yet we
        No holiday have seen.

    "Tomorrow is our wedding day,
        And we will then repair
    Unto the Bell at Edmonton,
        All in a chaise and pair

    "My sister, and my sister's child,
        Myself, and children three,
    Will fill the chaise, so you must ride
        On horseback after we."

    He soon replied, "I do admire
        Of womankind but one,
    And you are she, my dearest dear,
        Therefore, it shall be done.

    "I am a linen-draper bold,
        As all the world doth know,
    And my good friend, the calender,
        Will lend his horse to go."

    Quoth Mrs. Gilpin, "That's well said:
        And for that wine is dear,
    We will be furnished with our own,
        Which is both bright and clear."

    John Gilpin kissed his loving wife;
        O'erjoyed was he to find
    That, though on pleasure she was bent,
        She had a frugal mind.

    The morning came, the chaise was brought,
        But yet was not allowed
    To drive up to the door, lest all
        Should say that she was proud.

    So three doors off the chaise was stayed,
        Where they did all get in;
    Six precious souls, and all agog
        To dash through thick and thin.

    Smack went the whip, 'round went the wheels,
        Were never folks so glad;
    The stones did rattle underneath
        As if Cheapside were mad.

    John Gilpin at his horse's side
        Seized fast the flowing mane,
    And up he got, in haste to ride,
        But soon came down again;

    For saddle-tree scarce reached had he,
        His journey to begin,
    When, turning round his head, he saw
        Three customers come in.

    So down he came; for loss of time,
        Although it grieved him sore,
    Yet loss of pence, full well he knew,
        Would trouble him much more.

    'Twas long before the customers
        Were suited to their mind,
    When Betty screaming came down stairs,--
        "The wine is left behind!"

    "Good lack!" quoth he, "yet bring it me,
        My leathern belt likewise,
    In which I bear my trusty sword
        When I do exercise."

    Now Mrs. Gilpin, careful soul,
        Had two stone bottles found,
    To hold the liquor that she loved,
        And keep it safe and sound.

    Each bottle had a curling ear,
        Through which the belt he drew,
    And hung a bottle on each side,
        To make his balance true.

    Then, over all, that he might be
        Equipped from top to toe,
    His long red cloak, well brushed and
        He manfully did throw.

    Now see him mounted once again,
        Upon his nimble steed,
    Full slowly pacing o'er the stones
        With caution and good heed.

    But finding soon a smoother road
        Beneath his well-shod feet,
    The snorting beast began to trot,
        Which galled him in his seat.

    So "Fair and softly" John he cried,
        But John he cried in vain;
    That trot became a gallop soon,
        In spite of curb and rein.

    So stooping down, as needs he must
        Who cannot sit upright,
    He grasped the mane with both his hands,
        And eke with all his might.

    His horse, which never in that sort
        Had handled been before,
    What thing upon his back had got
        Did wonder more and more.

    Away went Gilpin, neck or nought;
        Away went hat and wig;
    He little dreamed when he set out
        Of running such a rig.

    The wind did blow, the cloak did fly,
        Like streamer long and gay,
    Till, loop and button failing both,
        At last it flew away.

    Then might all people well discern,
        The bottles he had slung;
    A bottle swinging at each side,
        As hath been said or sung.

    The dogs did bark, the children screamed,
        Up flew the windows all,
    And every soul cried out, "Well done!"
        As loud as he could bawl.

    Away went Gilpin--who but he?
        His fame soon spread around;
    "He carries weight, he rides a race!
        'Tis for a thousand pound!"

    And still, as fast as he drew near,
        'Twas wonderful to view,
    How in a trice the turnpike men
        Their gates wide open threw.

    And now, as he went bowing down
        His reeking head full low,
    The bottles twain behind his back
        Were shattered at a blow.

    Down ran the wine into the road,
        Most piteous to be seen,
    Which made his horse's flanks to smoke
        As they had basted been.

    But still he seemed to carry weight,
        With leathern girdle braced;
    For all might see the bottle necks
        Still dangling at his waist.

    Thus all through merry Islington
        These gambols he did play,
    Until he came unto the wash
        Of Edmonton so gay;

    And there he threw the wash about
        On both sides of the way,
    Just like unto a trundling mop,
        Or a wild goose at play.

    At Edmonton his loving wife
        From the balcony spied
    Her tender husband, wondering much
        To see how he did ride.

    "Stop, stop, John Gilpin! Here's the house!"
        They all at once did cry;
    "The dinner waits and we are tired."
        Said Gilpin, "So am I!"

    But yet his horse was not a whit
        Inclined to tarry there;
    For why? his owner had a house
        Full ten miles off, at Ware.

    So like an arrow swift he flew,
        Shot by an archer strong;
    So did he fly--which brings me to
        The middle of my song.

    Away went Gilpin, out of breath,
        And sore against his will,
    Till, at his friend the calender's,
        His horse at last stood still.

    The calender, amazed to see
        His neighbor in such trim,
    Laid down his pipe, flew to the gate,
        And thus accosted him:

    "What news? what news? your tidings tell;
        Tell me you must and shall;
    Say why bareheaded you are come,
        Or why you come at all?"

    Now Gilpin had a pleasant wit,
        And loved a timely joke;
    And thus unto the calender,
        In merry guise, he spoke:

    "I came because your horse would come;
        And, if I well forbode,
    My hat and wig will soon be here:--
        They are upon the road."

    The calender, right glad to find
        His friend in merry pin,
    Returned him not a single word,
        But to the house went in;

    Whence straight he came with hat and wig;
        A wig that flowed behind,
    A hat not much the worse for wear,
        Each comely in its kind.

    He held them up and in his turn
        Thus showed his ready wit:
    "My head is twice as big as yours,
        They, therefore, needs must fit.

    But let me scrape the dirt away
        That hangs upon your face;
    And stop and eat, for well you may
        Be in a hungry case."

    Said John, "It is my wedding day,
        And all the world would stare,
    If wife should dine at Edmonton
        And I should dine at Ware."

    So, turning to his horse, he said,
        "I am in haste to dine;
    'Twas for your pleasure you came here,
        You shall go back for mine."

    Ah! luckless speech and bootless boast,
        For which he paid full dear;
    For while he spake, a braying ass
        Did sing most loud and clear;

    Whereat his horse did snort, as he
        Had heard a lion roar,
    And galloped off with all his might,
        As he had done before.

    Away went Gilpin, and away
        Went Gilpin's hat and wig:
    He lost them sooner than at first;
        For why?--they were too big.

    Now Mistress Gilpin, when she saw
        Her husband posting down
    Into the country far away,
        She pulled out half a crown;

    And thus unto the youth she said,
        That drove them to the Bell,
    "This shall be yours when you bring back
        My husband safe and well."

    The youth did ride, and soon did meet
        John coming back amain;
    Whom in a trice he tried to stop
        By catching at his rein;

    But not performing what he meant
        And gladly would have done,
    The frightened steed he frighted more,
        And made him faster run.

    Away went Gilpin, and away
        Went postboy at his heels,
    The postboy's horse right glad to miss
        The lumbering of the wheels.

    Six gentlemen upon the road,
        Thus seeing Gilpin fly,
    With postboy scampering in the rear,
        They raised the hue and cry;--

    "Stop thief! stop thief! a highwayman!"
        Not one of them was mute;
    And all and each that passed that way
        Did join in the pursuit.

    And now the turnpike gates again
        Flew open in short space;
    The toll-men thinking as before,
        That Gilpin rode a race.

    And so he did, and won it too,
        For he got first to town;
    Nor stopped till where he had got up
        He did again get down.

    Now let us sing "Long Live the King,"
        And Gilpin, long live he;
    And when he next doth ride abroad
        May I be there to see!

Biographical: William Cowper, 1731-1800, was a famous English poet. His poems range from religious to humorous subjects.

    "calender"
    "eke"
    "chaise and pair"
    "frugal"
    "gambols"
    "trainband"
    "repair"
    "he carries weight"
    "for that wine is dear"
    "turnpike"
    "basted"
    "bootless boast"
    "the postboy's horse right glad to miss the lumbering of the wheels"

    I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
    I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
    "Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;
    "Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through;
    Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
    And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

    Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace
    Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;
    I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,
    Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,
    Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit,
    Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.

    'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near
    Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear;
    At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see;
    At Düffeld, 'twas morning as plain as could be;
    And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime,
    So Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is time!"

    At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun,
    And against him the cattle stood black every one,
    To stare through the mist at us galloping past,
    And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last,
    With resolute shoulders, each butting away
    The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray:

    And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back
    For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track;
    And one eye's black intelligence,--ever that glance
    O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance
    And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon
    His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on.

    By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, "Stay spur!
    Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her,
    We'll remember at Aix"--for one heard the quick wheeze
    Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees,
    And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,
    As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.

    So, we were left galloping, Joris and I,
    Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky;
    The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,
    'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff;
    Till over by Dalhem, a dome-spire sprang white,
    And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in sight!"

    "How they'll greet us!"--and all in a moment his roan
    Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone;
    And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight
    Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,
    With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,
    And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim.

    Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster let fall,
    Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all,
    Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,
    Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer;
    Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good,
    Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.

    And all I remember is--friends flocking round
    As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground;
    And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,
    As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,
    Which (the burgesses voted by common consent)
    Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.

Biographical and Historical: Robert Browning was born in a suburb of London in 1812. His four grandparents were respectively of English, German, Scotch, and Creole birth. After his marriage with the poet, Elizabeth Barrett, he lived in Italy, where in the old palace Casa Guidi, in Florence, they spent years of rare companionship and happiness. After her death he returned to England, but spent most of his summers abroad. On the Grand Canal, in Venice, the gondoliers point out a palace where at his son's home, Browning died in 1889. He was buried in the Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.

Browning's poems are not easy to read, because he condenses so much into a word or phrase and he often leaves large gaps to be filled in by the reader's imagination. Any one can make selections of lines and even entire poems from Tennyson, Poe, Southey, and Lanier, in which the poet has created for us verbal music and beauty. Browning, however, is not so much concerned with this side of poetry as he is with portraying correctly the varied emotions of the human soul.

"Love in the largest sense, as the divine principle working through all nature, is at the very center of Browning's creed. His is the heartiest, happiest, most beautiful poetic voice that his age has read. He stands apart from most others of his kind and age in the positiveness of his religious faith, a faith that is based upon a conviction of the conquering universality of love and self-sacrifice."

"How They Brought the Good News" is without historical basis; the ride occurred only in the imagination of the poet. The inspiration came from Browning's longing for a horseback gallop over the English downs.

The rhythm suggests the gallop of the horses. In which lines is this suggestion most marked?

    "postern"
    "pique"
    "askance"
    "burgesses"
    "stirrup"
    "twilight"
    "haunches"
    "holster"
    "Good speed! cried the watch as the gate-bolts undrew"
    "With resolute shoulders each butting away
    The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray"

    You know, we French stormed Ratisbon:
        A mile or so away,
    On a little mound, Napoleon
        Stood on our storming-day;
    With neck out-thrust, you fancy how,
        Legs wide, arms locked behind,
    As if to balance the prone brow
        Oppressive with its mind.

    Just as perhaps he mused, "My plans
        That soar, to earth may fall,
    Let once my army-leader, Lannes,
        Waver at yonder wall,"--
    Out 'twixt the battery-smokes there flew
        A rider, bound on bound
    Full-galloping; nor bridle drew
        Until he reached the mound.

    Then off there flung in smiling joy,
        And held himself erect
    By just his horse's mane, a boy:
        You hardly could suspect--
    (So tight he kept his lips compressed,
        Scarce any blood came through)
    You looked twice ere you saw his breast
        Was all but shot in two.

    "Well," cried he, "Emperor, by God's grace,
        We've got you Ratisbon!
    The marshal's in the market-place,
        And you'll be there anon
    To see your flag-bird flap his vans
        Where I, to heart's desire,
    Perched him!" The chief's eye flashed; his plans
        Soared up again like fire.

    The chiefs eye flashed; but presently
        Softened itself, as sheathes
    A film the mother eagle's eye
        When her bruised eaglet breathes:
    "You're wounded!" "Nay," the soldier's pride
        Touched to the quick, he said:
    "I'm killed, sire!" And his chief beside,
        Smiling, the boy fell dead.

    "stormed"
    "soar"
    "prone"
    "waver"
    "battery-smokes"
    "vans"
    "sheathes"
    "film"

    On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two,
        Did the English fight the French--woe to France!
    And the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter through the blue,
    Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue,
        Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Rance,
    With the English fleet in view.

    'Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in full chase;
        First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, Damfreville;
            Close on him fled, great and small,
            Twenty-two good ships in all;
    And they signalled to the place,
    "Help the winners of a race!
        Get us guidance, give us harbor, take us quick--or, quicker still,
        Here's the English can and will!"

    Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and leapt on board;
        "Why, what hope or chance have ships like these to pass?" laughed they:
        "Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage scarred and scored,--
    Shall the "Formidable" here, with her twelve and eighty guns,
        Think to make the river-mouth by the single narrow way,
    Trust to enter--where 'tis ticklish for a craft of twenty tons,
            And with flow at full beside?
            Now, 'tis slackest ebb of tide.
        Reach the mooring? Rather say,
    While rock stands or water runs,
        Not a ship will leave the bay!"

    Then was called a council straight.
    Brief and bitter the debate:
    "Here's the English at our heels; would you have them take in tow
    All that's left us of the fleet, linked together stern and bow,
    For a prize to Plymouth Sound? Better run the ships aground!"
        (Ended Damfreville his speech).
    "Not a minute more to wait!
        Let the captains all and each
        Shove ashore, then blow up, burn the vessels on the beach!
    France must undergo her fate.

    "Give the word!" But no such word
    Was ever spoke or heard:
        For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck, amid all these,--
    A captain? a lieutenant? a mate,--first, second, third?
            No such man of mark, and meet
            With his betters to compete!
            But a simple Breton sailor, pressed by Tourville for the fleet,
        A poor coasting-pilot, he,---Hervé Riel, the Croisickese.

    And "What mockery or malice have we here?" cried Hervé Riel.
        "Are you mad, you Malouins? Are you cowards, fools, or rogues?
    Talk to me of rocks and shoals?--me, who took the soundings, tell
    On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every swell,
        'Twixt the offing here and Grève, where the river disembogues?
    Are you bought by English gold? Is it love the lying's for?
            Morn and eve, night and day,
            Have I piloted your bay,
    Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of Solidor.
        Burn the fleet, and ruin France? That were worse than fifty Hogues!
        Sirs, they know I speak the truth! Sirs, believe me, there's way!
    Only let me lead the line,
        Have the biggest ship to steer,
        Get this Formidable clear,
    Make the others follow mine,
    And I lead them, most and least, by a passage I know well,
        Right to Solidor past Grève,
            And there lay them safe and sound;
        And if one ship misbehave,--
            Keel so much as grate the ground,
    Why, I've nothing but my life,--here's my head!" cries Hervé Riel.

    Not a minute more to wait.
    "Steer us in, then, small and great!
            Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron!" cried its chief.
    Captains, give the sailor place!
            He is Admiral, in brief.
    Still the north-wind, by God's grace!
    See the noble fellow's face
    As the big ship, with a bound,
    Clears the entry like a hound,
    Keeps the passage, as its inch of way were the wide sea's profound!
        See, safe thro' shoal and rock,
        How they follow in a flock,
    Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground,
        Not a spar that comes to grief!
    The peril, see, is past.
    All are harbored to the last,
    And just as Hervé Riel hollas "Anchor!" sure as fate,
    Up the English come,--too late!

    So, the storm subsides to calm:
    They see the green trees wave
        On the heights o'erlooking Grève.
    Hearts that bled are stanched with balm.
    "Just our rapture to enhance,
            Let the English rake the bay,
    Gnash their teeth and glare askance
            As they cannonade away!
    'Neath rampired Solidor pleasant riding on the Rance!"
    How hope succeeds despair on each captain's countenance!
    Out burst all with one accord,
            "This is paradise for hell!
        Let France, let France's king,
        Thank the man that did the thing!"
    What a shout, and all one word,
          "Hervé Riel!"
    As he stepped in front once more;
        Not a symptom of surprise
        In the frank blue Breton eyes,--
    Just the same man as before.

    Then said Damfreville, "My friend,
    I must speak out at the end,
        Though I find the speaking hard;
    Praise is deeper than the lips;
    You have saved the king his ships;
        You must name your own reward.
    Faith, our sun was near eclipse!
    Demand whate'er you will,
    France remains your debtor still.
    Ask to heart's content, and have! or my name's not Damfreville."

    Then a beam of fun outbroke
    On the bearded mouth that spoke,
        As the honest heart laughed through
        Those frank eyes of Breton blue:--
    "Since I needs must say my say,
        Since on board the duty's done,
        And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point, what is it but a run!
    Since 'tis ask and have, I may--
        Since the others go ashore--
    Come! A good whole holiday!
        Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the Belle Aurore!"
        That he asked and that he got,--nothing more.

    Name and deed alike are lost:
    Not a pillar nor a post
        In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell;
    Not a head in white and black
        On a single fishing-smack,
    In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack
        All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell.
    Go to Paris: rank on rank
        Search the heroes flung pell-mell
    On the Louvre, face and flank!
        You shall look long enough ere you come to Hervé Riel.
    So, for better and for worse, Hervé Riel, accept my verse!
    In my verse, Hervé Riel, do thou once more
    Save the squadron, honor France, love thy wife the Belle Aurore!

What forfeit did Hervé Riel propose in case he failed to pilot the ships safely in?

    "Worse than fifty Hogues"
    "Clears the entry like a hound"
    "Just the same man as before"
    "He is Admiral, in brief"
    "Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide sea's profound"
    "Search the heroes flung pell-mell on the Louvre, face and flank"
    "pressed"
    "disembogues"
    "rampired"
    "bore the bell"

        O, hark! O, hear! how thin and clear,
            And thinner, clearer, farther going!
        O, sweet and far from cliff and scar,
            The horns of Elfland, faintly blowing!
    Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying;
    Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

        O, love, they die in yon rich sky;
            They faint on hill or field or river.
        Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
            And grow forever and forever.
    Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying;
    And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

Why does the poet use "splendor" instead of "sun-set," and "summits" instead of "mountains"?

Line l6--They "die" and "faint" while "our echoes" "roll" and "grow." Note that "grow" is the important word.

Note the refrain and the changes in its use; in the first stanza--the bugle; in the second--the echo; in the third--the spiritual echo.

    "wild echoes"
    "cliff and scar"
    "horns of Elfland"
    "rich sky"
    "purple glens"

    By thirty hills I hurry down,
        Or slip between the ridges,
    By twenty thorps, a little town,
        And half a hundred bridges,

    Till last by Philip's farm I flow
        To join the brimming river,
    For men may come and men may go,
        But I go on forever.

    I chatter over stony ways,
        In little sharps and trebles;
    I bubble into eddying bays,
        I babble on the pebbles.

    With many a curve my banks I fret
        By many a field and fallow,
    And many a fairy foreland set
        With willow-weed and mallow.

    I chatter, chatter, as I flow
        To join the brimming river,
    For men may come and men may go,
        But I go on forever.

    I wind about, and in and out,
        With here a blossom sailing,
    And here and there a lusty trout,
        And here and there a grayling.

    And here and there a foamy flake
        Upon me, as I travel
    With many a silvery water-break
        Above the golden gravel,

    And draw them all along, and flow
        To join the brimming river,
    For men may come and men may go,
        But I go on forever.

    I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
        I slide by hazel covers;
    I move the sweet forget-me-nots
        That grow for happy lovers.

    I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
        Among my skimming swallows;
    I make the netted sunbeams dance
        Against my sandy shallows,

    I murmur under moon and stars
        In brambly wildernesses;
    I linger by my shingly bars,
        I loiter round my cresses;

    And out again I curve and flow
        To join the brimming river,
    For men may come and men may go,
        But I go on forever.

Where in the poem do we find a meaning for the following lines:
    "Oh! of all the songs sung
    No songs are so sweet
    As the songs with refrains
    Which repeat and repeat."

How does the repetition of "chatter" influence the melody of the first line in the sixth stanza?

Alliteration is the repetition of the same letter or sound at the beginning of two or more words in close succession.

Find lines in which alliteration is used e. g. "sudden sally," "field and fallow," etc. What does this add to the poem?

Indicate the rhythm of the first four lines by placing them in these curves:
_______ _______ _______ _______
/ \/ \/ \/ \

    "coot and hern" (heron)
    "bicker"
    "thorps"
    "fairy foreland"
    "willow weed and mallow"
    "grayling"
    "water-break"
    "covers"
    "brambly"
    "shingly bars"
    "eddying"
    "fallow"
    "babble"
    "cresses"
    "brimming"
    "sharps and trebles"
    "skimming swallows"
    "netted sunbeams"

        Out of the hills of Habersham,
        Down the valleys of Hall,
    I hurry amain to reach the plain,
    Run the rapid and leap the fall;
    Split at the rock and together again,
    Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
    And flee from folly on every side
    With a lover's pain to attain the plain
        Far from the hills of Habersham,
        Far from the valleys of Hall.

        All down the hills of Habersham,
        All through the valleys of Hall,
    The rushes cried, "Abide, abide,"
    The wilful water-weeds held me thrall,
    The laving laurel turned my tide,
    The ferns and the fondling grass said, "Stay,"
    The dewberry dipped for to work delay,
    And the little reeds sighed, "Abide, abide,"
        Here in the hills of Habersham,
        Here in the valleys of Hall.

        High o'er the hills of Habersham,
        Veiling the valleys of Hall,
    The hickory told me manifold
    Fair tales of shade; the poplar tall
    Wrought me her shadowy self to hold;
    The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine,
    Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign,
        Said: "Pass not so cold, these manifold
        Deep shades of the hills of Habersham,
        These glades in the valleys of Hall."

        And oft in the hills of Habersham,
        And oft in the valleys of Hall,
    The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook stone
    Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl;
    And many a luminous jewel lone
    (Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist,
    Ruby, garnet, or amethyst)
    Made lures with the lights of streaming stone
        In the clefts of the hills of Habersham,
        In the beds of the valleys of Hall.

        But oh! not the hills of Habersham,
        And oh! not the valleys of Hall
    Avail; I am fain for to water the plain.
    Downward the voices of Duty call;
    Downward to toil and be mixed with the main.
    The dry fields burn and the mills are to turn,
    And a myriad flowers mortally yearn,
    And the lordly main from beyond the plain
        Calls o'er the hills of Habersham,
        Calls through the valleys of Hall.

Biographical and Historical: The South has given us two most melodious singers, Poe and Lanier. When only nineteen Sidney Lanier enlisted in the Confederate army, and the close of the war found him broken in health, with little else in the world than a brave wife and a brave heart. When his health permitted he played the flute in an orchestra in Baltimore. The rhythm, the rhyme and the melodious words of his poetry all show him the passionate lover of music that he was. Among his prose writings, "The Boy's Froissart" and "The Boy's King Arthur" are of especial interest to young readers.

Find the Chattahoochee river on your map with its source in the "hills of Habersham" and its course through the "valleys of Hall."

What is peculiar in the phrases: "run the rapid," "flee from folly," "wilful waterweeds," "loving laurel," etc.

Find lines in the other stanzas which contain rhymes. Notice the last word in each of these lines. What two things have you found out?

Lanier believed that poetry is a kind of music. Does the rhythm in this poem sustain this definition?

    "laving laurel"
    "fondling grass"
    "friendly brawl"
    "made lures"
    "lordly main"
    "run the rapid"
    "leap the fall"
    "hurry amain"
    "veiling the valleys"
    "flickering meaning"
    "the mills are to turn"
    "I am fain for to water the plain"

    "How does the water
        Come down at Lodore?"
    My little boy asked me
        Thus, once on a time;
    And, moreover, he tasked me
        To tell him in rhyme.
    Anon at the word,
    There first came one daughter,
        And then came another,
    To second and third
        The request of their brother,
    And to hear how the water
    Comes down at Lodore,
    With its rush and its roar,
        As many a time
    They had seen it before.
        So I told them in rhyme--
    For of rhymes I had store;
    And 'twas my vocation
    For their recreation
        That so I should sing;
    Because I was Laureate
        To them and the king.

    From its sources, which well
        In the tarn on the fell;
    From its fountains
        In the mountains,
    Its rills and its gills;
    Through moss and through brake,
        It runs and it creeps
        For a while, till it sleeps
    In its own little lake.
    And thence, at departing,
    Awakening and starting,
    It runs through the reeds,
    And away it proceeds,
    Through meadow and glade,
    In sun and in shade,
    And through the wood shelter,
        Among crags in its flurry,
    Helter-skelter,
        Hurry-skurry.
    Here it comes sparkling,
    And there it lies darkling;
    Now smoking and frothing
    In tumult and wrath in,
    Till, in this rapid race
        On which it is bent,
    It reaches the place
        Of its steep descent.

        The cataract strong
        Then plunges along,
        Striking and raging,
        As if a war waging
    Its caverns and rocks among;
        Rising and leaping,
        Sinking and creeping,
        Swelling and sweeping,
        Showering and springing,
        Flying and flinging,
        Writhing and ringing,
        Eddying and whisking,
        Spouting and frisking,
        Turning and twisting,
        Around and around
        With endless rebound;
        Smiting and fighting,
        A sight to delight in;
        Confounding, astounding,
    Dizzying, and deafening the ear with its sound,

        Collecting, projecting,
        Receding and speeding,
        And shocking and rocking,
        And darting and parting,
        And threading and spreading,
        And whizzing and hissing,
        And dripping and skipping,
        And hitting and splitting,
        And shining and twining,
        And rattling and battling,
        And shaking and quaking,
        And pouring and roaring,
        And waving and raving,
        And tossing and crossing,
        And flowing and going,
        And running and stunning,
        And foaming and roaming,
        And dinning and spinning,
        And dropping and hopping,
        And working and jerking,
        And guggling and struggling,
        And heaving and cleaving,
        And moaning and groaning,
        And glittering and frittering,
        And gathering and feathering,
        And whitening and brightening,
        And quivering and shivering,
        And hurrying and skurrying,
        And thundering and floundering;

    Dividing and gliding and sliding,
    And falling and brawling and sprawling,
    And driving and riving and striving,
    And sprinkling and twinkling and wrinkling,
    And sounding and bounding and rounding,
    And bubbling and troubling and doubling,
    And grumbling and rumbling and tumbling,
    And chattering and battering and shattering;
    Retreating and beating and meeting and sheeting,
    Delaying and straying and playing and spraying,
    Advancing and prancing and glancing and dancing,
    Recoiling, turmoiling, and toiling and boiling,
    And gleaming and streaming and steaming and beaming,
    And rushing and flushing and brushing and gushing,
    And flapping and rapping and clapping and slapping,
    And curling and whirling and purling and twirling,
    And thumping and plumping and bumping and jumping.
    And dashing and flashing and splashing and clashing;
    And so never ending, but always descending,
    Sounds and motions forever and ever are blending,
        All at once, and all o'er, with a mighty uproar:
        And this way the water comes down at Lodore.

Biographical: Robert Southey, 1774-1843, was a great English poet. In 1813 he was made poet laureate.

Find this cataract on your map (Derwent River in Cumberland). What is a cataract? Have you ever seen one?

Where in the poem does Southey first use lines in which two words rhyme? In which three words rhyme?

    "cataract"
    "tarn"
    "brake"
    "glade"
    "helter-skelter"
    "hurry-skurry"
    "vocation"
    "recreation"
    "fell"

            Hear the sledges with the bells--
                        Silver bells!
    What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
        How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
            In the icy air of night!
        While the stars that oversprinkle
        All the heavens, seem to twinkle
            With a crystalline delight;
                Keeping time, time, time,
                In a sort of Runic rhyme,
    To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
        From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
                    Bells, bells, bells--
    From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

        Hear the mellow wedding-bells,
                    Golden bells!
    What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
        Through the balmy air of night
        How they ring out their delight!
            From the molten-golden notes,
                And all in tune,
            What a liquid ditty floats
    To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
                    On the moon!
        Oh, from out the sounding cells
    What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
                    How it swells!
                    How it dwells
            On the Future! how it tells
            Of the rapture that impels
        To the swinging and the ringing
            Of the bells, bells, bells--
                    Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
                            Bells, bells, bells--
    To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

                    Hear the loud alarum bells--
                            Brazen bells!
    What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
                In the startled ear of night
                How they scream out their affright!
                    Too much horrified to speak,
                    They can only shriek, shriek,
                            Out of tune,
    In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
    In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire
                    Leaping higher, higher, higher,
                    With a desperate desire,
                            And a resolute endeavor,
                            Now--now to sit or never,
                    By the side of the pale-faced moon.
                            Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
                            What a tale their terror tells
                                  Of despair!
                    How they clang, and clash, and roar!
                    What a horror they outpour
                On the bosom of the palpitating air!
                        Yet the ear it fully knows,
                                  By the twanging
                                  And the clanging,
                        How the danger ebbs and flows;
                    Yet the ear distinctly tells,
                                  In the jangling,
                                  And the wrangling,
                    How the danger sinks and swells,
    By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells--
                                        Of the bells--
                    Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
                                        Bells, bells, bells--
    In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!

            Hear the tolling of the bells--
                Iron bells!
    What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
        In the silence of the night,
        How we shiver with affright
    At the melancholy menace of their tone!
        For every sound that floats
        From the rust within their throats
                Is a groan.
        And the people--ah, the people--
        They that dwell up in the steeple,
                All alone,
        And who tolling, tolling, tolling,
            In that muffled monotone,
        Feel a glory in so rolling
            On the human heart a stone--
        They are neither man nor woman--
        They are neither brute nor human--
                They are Ghouls;
        And their king it is who tolls;
        And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
                Rolls,
            A paean from the bells!
        And his merry bosom swells
            With the paean of the bells!
        And he dances, and he yells;
            Keeping time, time, time,
            In a sort of Runic rhyme,
        To the paean of the bells--
                Of the bells:
        Keeping time, time, time,
        In a sort of Runic rhyme,
            To the throbbing of the bells--
                Of the bells, bells, bells--
            To the sobbing of the bells;
        Keeping time, time, time,
            As he knells, knells, knells,
            In a happy Runic rhyme,
            To the rolling of the bells--
                      Of the bells, bells, bells--
              To the tolling of the bells,
                  Of the bells, bells, bells, bells--
                        Bells, bells, bells--
        To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

Biographical and Historical: Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston on January 19th, 1809. Both his parents were members of a theatrical troupe then playing in Boston. He was left an orphan at the age of three years, and was adopted by a wealthy Virginia planter and by him educated in England and elsewhere. Owing to his erratic habits, Poe's foster-father disowned him, and after that life for him was a constant battle with poverty. His prose tales abound in adventure, allegory, and the supernatural. His poetry is full of imagery, beauty, and melody.

    "euphony"
    "tintinnabulation"
    "expostulation"
    "Runic"
    "crystalline"
    "palpitating"

    I was a child and she was a child,
        In this kingdom by the sea:
    But we loved with a love that was more than love--
        I and my Annabel Lee;
    With a love that the wingèd seraphs of heaven
        Coveted her and me.

    And this was the reason that, long ago,
        In this kingdom by the sea,
    A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
        My beautiful Annabel Lee;
    So that her highborn kinsmen came
        And bore her away from me,
    To shut her up in a sepulchre
        In this kingdom by the sea.

    The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
        Went envying her and me--
    Yes!--that was the reason (as all men know,
        In this kingdom by the sea)
    That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
        Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

    But our love it was stronger by far than the love
        Of those who were older than we--
        Of many far wiser than we--
    And neither the angels in heaven above,
        Nor the demons down under the sea,
    Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
        Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:

    For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
        Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
    And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
        Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
    And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
    Of my darling,--my darling,--my life and my bride,
        In the sepulchre there by the sea,
        In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Like "The Bells," this poem is musical and the words are chosen with reference to this quality.

Notice that the repetition of the word "many" adds to the music of the first line.

    "winged seraphs"
    "sounding sea"
    "sepulchre"
    "highborn kinsmen"
    "coveted"
    "envying"

    This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:--
    There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;
    And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged
    A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords
    Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's banner
    Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.
    A craven hung along the battle's edge,
    And thought, "Had I a sword of keener steel--
    That blue blade that the king's son bears,--but this
    Blunt thing--!" he snapt and flung it from his hand,
    And lowering crept away and left the field.
    Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead,
    And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,
    Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand,
    And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shout
    Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down,
    And saved a great cause that heroic day.

Biographical: Edward Rowland Sill was born in Connecticut in 1841. He graduated at Yale and lived most of his life in California, being for some years professor of English language and literature at the State University. Sill was a true poet, but the whole of his literary output is contained in two slender volumes. His poems are noted for their compressed thought. The selection here given shows this quality.

If the battle represents life, and the craven and the king's son are types of the people in the world, what do you think the swords represent?

    "craven"
    "bestead"
    "hung along the battle's edge"
    "shocked"
    "hemmed by foes"

        Whither, midst falling dew,
    While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
    Far through their rosy depths dost thou pursue
        Thy solitary way?

        Vainly the fowler's eye
    Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
    As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,
        Thy figure floats along.

        Seek'st thou the plashy brink
    Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
    Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
        On the chafed ocean-side?

        There is a Power whose care
    Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,--
    The desert and illimitable air,--
        Lone wandering, but not lost.

        All day thy wings have fanned,
    At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
    Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
        Though the dark night is near.

        And soon that toil shall end;
    Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
    And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend
        Soon o'er thy sheltered nest.

        Thou'rt gone; the abyss of heaven
    Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart
    Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
        And shall not soon depart.

        He who, from zone to zone,
    Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
    In the long way that I must tread alone
        Will lead my steps aright.

Biographical and Historical: William Cullen Bryant was born in 1794 in Western Massachusetts. His education was carried on in the district school. At home he had the use of an exceptionally fine library, for that period, and he made the most of its opportunities. In 1816 he secured a license to practice law, and journeyed on foot to Plainfield, Mass., to look for a place to open an office. He felt forlorn and desolate, and the world seemed big and cold. In this mood, while pausing on his way to contemplate the beauty of the sunset, he saw a solitary bird wing its way along the horizon. He watched it until it was lost in the distance. Then he pursued his journey with new courage and on arriving at the place where he was to stop for the night, he sat down and wrote this beautiful poem of faith and hope.

    "thy solitary way"
    "rosy depths"
    "thin atmosphere"
    "the fowler's eye"
    "long way"
    "welcome land"
    "that toil shall end"
    "tread alone"
    "boundless sky"
    "last steps of day"
    "certain flight"
    "lone wandering but not lost"
    "chafed ocean-side"
    "pathless coast"
    "the abyss of heaven hath swallowed up thy form"

        Bird of the wilderness,
        Blithesome and cumberless,
    Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea!
        Emblem of happiness,
        Blest is thy dwelling place,--
    O to abide in the desert with thee!
        Wild is thy lay and loud,
        Far in the downy cloud,
    Love gives it energy, love gave it birth.
        Where on thy dewy wing,
        Where art thou journeying?
    Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth,

        O'er fell and fountain sheen,
        O'er moor and mountain green,
    O'er the red streamer that heralds the day,
        Over the cloudlet dim,
        Over the rainbow's rim,
    Musical cherub, soar, singing, away!
        Then, when the gloaming comes,
        Low in the heather blooms,
    Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be!

James Hogg was born in Ettrick, Scotland, in 1770, and was known as "the Ettrick Shepherd," because he followed the occupation of a shepherd until he was thirty. The beautiful selection here given was doubtless inspired by the poet's early communion with Nature.

Why is the lark called an emblem of happiness? Name something that might be called an emblem of strength; of sorrow.

What pictures do the following words make to you: "wilderness," "moor," "lea," "fell," "heather-bloom"?

Indicate the rhythm of the first six lines by writing them in groups as shown in the following curves:

__________    ____________
/                      \/                          \
    Bird of the        wil-der-ness

                  Higher still and higher
                      From the earth thou springest
                  Like a cloud of fire;
                      The blue deep thou wingest
    And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

                  In the golden lightning
                      Of the sunken sun,
                  O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
                      Thou dost float and run;
    Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

                  The pale purple even
                      Melts around thy flight;
                  Like a star of heaven,
                      In the broad daylight
    Thou art unseen,--but yet I hear thy shrill delight,

                  Keen as are the arrows
                      Of that silver sphere,
                  Whose intense lamp narrows
                      In the white dawn clear
    Until we hardly see--we feel that it is there.

                  All the earth and air
                      With thy voice is loud,
                  As, when Night is bare,
                      From one lonely cloud
    The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflowed.

                  What thou art we know not;
                      What is most like thee?
                  From rainbow clouds there flow not
                      Drops so bright to see
    As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

                  Like a Poet hidden
                      In the light of thought,
                  Singing hymns unbidden
                      Till the world is wrought
    To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

                  Like a high-born maiden
                      In a palace tower,
                  Soothing her love-laden
                      Soul in secret hour
    With music sweet as love,--which overflows her bower:

                  Like a glow-worm golden
                      In a dell of dew,
                  Scattering unbeholden
                      Its aërial hue
    Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view:

                  Like a rose embowered
                      In its own green leaves,
                  By warm winds deflowered,
                      Till the scent it give
    Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves:

                  Sound of vernal showers
                      On the twinkling grass,
                  Bain-awakened flowers,
                      All that ever was
    Joyous and clear and fresh, thy music doth surpass,

                  Teach us, Sprite or Bird,
                      What sweet thoughts are thine;
                  I have never heard
                      Praise of love or wine
    That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

                  Chorus Hymeneal,
                      Or triumphal chaunt,
                  Matched with thine, would be all
                      But an empty vaunt,
    A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

                  What objects are the fountains
                      Of thy happy strain?
                  What fields or waves or mountains?
                      What shapes of sky or plain?
    What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

                  With thy clear keen joyance
                      Languor cannot be;
                  Shadow of annoyance
                      Never came near thee;
    Thou lovest--but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

                  Waking or asleep
                      Thou of death must deem
                  Things more true and deep
                      Than we mortals dream--
    Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

                  We look before and after,
                      And pine for what is not;
                  Our sincerest laughter
                      With some pain is fraught;
    Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

                  Yet if we could scorn
                      Hate and pride and fear;
                  If we were things born
                      Not to shed a tear,
    I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

                  Better than all measures
                      Of delightful sound,
                  Better than all treasures
                      That in books are found,
    Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

                  Teach me half the gladness
                      That thy brain must know,
                  Such harmonious madness
                      From my lips would flow,
    The world should listen then--as I am listening now.

Biographical and Historical: Percy Bysshe Shelley was born in 1792. He was an English poet who traveled much in Europe, and found Italy especially to his liking. His life was short and full of storm and stress, although he never allowed his personal sufferings to embitter his spirit. While only thirty, on a pleasure cruise off the coast of Italy, he was drowned.

"To a Skylark" and "The Cloud" are rare poems because of their wonderful harmony of sound.

The skylark is found in northern Europe. It is noted for its lofty flights and wonderful song. Note that Shelley, Wordsworth, and James Hogg have all written poems about the skylark.

Note the four comparisons--stanzas eight, nine, ten and eleven. Which do you like best? Why?

In line 96 to end, what does Shelley say would be the result if a poet could feel such joy as the little bird seems to feel?

If Shelley had never experienced sadness could he have written this beautiful poem of gladness?

      "There is no music in the life
        That sounds with empty laughter wholly;
        There's not a string attuned to mirth
        But has its chord in melancholy."

    "profuse strains"
    "panted forth"
    "heavy-winged thieves"
    "unpremeditated art"
    "rain of melody"
    "harmonious madness"
    "shrill delight"
    "flood of rapture"
    "float and run"
    "rains out"
    "triumphant chaunt"
    "scattering unbeholden"

    I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
            From the seas and the streams;
    I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
            In their noon-day dreams;
    From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
            The sweet buds every one,
    When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
            As she dances about the sun.
    I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
            And whiten the green plains under;
    And then again I dissolve it in rain,
            And laugh as I pass in thunder.

    I sift the snow on the mountains below,
            And their great pines groan aghast;
    And all the night 'tis my pillow white,
        While I sleep in the arms of the blast,
    Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers,
        Lightning, my pilot, sits;
    In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,--
        It struggles and howls by fits;
    Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
        This pilot is guiding me,
    Lured by the love of the genii that move
        In the depths of the purple sea;
    Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
        Over the lakes and the plains,
    Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
        The spirit he loves remains;
    And I, all the while, bask in heaven's blue smile,
        Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

    The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
        And his burning plumes outspread,
    Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
        When the morning-star shines dead,
    As on the jag of a mountain-crag,
        Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
    An eagle, alit, one moment may sit,
        In the light of its golden wings.
    And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,
        Its ardors of rest and love,
    And the crimson pall of eve may fall
        From the depth of heaven above,
    With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest,
        As still as a brooding dove.

    That orbèd Maiden, with white fire laden,
        Whom mortals call the Moon,
    Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
        By the midnight breezes strewn;
    And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
        Which only the angels hear,
    May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
        The stars peep behind her, and peer!
    And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
        Like a swarm of golden bees,
    When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
        Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
    Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
        Are each paved with the moon and these.

    I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone,
        And the moon's with a girdle of pearl;
    The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
        When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
    From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
        Over a torrent of sea,
    Sun-beam proof, I hang like a roof,
        The mountains its columns be.
    The triumphal arch through which I march
        With hurricane, fire, and snow,
    When the powers of the air are chained to my chair,
        Is the million-colored bow;
    The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove,
        While the moist earth was laughing below.

    I am the daughter of earth and water,
        And the nursling of the sky;
    I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
        I change, but I can not die.
    For after the rain, when, with never a stain,
        The pavilion of heaven is bare,
    And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams,
        Build up the blue dome of air,
    I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
        And out of the caverns of rain,
    Like a sprite from the gloom, like a ghost from the tomb,
        I rise and unbuild it again.

Read the last stanza and tell what lesson the poem teaches. What line tells you?

    "sanguine sunrise"
    "pavilion of heaven"
    "reel and swim"
    "meteor eyes"
    "caverns of rain"
    "million-colored bow"
    "burning plumes"
    "fleece-like floor"
    "sphere-fire"
    "orbed maiden"
    "wind-built tent"
    "cenotaph"

        There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
        There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
        There is society, where none intrudes,
        By the deep sea, and music in its roar;
        I love not man the less, but nature more,
        From these our interviews, in which I steal
        From all I may be, or have been before,
        To mingle with the universe, and feel
    What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

        Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean--roll!
        Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
        Man marks the earth with ruin--his control
        Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain
        The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
        A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
        When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
        He sinks into thy depths, with bubbling groan--
    Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

        His steps are not upon thy paths--thy fields
        Are not a spoil for him--thou dost arise
        And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
        For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
        Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
        And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray,
        And howling to his gods, where haply lies
        His petty hope in some near port or bay,
    And dashest him again to earth: there let him lay.

        The armaments which thunder-strike the walls
        Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
        And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
        The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
        Their clay creator the vain title take
        Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war:
        These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
        They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
    Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

        Thy shores are empires changed in all save thee--
        Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
        Thy waters washed them power while they were free,
        And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
        The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
        Has dried up realms to deserts; not so thou;
        Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play.
        Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow:
    Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

        Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
        Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
        Calm or convulsed--in breeze or gale or storm,
        Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
        Dark-heaving; boundless, endless, and sublime--
        The image of Eternity--the throne
        Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
        The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
    Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

        And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
        Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
        Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
        I wantoned with thy breakers--they to me
        Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
        Made them a terror--'twas a pleasing fear;
        For I was as it were a child of thee,
        And trusted to thy billows far and near,
    And laid my hand upon thy mane--as I do here.

Biographical and Historical: George Gordon Byron was born in London the year before the outbreak of the French Revolution. At the age of ten, upon the death of his grand-uncle he became Lord Byron. He traveled extensively through Europe, spending much time in Italy. At Pisa he formed a warm friendship for the poet Shelley. So deeply was he moved by his impulses toward liberty and freedom that in the summer of 1823 he left Genoa with a supply of arms, medicines, and money to aid the Greeks in their struggle for independence. In the following year he became commander-in-chief at Missolonghi, but he died of a fever before he had an opportunity to actually engage in battle. Hearing the news, the boy Tennyson, dreaming at Somersby on poetic greatness, crept away to weep and carve upon sandstone the words, "Byron is dead."

In the second and third stanzas Byron contrasts the ocean and the earth in their relation to man.

"The Invincible Armada"--an immense Spanish fleet consisting of one hundred thirty vessels, sailed from Corunna in 1588 and attacked the English fleet but suffered defeat. This event furnished Southey the inspiration for a poem, "The Spanish Armada."

"Trafalgar"--one of Lord Nelson's great sea-fights, occurring off Cape Trafalgar on the coast of Spain in 1805. Here he defeated the combined fleets of France and Spain, but was himself killed.

    "unknelled"
    "uncoffined"
    "unknown"
    "playful spray"
    "oak leviathans"
    "yeast of waves"
    "These are thy toys"
    "The Armada's pride"
    "spoils of Trafalgar"
    "rock-built"
    "glasses itself"
    "fathomless"

    Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,
    That host with their banners at sunset were seen;
    Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath flown,
    That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

    For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
    And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
    And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
    And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still!

    And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
    But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
    And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
    And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.
    And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
    With the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail;
    And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
    The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

    And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
    And their idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
    And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
    Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

Historical: Sennacherib was King of Assyria. His army invaded Judea and besieged Jerusalem but was overthrown; 185,000 of his men were destroyed in a single night. Sennacherib returned in haste with the remnant to his own country. For the Bible story of this event read 2 Kings XIX. 6-36.

Note the development:
1. Brilliant outset of the Assyrian cavalry.
2. Their summer changes to winter.
3. The angel turns their sleep into death.
4. The steed and the rider.
5. The mourning.
6. Their idols powerless to help them.
7. Their religion broken down.
8. Their power "melted like snow."

Indicate the rhythm of the four lines of the second stanza by writing them in groups under curves as on page 47:

    "cohorts"
    "sheen"
    "host"
    "unsmote"
    "idols are broke" (broken)
    "purple and gold"
    "withered and strown"
    "rock-beating surf"

        There was a sound of revelry by night,
        And Belgium's capital had gathered then
        Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright
        The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men.
        A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
        Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
        Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,
        And all went merry as a marriage bell.
    But, hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!

        Did ye not hear, it?--No; 'twas but the wind,
        Or the car rattling o'er the stony street.
        On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
        No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
        To chase the glowing hours with flying feet!
        But, hark! that heavy sound breaks in once more,
        As if the clouds its echo would repeat;
        And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before!
    Arm! arm! it is--it is the cannon's opening roar!

        Within a windowed niche of that high hall
        Sate Brunswick's fated chieftain; he did hear
        That sound the first amidst the festival,
        And caught its tone with Death's prophetic ear;
        And when they smiled because he deemed it near,
        His heart more truly knew that peal too well
        Which stretched his father on a bloody bier,
        And roused the vengeance blood alone could quell;
    He rushed into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell.

        Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro,
        And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress,
        And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago
        Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness;
        And there were sudden partings, such as press
        The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs
        Which ne'er might be repeated: who could guess
        If ever more should meet those mutual eyes,
    Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise!

        And there was mounting in hot haste: the steed,
        The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,
        Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,
        And swiftly forming in the ranks of war;
        And the deep thunder peal on peal afar;
        And near, the beat of the alarming drum
        Roused up the soldier ere the morning star;
        While thronged the citizens with terror dumb,
    Or whispering with white lips, "The foe! They come! they come!"

        And wild and high the "Cameron's Gathering" rose!
        The war note of Lochiel, which Albyn's hills
        Have heard--and heard, too, have her Saxon foes:
        How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills,
        Savage and shrill! But with the breath which fills
        Their mountain pipe, so fill the mountaineers
        With the fierce native daring which instills
        The stirring memory of a thousand years,
    And Evan's, Donald's fame rings in each clansman's ears!

        And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves,
        Dewy with Nature's tear-drops, as they pass,
        Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves,
        Over the unreturning brave--alas!
        Ere evening to be trodden like the grass
        Which now beneath them, but above shall grow
        In its next verdure, when this fiery mass
        Of living valor, rolling on the foe,
    And burning with high hope, shall molder cold and low.

        Last noon beheld them full of lusty life,
        Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay;
        The midnight brought the signal sound of strife--
        The morn, the marshaling in arms--the day,
        Battle's magnificently stern array!
        The thunderclouds close o'er it, which when rent
        The earth is covered thick with other clay,
        Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent,
Rider and horse--friend, foe--in one red burial blent!

Historical: On the evening of June 15, 1815, the Duchess of Richmond gave a ball at Brussels. Wellington's officers, at his request, were present, his purpose being to conceal the near approach of battle. Napoleon, the leader of the French army, was the military genius of the age; Wellington, the leader of the English forces, had, Tennyson tells us, "gained a hundred fights nor ever lost an English gun." These two great generals now met for the first time. The event was of supreme interest to all the world. The engagement that followed next day was fought at Quatre Bras; the great battle of Waterloo took place June 18th, Sunday. Read Thackeray's "Vanity Fair" for description of this night in Brussels. This is a great martial poem--the greatest inspired by this event.

Note the movement of the poem. The revelry, the beauty and the chivalry, the music and the merry-making, the alarm, the hurrying to and fro, the gathering tears, the mounting in hot haste, the whispering with white lips, the Scotch music, the green leaves of Ardennes, the closing scene.

The sixth stanza describes the Scottish martial music--What purpose does this stanza serve in the poem?

Note the rhythm and the change in movement. "Cameron's Gathering"--The Cameron Highlander's call to arms. "Lochiel"--Donald Cameron of Lochiel was a famous highland chieftain. Read the poem "Lochiel's Warning."

"Evan's, Donald's fame"--Evan Cameron (another Lochiel) and his grandson, Donald, were famous Highland chiefs.

"Ardennes"--Arden, a forest on the Meuse river between Brussels and Waterloo, called Arden by Shakespeare in "As You Like It."

    "voluptuous swell"
    "rising knell"
    "glowing hours"
    "opening roar"
    "terror dumb"
    "noon of night"
    "stirring memory"
    "revelry"
    "chivalry"
    "mustering squadron"
    "clattering car"
    "pouring forward"
    "impetuous speed"
    "unreturning brave"
    "rolling on the foe"
    "magnificently stern"
    "clansman"
    "inanimate"
    "verdure"
    "blent"

    The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!
        Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
    Where grew the arts of war and peace,
        Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung!
    Eternal summer gilds them yet,
    But all, except their sun, is set.

    The Scian and the Teian muse,
        The hero's harp, the lover's lute,
    Have found the fame your shores refuse;
        Their place of birth alone is mute
    To sounds which echo further west
    Than your sires' "Islands of the Blest."

    The mountains look on Marathon--
        And Marathon looks on the sea;
    And musing there an hour alone,
        I dreamed that Greece might still be free:
    For, standing on the Persian's grave,
    I could not deem myself a slave.

    A king sat on the rocky brow
        Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis;
    And ships by thousands lay below,
      And men in nations;--all were his!
    He counted them at break of day--
    And when the sun set, where were they?

    And where are they? and where art thou
        My country? On thy voiceless shore
    The heroic lay is tuneless now--
        The heroic bosom beats no more.
    And must thy lyre, so long divine,
        Degenerate into hands like mine?

    'Tis something in the dearth of fame,
        Though linked among a fettered race,
    To feel at least a patriot's shame,
        Even as I sing, suffuse my face;
    For what is left the poet here?
        For Greeks a blush--for Greece a tear.

    Must we but weep o'er days more blest?
        Must we but blush?--Our fathers bled.
    Earth, render back from out thy breast
        A remnant of our Spartan dead!
    Of the three hundred grant but three,
    To make a new Thermopylæ!

    What, silent still? and silent all?
        Ah, no; the voices of the dead
    Sound like a distant torrent's fall,
        And answer, "Let one living head,
    But one, arise--we come, we come!"
    'Tis but the living who are dumb.

    In vain--in vain: strike other chords;
        Fill high the cup with Samian wine!
    Leave battles to the Turkish hordes,
        And shed the blood of Scio's vine!
    Hark! rising to the ignoble call--
    How answers each bold bacchanal!

    You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet--
        Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?
    Of two such lessons, why forget
        The nobler and the manlier one?
    You have the letters Cadmus gave--
    Think you he meant them for a slave?

    The tyrant of the Chersonese
        Was freedom's best and bravest friend;
    That tyrant was Miltiades!
        O that the present hour would lend
    Another despot of the kind!
    Such chains as his were sure to bind.

    Trust not for freedom to the Franks--
        They have a king who buys and sells--
    In native swords and native ranks
        The only hope of courage dwells;
    But Turkish force and Latin fraud
    Would break your shield, however broad.

    Place me on Sunium's marbled steep,
        Where nothing, save the waves and I
    May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;
        There, swan-like, let me sing and die;
    A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine--
    Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!

Historical: The decline of Greece is the theme of this poem. Byron represents a Greek poet as contrasting ancient and modern Greece, showing that, in modern Greece, "all except their sun is set."

    "Sappho"
    "Delos"
    "Phoebus"
    "Marathon"
    "Persian's grave"
    "Salamis"
    "eternal summer"
    "rocky brow"
    "voiceless shore"
    "heroic lay"
    "fettered race"
    "dearth of fame"
    "Of the three hundred grant but three,
To make a new Thermopylæ"

    At midnight, in his guarded tent,
        The Turk was dreaming of the hour
    When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent,
        Should tremble at his power.
    In dreams, through camp and court he bore
    The trophies of a conqueror;
        In dreams, his song of triumph heard;
    Then wore his monarch's signet-ring;
    Then pressed that monarch's throne--a king:
    As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing,
        As Eden's garden-bird.

    At midnight, in the forest shades,
        Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band,
    True as the steel of their tried blades,
        Heroes in heart and hand.
    There had the Persian's thousands stood,
    There had the glad earth drunk their blood,
        On old Platæa's day:
    And now there breathed that haunted air,
    The sons of sires who conquered there,
    With arms to strike, and soul to dare,
        As quick, as far as they.

    An hour passed on--the Turk awoke;
        That bright dream was his last:
    He woke--to hear his sentries shriek,
    "To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!"
    He woke--to die mid flames and smoke,
    And shout and groan, and sabre-stroke,
        And death-shots falling thick and fast
    As lightnings from the mountain-cloud;
    And heard, with voice as trumpet loud,
        Bozzaris cheer his band:
    "Strike!--till the last armed foe expires;
    Strike!--for your altars and your fires;
    Strike!--for the green graves of your sires;
        God--and your native land!"

    They fought--like brave men, long and well;
        They piled the ground with Moslem slain;
    They conquered--but Bozzaris fell,
        Bleeding at every vein.
    His few surviving comrades saw
    His smile, when rang their proud--"Hurrah,"
        And the red field was won:
    Then saw in death his eyelids close,
    Calmly as to a night's response,
        Like flowers at set of sun.

    But to the hero, when his sword
        Has won the battle for the free,
    Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word,
    And in its hollow tones are heard
        The thanks of millions yet to be.
    Bozzaris! with, the storied brave
    Greece nurtured in her glory's time,
    Rest thee--there is no prouder grave,
        Even in her own proud clime.
    We tell thy doom without a sigh;
    For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's--
    One of the few, the immortal names
        That were not born to die.

Biographical and Historical: Fitz-Greene Halleck was born in Connecticut, July 8, 1790, and died November 19, 1867. Of his poems, "Marco Bozzaris" is probably the best known. Marco Bozzaris, leader of the Greek revolution, was, killed August 20, 1823, in an attack upon the Turks near Missolonghi, a Greek town. His last words were: "To die for liberty is a pleasure, not a pain."

Trace the successive steps by which the Turk in his dream rises to the summit of his ambition.

"Suliote"--natives of Suli, a mountainous district in Albania (European Turkey).

"Platæa's day" refers to the victory of the Greeks over the Persians on this field 479 B. C.

    Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
        At his corse to the rampart we hurried;
    Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
        O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

    We buried him darkly at dead of night,
        The sods with our bayonets turning,
    By the struggling moonbeams' misty light,
        And the lantern dimly burning.

    No useless coffin inclosed his breast,
        Nor in sheet nor in shroud we wound him;
    But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
        With his martial cloak around him.

    Few and short were the prayers we said,
        And we spike not a word of sorrow;
    But we steadfastly gazed on the face of the dead,
        And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

    We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed,
        And smoothed down his lonely pillow,
    That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,
        And we far away on the billow.

    Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,
        And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him;
    But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on
        In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

    But half of our heavy task was done
        When the clock struck the hour for retiring;
    And we heard the distant and random gun
        That the foe was sullenly firing.

    Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
        From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
    We carved not a line, we raised not a stone,
        But we left him alone with his glory.

Charles Wolfe, a British clergyman, was born at Dublin, December 14, 1791, and died at Cork, February 21, 1823. His poem, "The Burial of Sir John Moore," is the only one of his works now widely read.

Historical: Sir John Moore, an English general, was killed (January 16, 1809) in an engagement between the English and the army of Napoleon at Corunna, in Spain. In accordance with an expressed wish, he was buried at night on the battlefield. In St. Paul's Cathedral, London, a monument was erected to his memory, and a stone also marks the spot where he was buried on the ramparts, at Corunna. Note that it was from this port that the Spanish Armada sailed.

Which is the greater memorial, a monument of stone or bronze, or such a poem as this? Why?

    "corse"
    "upbraid"
    "rampart"
    "random"
    "bayonets"
    "sullenly"
    "shroud"
    "rock"
    "spirit"
    "struggling"
    "Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot"
    "The struggling moonbeam"
    "We bitterly thought of the morrow"

        The waters slept. Night's silvery veil hung low
    On Jordan's bosom, and the eddies curled
    Their glassy rings beneath it, like the still,
    Unbroken beating of the sleeper's pulse.
    The reeds bent down the stream; the willow leaves,
    With a soft cheek upon the lulling tide,
    Forgot the lifting winds; and the long stems,
    Whose flowers the water, like a gentle nurse,
    Bears on its bosom, quietly gave way,
    And leaned in graceful attitudes to rest.
    How strikingly the course of nature tells,
    By its light heed of human suffering,
    That it was fashioned for a happier world!

        King David's limbs were weary. He had fled
    From far Jerusalem; and now he stood,
    With his faint people, for a little rest,
    Upon the shore of Jordan. The light wind
    Of morn was stirring, and he bared his brow
    To its refreshing breath; for he had worn
    The mourner's covering, and he had not felt
    That he could see his people until now.
    They gathered round him on the fresh green bank,
    And spoke their kindly words; and as the sun
    Rose up in heaven, he knelt among them there,
    And bowed his head upon his hands to pray.
    Oh, when the heart is full--when bitter thoughts
    Come crowding thickly up for utterance,
    And the poor, common words of courtesy
    Are such an empty mockery--how much
    The bursting heart may pour itself in prayer!
    He prayed for Israel; and his voice went up
    Strongly and fervently. He prayed for those
    Whose love had been his shield; and his deep tones.
    Grew tremulous. But oh! for Absalom--
    For his estranged, misguided Absalom--
    The proud, bright being who had burst away
    In all his princely beauty, to defy
    The heart that cherished him--for him he poured,
    In agony that would not be controlled,
    Strong supplication, and forgave him there,
    Before his God, for his deep sinfulness.
        The pall was settled. He who slept beneath
    Was straightened for the grave; and as the folds
    Sunk to the still proportions, they betrayed
    The matchless symmetry of Absalom.
    His hair was yet unshorn, and silken curls
    Were floating round the tassels as they swayed
    To the admitted air, as glossy now
    As when, in hours of gentle dalliance, bathing
    The snowy fingers of Judea's daughters.
    His helm was at his feet; his banner, soiled
    With trailing through Jerusalem, was laid,
    Reversed, beside him; and the jeweled hilt,
    Whose diamonds lit the passage of his blade,
    Rested, like mockery, on his covered brow.
    The soldiers of the king trod to and fro,
    Clad in the garb of battle; and their chief,
    The mighty Joab, stood beside the bier,
    And gazed upon the dark pall steadfastly,
    As if he feared the slumberer might stir.
    A slow step startled him. He grasped his blade
    As if a trumpet rang; but the bent form
    Of David entered, and he gave command,
    In a low tone, to his few followers,
    And left him with his dead. The King stood still
    Till the last echo died; then, throwing off
    The sackcloth from his brow, and laying back
    The pall from the still features of his child,
    He bowed his head upon him, and broke forth
    In the resistless eloquence of woe:

    "Alas, my noble boy, that thou shouldst die!
        Thou, who wert made so beautifully fair!
    That death should settle in thy glorious eye,
        And leave his stillness in this clustering hair!
    How could he mark thee for the silent tomb,
        My proud boy, Absalom?

    "Cold is thy brow, my son, and I am chill
        As to my bosom I have tried to press thee!
    How I was wont to feel my pulses thrill,
        Like a rich harp-string, yearning to caress thee,
    And hear thy sweet 'My father!' from these dumb
        And cold lips, Absalom!

    "But death is on thee. I shall hear the gush
        Of music, and the voices of the young;
    And life will pass me in the mantling blush,
        And the dark tresses to the soft winds flung--
    But thou no more, with thy sweet voice, shalt come
        To meet me, Absalom!

    "And oh! when I am stricken, and my heart,
        Like a bruised reed, is waiting to be broken,
    How will its love for thee, as I depart,
        Yearn for thine ear to drink its last deep token!
    It were so sweet, amid death's gathering gloom,
        To see thee, Absalom!

    "And now, farewell! 'Tis hard to give thee up,
        With death so like a gentle slumber on thee;
    And thy dark sin! Oh, I could drink the cup,
        If from this woe its bitterness had won thee.
    May God have called thee, like a wanderer, home,
        My lost boy, Absalom!"

    He covered up his face, and bowed himself
    A moment on his child; then, giving him
    A look of melting tenderness, he clasped
    His hands convulsively, as if in prayer;
    And, as if strength were given him of God,
    He rose up calmly, and composed the pall
    Firmly and decently, and left him there,
    As if his rest had been a breathing sleep.

Nathaniel Parker Willis was born in Maine in 1806. He was a graduate of Yale and was an early contributor to various periodicals, including the "Youths' Companion," which magazine had been founded by his father. The selection here given is regarded as the poet's masterpiece.

Historical: Absalom, the son of David, King of Israel, rebelled against his father. David sent his army to put down the rebellion, but said to his captains, "Deal gently for my sake with the young man, even with Absalom." In spite of this entreaty, Absalom was slain by Joab, a captain in David's army. The first forty-one lines relate to events preceding the battle, the remainder to events following the battle. Read 2 Samuel XVIII.

"The willow leaves with a soft cheek upon the lulling tide, Forgot the lifting winds"--What does this mean? Why "lulling tide"?

What flowers does the poet mean in the eighth line? Is the poet true to nature in what he says of them? Show why.

Select two words or expressions that seem to you to be especially beautiful or fit, and tell why. Do you like the selection? Why?

    "waters slept"
    "melting tenderness"
    "fashioned for a happier world"
    "lifting winds"
    "mantling blush"
    "straightened for the grave"
    "estranged"
    "breathing sleep"
    "resistless eloquence"
    "bruised reed"
    "still proportions"
    "Whose diamonds lit the passage of his blade"

    O, young Lochinvar is come out of the West,--
    Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;
    And, save his good broadsword, he weapons had none,--
    He rode all unarmed and he rode all alone.
    So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,
    There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.

    He stayed not for brake, and he stopped not for stone,
    He swam the Esk river, where ford there was none;
    But ere he alighted at Netherby gate,
    The bride had consented, the gallant came late:
    For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war,
    Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.

    So boldly he entered the Netherby hall,
    'Mong bridesmen, and kinsmen, and brothers, and all:
    Then spoke the bride's father, his hand on his sword
    (For the poor, craven bridegroom said never a word),
    "O, come ye in peace here, or come ye in war,
    Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?"

    "I long wooed your daughter,--my suit you denied;--
    Love swells like the Selway, but ebbs like its tide;
    And now am I come, with this lost love of mine,
    To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine.
    There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far,
    That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar!"

    The bride kissed the goblet; the knight took it up,
    He quaffed off the wine, and he threw down the cup.
    She looked down to blush, and she looked up to sigh,
    With a smile on her lips, and a tear in her eye.
    He took her soft hand, ere her mother could bar,--
    "Now tread we a measure!" said young Lochinvar.

    So stately his form, and so lovely her face,
    That never a hall such a galliard did grace;
    While her mother did fret, and her father did fume,
    And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume,
    And the bridemaidens whispered, "'Twere better, by far,
    To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar."

    One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear,
    When they reached the hall-door, and the charger stood near,
    So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung,
    So light to the saddle before her he sprung!
    "She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur;
    They'll have fleet steeds that follow," quoth young Lochinvar.

    There was mounting 'mong Græmes of the Netherby clan;
    Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode, and they ran;
    There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lee,
    But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see.
    So daring in love, and so dauntless in war,
    Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?

Biographical and Historical: Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh, in 1771. He loved the romance of Scotland's history and legends. A collection of legendary ballads, songs, and traditions, published by him early in life met with such immediate success that it confirmed him in his resolution to devote himself to literary pursuits. The two selections here given, are taken from his second metrical romance, "Marmion." Later Scott turned his attention to prose and became the creator of the historical novel, of which "Ivanhoe," "Kenilworth," and "Woodstock" are conspicuous examples. He died in 1832, and lies buried in one of the most beautiful ruins in Scotland, Dryburgh Abbey.

Scott describes the tides of Solway Firth in Chapter IV of his novel, "Redgauntlet." Compare the rhythm with that in "How They Brought the Good News."

Translate into your own words: "'They'll have fleet steeds that follow,' quoth young Lochinvar."

    "laggard"
    "brake"
    "bar"
    "charger"
    "craven"
    "bonnet and plume"
    "dastard"
    "gallant"

    The train from out the castle drew,
    But Marmion stopped to bid adieu:
    "Though something I might 'plain," he said,
        "Of cold respect to stranger guest,
        Sent hither by your king's behest,
    While in Tantallon's towers I staid;
        Part we in friendship from your land,
        And, noble Earl, receive my hand."
    But Douglas round him drew his cloak,
    Folded his arms, and thus he spoke:
    "My manors, halls, and bowers shall still
    Be open, at my sovereign's will,
        To each one whom he lists, howe'er
        Unmeet to be the owner's peer.
    My castles are my king's alone,
    From turret to foundation stone;
    The hand of Douglas is his own;
        And never shall, in friendly grasp,
        The hand of such as Marmion clasp."

    Burned Marmion's swarthy cheek like fire,
    And shook his very frame for ire;
        And "This to me," he said;
    "An 'twere not for thy hoary beard,
    Such hand as Marmion's had not spared
        To cleave the Douglas' head!
    And, first, I tell thee, haughty peer,
    He, who does England's message here,
    Although the meanest in her state,
    May well, proud Angus, be thy mate:
    And, Douglas, more, I tell thee here,
        Even in thy pitch of pride--
    Here, in thy hold, thy vassals near,
        I tell thee, thou'rt defied!
    And if thou said'st, I am not peer
    To any lord in Scotland here,
    Lowland or Highland, far or near,
        Lord Angus, thou hast lied!"

    On the Earl's cheek, the flush of rage
    O'ercame the ashen hue of age:
    Fierce he broke forth; "And dar'st thou then
    To beard the lion in his den,
        The Douglas in his hall?
    And hopest thou hence unscathed to go?
    No, by Saint Bride of Bothwell, no!
    Up draw-bridge, grooms,--what, warder, ho!
        Let the portcullis fall."
    Lord Marmion turned,--well was his need,
    And dashed the rowels in his steed,
    Like arrow through the archway sprung;
    The ponderous grate behind him rung:
    To pass there was such scanty room,
    The bars, descending, razed his plume.

    The steed along the draw-bridge flies,
    Just as it trembled on the rise;
    Nor lighter does the swallow skim
    Along the smooth lake's level brim;
    And when Lord Marmion reached his band
    He halts, and turns with clinched hand
    And shout of loud defiance pours,
    And shook his gauntlet at the towers.
    "Horse! horse!" the Douglas cried, "and chase!"
    But soon he reined his fury's pace:
    "A royal messenger he came,
    Though most unworthy of the name.
    Saint Mary mend my fiery mood!
    Old age ne'er cools the Douglas' blood;
    I thought to slay him where he stood.
    'Tis pity of him, too," he cried;
    "Bold he can speak, and fairly ride--
    I warrant him a warrior tried."
    With this his mandate he recalls,
    And slowly seeks his castle halls.

Historical: Marmion, an English nobleman, is sent as an envoy by Henry the Eighth, King of England, to James the Fourth, King of Scotland. The two countries are on the eve of war with each other. Arriving in Edinburgh, Marmion is entrusted by King James to the care and hospitality of Douglas, Earl of Angus, who, taking him to his castle at Tantallon, treats him with the respect due his position as representative of the king, but at the same time dislikes him. The war approaching, Marmion leaves to join the English camp. This sketch describes the leave-taking.

Where are Marmion's followers during this time? Where are Douglas's soldiery and servants? What lines tell you?

Notice how simply Marmion reminds Douglas of the claim he had upon hospitality, while in Scotland. Lines 9 to 12.

Note the claims that have always been allowed the stranger: "And stranger is a holy name, Guidance and rest and food and fire, In vain he never must require."

Is this Marmion's personal pride or pride of country (patriotism)? Read the lines in which Marmion's personal pride shows itself in resentment of Douglas's insults.

    "pitch of pride"
    "ponderous grate"
    "swarthy cheek"
    "flush of rage"
    "level brim"
    "haughty peer"
    "ire"
    "vassals"
    "gauntlet"
    "unmeet"
    "hold"

    Is there, for honest poverty,
        That hangs his head, and a' that?
    The coward-slave, we pass him by;
        We dare be poor for a' that!
            For a' that, and a' that,
                Our toils obscure, and a' that;
            The rank is but the guinea stamp,
                The man's the gowd for a' that.

    What though on hamely fare we dine,
        Wear hodden-gray, an a' that;
    Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
        A man's a man for a' that!
            For a' that, and a' that,
                Their tinsel show, and a' that;
            The honest man, though e'er sae poor,
                Is king o' men for a' that.

    Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,
        Wha struts, and stares, and a' that;
    Though hundreds worship at his word,
        He's but a coof for a' that;
            For a' that, and a' that,
                His ribband, star, and a' that;
            The man of independent mind,
                He looks and laughs at a' that.

    A prince can make a belted knight,
        A marquis, duke, and a' that;
    But an honest man's aboon his might,
        Guid faith, he maunna fa' that!
            For a' that, and a' that;
                Their dignities, and a' that;
            The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth,
                Are higher rank than a' that.

    Then let us pray that come it may,
        As come it will for a' that,
    That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,
        Shall bear the gree, and a' that.
            For a' that, and a' that,
                It's comin' yet, for a' that,
            That man to man, the warld o'er
                Shall brothers be for a' that.

Biographical: Robert Burns was born in Ayrshire, Scotland, in 1759. His life was short and full of poverty and privation; but he saw poetry in all the commonplace occurrences of every-day life. His sympathy went out to all human kind and, as the above selection shows, he had a high regard for the real worth of man.

Scotch words and their English equivalents: a'--all; wha--who; gowd--gold; hamely--homely; hodden--gray--coarse gray cloth; gie--give; sae--so; birkie--clever fellow; ca'd--called; coof--dunce; aboon--above; guid--good; maunna fa'--must not try; gree--prize.

    "toils obscure"
    "pith o' sense"
    "guinea stamp"
    "ribband"
    "star"
    "belted knight"

    The quality of mercy is not strained;
    It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
    Upon the place beneath; it is twice blessed;
    It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.
    'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
    The thronéd monarch better than his crown;
    His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
    The attribute to awe and majesty,
    Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings:
    But mercy is above the sceptred sway:
    It is enthronéd in the hearts of kings,
    It is an attribute of God himself:
    And earthly power doth then show likest God's,
    When mercy seasons justice. Therefore,
    Jew, though justice be thy plea, consider this,--
    That, in the course of justice, none of us
    Should see salvation; we do pray for mercy;
    And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
    The deeds of mercy.

Biographical and Historical: William Shakespeare, the greatest of English poets, indeed one of the greatest of the world's poets, was born in 1564 at Stratford-on-Avon. As a young man of twenty-two, after his marriage with Anne Hathaway, he went up to London, where he became connected with theaters, first, tradition says, by holding horses at the doors. The next twenty years he spent in London as an actor, and in writing poems and plays, later becoming a shareholder as well as an actor. The last ten years of his life were spent at Stratford, where he died at the age of fifty-two. This was the time of Queen Elizabeth and is known as the Elizabethan Age. It was the age richest in genius of all kinds, but especially in the creation of dramatic literature.

In the foregoing selection, Portia, disguised as a lawyer, makes this famous speech in pleading the cause of Antonio against Shylock.

    "temporal power"
    "sceptered sway"
    "Earthly power doth then show likest
    God's When mercy seasons justice"

        All the world's a stage,
    And all the men and women merely players:
    They have their exits and their entrances;
    And one man in his time plays many parts,
    His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
    Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
    Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
    And shining morning face, creeping like snail
    Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
    Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
    Made to his mistress' eye-brow. Then a soldier,
    Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
    Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
    Seeking the bubble reputation
    Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the Justice,
    In fair round belly with good capon lined,--
    With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
    Full of wise saws and modern instances;
    And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
    Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
    With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side;
    His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
    For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
    Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
    And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
    That ends this strange eventful history,
    Is second childishness, and mere oblivion,
        Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

"Mewling"--squalling.
"sudden"--impetuous.
"sans"--without.
"his"--its, which was just coming into use at this time.
"formal cut"--trim, near--not shaggy as that of the soldier's,
"wise saws"--wise sayings.
"modern instances"--everyday examples, illustrations.
"strange oaths"--soldiers are proverbially profane--probably satirical reference to the affectation of foreign oaths by soldiers who have been abroad.

Comparisons:
    "creeping like snail"
    "sighing like furnace"
    "bearded like the pard"

    "eyes severe"
    "woeful ballad"
    "mere oblivion"
    "Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth"

        Give thy thoughts no tongue,
    Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
    Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar:
    The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
    Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
    But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
    Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware
    Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,
    Bear it, that the opposed may beware of thee.
    Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:
    Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment
    Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
    But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy:
    For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
    Neither a borrower nor a lender be:
    For loan oft loses both itself and friend;
    And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
    This above all,--to thine own self be true;
    And it must follow, as the night the day,
    Thou canst not then be false to any man.

"unproportioned"--not worthy or fitting the occasion.
"familiar"--courteous, friendly.
"vulgar"-unduly familiar.
"their adoption tried"--tested by long acquaintance.
"dull thy palm"--lose discrimination.
"censure"--opinion.
"expressed in fancy"--loud, ostentatious.
"husbandry"--thrift.

    To be or not to be: that is the question:
    Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer
    The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
    Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
    And by opposing end them. To die; to sleep;
    No more; and, by a sleep to say we end
    The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
    That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
    Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;
    To sleep? Perchance to dream! ay, there's the rub;
    For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
    When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
    Must give us pause: there's the respect
    That makes calamity of so long life;
    For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
    The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
    The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
    The insolence of office and the spurns
    That patient merit of the unworthy takes
    When he himself might his quietus make
    With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
    To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
    But that the dread of something after death,
    The undiseover'd country, from whose bourn
    No traveler returns, puzzles the will
    And makes us rather bear those ills we have
    Than fly to others that we know not of?
    Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
    And thus the native hue of resolution
    Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
    And enterprises of great pitch and moment,
    With this regard their currents turn awry,
    And lose the name of action.

    "shuffled off this mortal coil"
    "puzzles the will"
    "native hue of resolution"
    "pale cast of thought"
    "great pitch and moment"

    Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
    Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
    Who steals my purse, steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
    'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
    But he, that filches from me my good name,
    Robs me of that which not enriches him,
    And makes me poor indeed.

    WOLSEY: Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness!
    This is the state of man: Today he puts forth
    The tender leaves of hope; tomorrow blossoms,
    And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;
    The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,
    And--when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
    His greatness is a-ripening--nips his root;
    And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured,
    Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,
    This many summers, in a sea of glory;
    But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride
    At length broke under me, and now has left me,
    Weary and old with service, to the mercy
    Of a rude stream, that must forever hide me.
    Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye:
    I feel my heart new opened. O, how wretched
    Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favors!
    There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to,
    That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,
    More pangs and fears than wars or women have;
    And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,
    Never to hope again.--

    Cromwell, I did not think to shed a tear
    In all my miseries; but thou hast forced me,
    Out of thy honest truth, to play the woman.
    Let's dry our eyes; and thus far hear me, Cromwell;
    And--when I am forgotten, as I shall be,
    And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention
    Of me more must be heard of--say, I taught thee;
    Say, Wolsey--that once trod the ways of glory,
    And sounded all the depths and shoals of honor--
    Found thee a way, out of his wreck, to rise in;
    A sure and safe one, though thy master missed it.
    Mark but my fall, and that that ruined me.
    Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition:
    By that sin fell the angels: how can man, then,
    The image of his Maker, hope to win by't?
    Love thyself last; cherish those hearts that hate thee;
    Corruption wins not more than honesty:
    Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace,
    To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not.
    Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's,
    Thy God's, and truth's; then, if thou fall'st, O Cromwell,
    Thou fall'st a blessed martyr! Serve the king;
    And--Prithee, lead me in:
    There take an inventory of all I have,
    To the last penny; 'tis the king's; my robe,
    And my integrity to Heaven, is all
    I dare now call mine own. O Cromwell, Cromwell,
    Had I but served my God with half the zeal
    I served my king, he would not in mine age
    Have left me naked to mine enemies!

"This many summers"--this nineteen years.
"Like Lucifer"--See Isaiah XIV, 12.
"To play the woman"--to shed tears.

Cas. Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. My reputation, Iago, my reputation!

Iago. As I am an honest man, I thought you had received some bodily wound; there is more sense in that than in reputation. Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving: you have lost no reputation at all, unless you repute yourself such a loser. What, man! there are ways to recover the general again: you are but now cast in his mood, a punishment more in policy than in malice; even so as one would beat his offenceless dog to affright an imperious lion: sue to him again, and he's yours.

Cas. I will rather sue to be despised than to deceive so good a commander with so slight, so drunken, and so indiscreet an officer. Drunk? and speak parrot? and squabble? swagger? swear? and discourse fustian with one's own shadow? O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!

Cas. I remember a mass of things, but nothing distinctly; a quarrel, but nothing wherefore. O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! that we should, with joy, pleasance, revel, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!

Cas. It hath pleased the devil drunkenness to give place to the devil wrath: one unperfectness shows me another, to make me frankly despise myself.

Iago. Come, you are too severe a moraler: as the time, the place, and the condition of this country stands, I could heartily wish this had not befallen; but, since it is as it is, mend it for your own good.

Cas. I will ask him for my place again; he shall tell me I am a drunkard! Had I as many mouths as Hydra, such an answer would stop them all. To be now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and presently a beast! O strange! Every inordinate cup is unblessed and the ingredient is a devil.

Iago. Come, come, good wine is a good familiar creature, if it be well used: exclaim no more against it. And, good lieutenant, I think you think I love you.

Iago. You or any man living may be drunk at a time, man. I'll tell you what you shall do. Our general's wife is now the general: I may say so in this respect, for that he hath devoted and given up himself to the contemplation, mark, and denotement of her parts and graces: confess yourself freely to her: importune her help to put you in your place again: she is of so free, so kind, so apt, so blessed a disposition, she holds it a vice in her goodness not to do more than she is requested: this broken joint between you and her husband entreat her to splinter; and my fortunes against any lay worth naming, this crack of your love shall grow stronger than it was before.

Cas. I think it freely; and betimes in the morning I will beseech the virtuous Desdemona to undertake for me: I am desperate of my fortunes if they check me here.

"marry"--an exclamation--indeed!
"cast"--dismissed.
"fustian"--empty phrasing,
"pleasance"--merriment.
"moraler"--moralizer

    "immortal part of myself"
    "repute yourself"
    "as many mouths as Hydra"
    "crack of your love"
    "false imposition"
    "speak parrot"
    "denotement"
    "must to the watch"

"He cometh unto you with a tale which holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney corner."

"Washington's work is ended and the child shall be named after him," so said the mother of Washington Irving at his birth in New York, April 3, 1783. When, six years later, all New York was enthusiastically greeting the first President of the United States, a Scotch servant in the Irving family followed the President into a shop with the youngest son of the family and approaching him said, "Please, your honor, here's a bairn was named for you." Washington, putting his hand upon the boy's head, gave him his blessing. It seems eminently fitting that this boy, who became known as the Father of American Letters, should write the biography of the man whose name he bore, and whom we know as the Father of his Country.

New York was then the capital of the country, a city of about twenty-five thousand inhabitants, small enough so that it was an easy matter for the city boy to get into the country. New York itself retained many traces of its Dutch origin, and upon its streets could be seen men from all parts of the world. Here the boy grew up happy, seeing many sides of American life, both in the city and in the country. He was fun-loving and social, and could hardly be called a student. He greatly preferred "Robinson Crusoe" and "Sinbad" to the construing of Latin. Best of all, he liked to go exploring down to the water front to see the tall ships setting sail for the other side of the world, or, as he grew older, up the Hudson and into the Catskills, or to that very Sleepy Hollow which lives for us now because of him. Irving liked people, and had many warm friends.

These three tastes--for people, for books, and for travel--his life was destined to gratify. His health being delicate, he was sent abroad at twenty-one, and the captain of the ship he sailed in, noting his fragile appearance, said, "There's one who'll go overboard before we get across," but he happily proved a mistaken prophet. Irving not only survived the voyage, but spent two years traveling in Italy, France, Sicily, and the Netherlands. The romantic spirit strong within him eagerly absorbed mediæval history and tradition. "My native country was full of youthful promise; Europe was rich in the accumulated treasures of age."

Upon his return home, Irving was admitted to the bar, but he never seriously turned his attention to law. In 1809 he published "A History of New York by Diedrich Knickerbocker." It was a humorous history of New Amsterdam, a delicious mingling of sense and nonsense, over which Walter Scott said his "sides were absolutely sore with laughing." While writing this history a great sorrow touched his life--the death of a young girl to whom he was deeply attached.

Ten years later, upon his second visit to Europe, Irving published "The Sketch Book." It rapidly won favor both in England and America. Byron said of it: "I know it by heart; at least there is not a passage that I cannot refer to immediately." This second visit to Europe was to be a short business trip, but as it chanced, it lasted seventeen years. The first five years were spent in England. Later he went to Spain, and as a result of this visit, we have a series of books dealing with Spanish history and tradition--"The Alhambra," "The Conquest of Granada" and "The Life of Columbus." During all these years and in all these places, he met and won the regard of hosts of interesting people. Everyone praised his books, and everyone liked the likable American, with his distinguished face and gentle manners.

In 1832 Irving was gladly welcomed back to America, for many had feared that his long absence might mean permanent residence abroad. The next ten years were spent in his beautiful home, Sunnyside, at Tarrytown-on-the-Hudson. Daniel Webster, Secretary of State, could find no person more gratifying to the Spanish people, than the author of the "Life of Columbus" and, in 1842, persuaded Irving to represent us at the Spanish court. After four years, he returned to America and passed his time almost exclusively in writing. The work which he finished just before his death, in November, 1859, was the "Life of Washington." He was buried on a hill overlooking the river and a portion of the Sleepy Hollow Valley.

Because of the ease and smoothness of his style, and his delicate sense of form, Irving delighted his own and succeeding generations of both his countrymen and his British cousins. All his work is pervaded by the strong and winning personal quality that brought him the love and admiration of all. Charles Dudley Warner says of him: "The author loved good women and little children and a pure life; he had faith in his fellow-men, a kindly sympathy with the lowest, without any subservience to the highest. His books are wholesome, full of sweetness and charm, of humor without any sting, of amusement without any stain; and their more solid qualities are marred by neither pedantry nor pretension."

        By Woden, God of Saxons,
        From whence comes Wensday, that is Wodensday.
        Truth is a thing that ever I will keep
        Unto thylke day in which I creep into
        My sepulchre.
--CARTWRIGHT.

The following tale was found among the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker, an old gentleman of New York, who was very curious in the Dutch history of the province, and the manners of the descendants from its primitive settlers. His historical researches, however, did not lie so much among books as among men; for the former are lamentably scanty on his favorite topics; whereas he found the old burghers, and still more their wives, rich in that legendary lore so invaluable to true history. Whenever, therefore, he happened upon a genuine Dutch family, snugly shut up in its low-roofed farmhouse under a spreading sycamore, he looked upon it as a little clasped volume of black-letter, and studied it with the zeal of a book worm. The result of all these researches was a history of the province during the reign of the Dutch governors, which he published some years since. There have been various opinions as to the literary character of his work, and, to tell the truth, it is not a whit better than it should be. Its chief merit is its scrupulous accuracy, which indeed was a little questioned on its first appearance, but has since been completely established; and it is now admitted into all historical collections, as a book of unquestionable authority.

The old gentleman died shortly after the publication of his work, and now that he is dead and gone, it cannot do much harm to his memory to say that his time might have been much better employed in weightier labors. He, however, was apt to ride his hobby his own way; and though it did now and then kick up the dust a little in the eyes of his neighbors, and grieve the spirit of some friends, for whom he felt the truest deference and affection; yet his errors and follies are remembered "more in sorrow than in anger," and it begins to be suspected that he never intended to injure or offend. But however his memory may be appreciated by critics, it is still held dear by many folk, whose good opinion is worth having; particularly by certain biscuit-bakers, who have gone so far as to imprint his likeness on their new-year cakes; and have thus given him a chance for immortality, almost equal to the being stamped on a Waterloo Medal, or a Queen Anne's Farthing.

Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Kaatskill Mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change of season, every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains, and they are regarded by all the good wives, far and near, as perfect barometers. When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear evening sky; but sometimes when the rest of the landscape is cloudless they will gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown of glory.

At the foot of these fairy mountains, the voyager may have descried the light smoke curling up from a village, whose shingle-roofs gleam among the trees, just where the blue tints of the upland melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape. It is a little village of great antiquity, having been founded by some of the Dutch colonists in the early time of the province, just about the beginning of the government of the good Peter Stuyvesant (may he rest in peace!), and there were some of the houses of the original settlers standing within a few years, built of small yellow bricks brought from Holland, having latticed windows and gable fronts, surmounted with weathercocks.

In that same village, and in one of these very houses (which, to tell the precise truth, was sadly time-worn and weather-beaten), there lived many years since, while the country was yet a province of Great Britain, a simple, good-natured fellow, of the name of Rip Van Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the siege of Fort Christina. He inherited, however, but little of the martial character of his ancestors. I have observed that he was a simple, good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor, and an obedient henpecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation; and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects be considered a tolerable blessing, and if so, rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed.

Certain it is, that he was a great favorite among all the good wives of the village, who, as usual with the amiable sex, took his part in all family squabbles; and never failed, whenever they talked those matters over in their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame on Dame Van Winkle. The children of the village, too, would shout with joy whenever he approached. He assisted at their sports, made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them long stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians. Whenever he went dodging about the village, he was surrounded by a troop of them, hanging on his skirts, clambering on his back, and playing a thousand tricks on him with impunity; and not a dog would bark at him throughout the neighborhood.

The great error in Rip's composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor. It could not be from the want of assiduity or perseverance; for he would sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a Tartar's lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even though he should not be encouraged by a single nibble. He would carry a fowling-piece on his shoulder for hours together, trudging through woods and swamps, and up hill and down dale, to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons. He would never refuse to assist a neighbor, even in the roughest toil, and was a foremost man at all country frolics for husking Indian corn, or building stone-fences; the women of the village, too, used to employ him to run their errands, and to do such little odd jobs as their less obliging husbands would not do for them. In a word, Rip was ready to attend to anybody's business but his own; but as to doing family duty, and keeping his farm in order, he found it impossible.

In fact, he declared it was of no use to work on his farm; it was the most pestilent little piece of ground in the whole country; everything about it went wrong, and would go wrong, in spite of him. His fences were continually falling to pieces; his cow would either go astray or get among the cabbages; weeds were sure to grow quicker in his fields than anywhere else; the rain always made a point of setting in just as he had some out-door work to do; so that though his patrimonial estate had dwindled away under his management, acre by acre, until there was little more left than a mere patch of Indian corn and potatoes, yet it was the worst-conditioned farm in the neighborhood.

His children, too, were as ragged and wild as if they belonged to nobody. His son Rip, an urchin begotten in his own likeness, promised to inherit the habits, with the old clothes of his father. He was generally seen trooping like a colt at his mother's heels, equipped in a pair of father's cast-off galligaskins, which he had much ado to hold up with, one hand, as a fine lady does her train in bad weather.

Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals, of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with least thought or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound. If left to himself, he would have whistled life away in perfect contentment; but his wife kept continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his family. Morning, noon, and night her tongue was incessantly going, and everything he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence. Rip had but one way of replying to all lectures of the kind, and that, by frequent use, had grown into a habit. He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, cast up his eyes, but said nothing. This, however, always provoked a fresh volley from his wife; so that he was fain to draw off his forces, and take to the outside of the house--the only side which, in truth, belongs to a henpecked husband.

Rip's sole domestic adherent was his dog Wolf, who was as much henpecked as his master; for Dame Van Winkle regarded them as companions in idleness, and even looked upon Wolf with an evil eye, as the cause of his master's going so often astray. True it is, in all points of spirit befitting an honorable dog, he was as courageous an animal as ever scoured the woods--but what courage can withstand the ever-during and all-besetting terrors of a woman's tongue? The moment Wolf entered the house his crest fell, his tail drooped to the ground, or curled between his legs, he sneaked about with a gallows air, casting many a sidelong glance at Dame Van Winkle, and at the least flourish of a broomstick or ladle he would fly to the door with yelping precipitation.

Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years of matrimony rolled on; a tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use. For a long while he used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle personages of the village; which held its sessions on a bench before a small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait of His Majesty George the Third. Here they used to sit in the shade through a long lazy summer's day, talking listlessly over village gossip, or telling endless sleepy stories about nothing. But it would have been worth any statesman's money to have heard the profound discussions that sometimes took place, when by chance an old newspaper fell into their hands from some passing traveler. How solemnly they would listen to the contents, as drawled out by Derrick Van Bummel, the school-master, a dapper learned little man, who was not to be daunted by the most gigantic word in the dictionary; and how sagely they would deliberate upon public events some months after they had taken place.

The opinions of this junto were completely controlled by Nicholas Vedder, a patriarch of the village, and landlord of the inn, at the door of which he took his seat from morning till night, just moving sufficiently to avoid the sun and keep in the shade of a large tree; so that the neighbors could tell the hour by his movements as accurately as by a sun-dial. It is true he was rarely heard to speak, but smoked his pipe incessantly. His adherents, however (for every great man has his adherents), perfectly understood him, and knew how to gather his opinions. When anything that was read or related displeased him, he was observed to smoke his pipe vehemently, and to send forth short, frequent and angry puffs; but when pleased, he would inhale the smoke slowly and tranquilly, and emit it in light and placid clouds; and sometimes, taking the pipe from his mouth, and letting the fragrant vapor curl about his nose, would gravely nod his head in token of perfect approbation.

From even this stronghold the unlucky Rip was at length routed by his termagant wife, who would suddenly break in upon the tranquillity of the assemblage and call the members all to naught; nor was that august personage, Nicholas Vedder himself, sacred from the daring tongue of this terrible virago, who charged him outright with encouraging her husband in habits of idleness.

Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and his only alternative, to escape from the labor of the farm and clamor of his wife, was to take gun in hand and stroll away into the woods. Here he would sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree, and share the contents of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he sympathized, as a fellow-sufferer in persecution. "Poor Wolf," he would say, "thy mistress leads thee a dog's life of it; but never mind, my lad, whilst I live thou shalt never want a friend to stand by thee!" Wolf would wag his tail, look wistfully in his master's face, and if dogs can feel pity I verily believe he reciprocated the sentiment with all his heart.

In a long ramble of the kind on a fine autumnal day, Rip had unconsciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of the Kaatskill Mountains. He was after his favorite sport of squirrel shooting, and the still solitudes had echoed and re-echoed with the reports of his gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on a green knoll, covered with mountain herbage, that crowned the brow of a precipice. From an opening between the trees he could overlook all the lower country for many a mile of rich woodland. He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its silent but majestic course, with the reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark, here and there sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last losing itself in the blue highlands.

On the other side he looked down into a deep mountain glen, wild, lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled with fragments from the impending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of the setting sun. For some time Rip lay musing on this scene; evening was gradually advancing; the mountains began to throw their long blue shadows over the valleys; he saw that it would be dark long before he could reach the village, and he heaved a heavy sigh when he thought of encountering the terrors of Dame Van Winkle.

As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from a distance, hallooing, "Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!" He looked round, but could see nothing but a crow winging its solitary flight across the mountain. He thought his fancy must have deceived him, and turned again to descend, when he heard the same cry ring through the still evening air: "Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!"--at the same time Wolf bristled up his back, and giving a low growl, skulked to his master's side, looking fearfully down into the glen. Rip now felt a vague apprehension stealing over him; he looked anxiously in the same direction, and perceived a strange figure slowly toiling up the rocks, and bending under the weight of something he carried on his back. He was surprised to see any human being in this lonely and unfrequented place; but supposing it to be some one of the neighborhood in need of assistance, he hastened down to yield it.

On nearer approach he was still more surprised at the singularity of the stranger's appearance. He was a short, square-built old fellow, with thick bushy hair, and a grizzled beard. His dress was of the antique Dutch fashion: a cloth jerkin strapped round the waist, several pair of breeches, the outer one of ample volume, decorated with rows of buttons down the sides, and bunches at the knees. He bore on his shoulder a stout keg, that seemed full of liquor, and made signs for Rip to approach and assist him with the load. Though rather shy and distrustful of this new acquaintance, Rip complied with his usual alacrity; and mutually relieving one another, they clambered up a narrow gully, apparently the dry bed of a mountain torrent. As they ascended, Rip every now and then heard long rolling peals like distant thunder, that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or rather cleft, between lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted. He paused for a moment, but supposing it to be the muttering of one of those transient thunder-showers which often take place in mountain heights, he proceeded. Passing through the ravine, they came to a hollow, like a small amphitheatre, surrounded by perpendicular precipices, over the brinks of which impending trees shot their branches, so that you only caught glimpses of the azure sky and the bright evening cloud. During the whole time Rip and his companion had labored on in silence; for though the former marveled greatly what could be the object of carrying a keg of liquor up this wild mountain, yet there was something strange and incomprehensible about the unknown, that inspired awe and checked familiarity.

On entering the amphitheatre, new objects of wonder presented themselves. On a level spot in the centre was a company of odd-looking personages playing at ninepins. They were dressed in a quaint outlandish fashion; some wore short doublets, others jerkins, with long knives in their belts, and most of them had enormous breeches of similar style with that of the guide's. Their visages, too, were peculiar; one had a large beard, broad face, and small piggish eyes; the face of another seemed to consist entirely of nose, and was surmounted by a white sugar-loaf hat, set off with a little red cock's tail. They all had beards, of various shapes and colors. There was one who seemed to be the commander. He was a stout old gentleman, with a weather-beaten countenance; he wore a laced doublet, broad belt and hanger, high-crowned hat and feather, red stockings, and high-heeled shoes, with roses in them. The whole group reminded Rip of the figures in an old Flemish painting in the parlor of Dominie Van Shaick, the village parson, which had been brought over from Holland at the time of the settlement.

What seemed particularly odd to Rip was, that though these folks were evidently amusing themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces, the most mysterious silence, and were, withal, the most melancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed. Nothing interrupted the stillness of the scene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they were rolled, echoed along the mountains like rumbling peals of thunder.

As Rip and his companion approached them, they suddenly desisted from their play, and stared at him with such fixed, statue-like gaze, and such strange, uncouth, lack-lustre countenances, that his heart turned within him, and his knees smote together. His companion now emptied the contents of the keg into large flagons, and made signs to him to wait upon the company. He obeyed with fear and trembling; they quaffed the liquor in profound silence, and then returned to their game.

By degrees Rip's awe and apprehension subsided. He even ventured, when no eye was fixed upon him, to taste the beverage, which he found had much of the flavor of excellent Hollands. He was naturally a thirsty soul, and was soon tempted to repeat the draught. One taste provoked another; and he reiterated his visits to the flagon so often that at length his senses were overpowered, his eyes swam in his head, his head gradually declined, and he fell into a deep sleep.

On waking, he found himself on the green knoll whence he had first seen the old man of the glen. He rubbed his eyes--it was a bright, sunny morning. The birds were hopping and twittering among the bushes, and the eagle was wheeling aloft, and breasting the pure mountain breeze. "Surely," thought Rip, "I have not slept here all night." He recalled the occurrences before he fell asleep. The strange man with a keg of liquor--the mountain ravine--the wild retreat among the rocks--the woe-begone party at ninepins--the flagon--"Oh! that flagon! that wicked flagon!" thought Rip--"what excuse shall I make to Dame Van Winkle?"

He looked round for his gun, but in place of the clean, well-oiled fowling-piece, he found an old firelock lying by him, the barrel incrusted with rust, the lock falling off, and the stock worm-eaten. He now suspected that the grave roisterers of the mountain had put a trick upon him, and, having dosed him with liquor, had robbed him of his gun. Wolf, too, had disappeared, but he might have strayed away after a squirrel or partridge. He whistled after him, and shouted his name, but all in vain; the echoes repeated his whistle and shout, but no dog was to be seen.

He determined to revisit the scene of the last evening's gambol, and if he met with any of the party, to demand his dog and gun. As he rose to walk, he found himself stiff in the joints, and wanting in his usual activity. "These mountain beds do not agree with me," thought Rip, "and if this frolic should lay me up with a fit of the rheumatism, I shall have a blessed time with Dame Van Winkle." With some difficulty he got down into the glen; he found the gully up which he and his companion had ascended the preceding evening; but to his astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witchhazel, and sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grapevines that twisted their coils or tendrils from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network in his path.

At length he reached to where the ravine had opened through the cliffs to the amphitheatre; but no traces of such opening remained. The rocks presented a high, impenetrable wall, over which the torrent came tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam, and fell into a broad, deep basin, black from the shadows of the surrounding forest. Here, then, poor Rip was brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog; he was only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows, sporting high in air about a dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice; and who, secure in their elevation, seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man's perplexities. What was to be done? the morning was passing away, and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He grieved to give up his dog and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; but it would not do to starve among the mountains. He shook his head, shouldered the rusty fire-lock, and, with a heart full of trouble and anxiety, turned his steps homeward.

As he approached the village he met a number of people, but none whom he knew, which somewhat surprised him, for he had thought himself acquainted with every one in the country round. Their dress, too, was of a different fashion from that to which he was accustomed. They all stared at him with equal marks of surprise, and whenever they cast their eyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins. The constant recurrence of this gesture induced Rip, involuntarily, to do the same, when, to his astonishment, he found his beard had grown a foot long!

He had now entered the skirts of the village. A troop of strange children ran at his heels, hooting after him, and pointing at his gray beard. The dogs, too, not one of which he recognized for an old acquaintance, barked at him as he passed. The very village was altered; it was larger and more populous. There were rows of houses which he had never seen before, and those which had been his familiar haunts had disappeared. Strange names were over the doors--strange faces at the windows,--everything was strange. His mind now misgave him; he began to doubt whether both he and the world around him were not bewitched. Surely this was his native village, which he had left but the day before. There stood the Kaatskill Mountains--there ran the silver Hudson at a distance--there was every hill and dale precisely as it had always been--Rip was sorely perplexed--"That flagon last night," thought he, "has addled my poor head sadly!"

It was with some difficulty that he found the way to his own house, which he approached with silent awe, expecting every moment to hear the shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. He found the house gone to decay--the roof fallen in, the windows shattered, and the doors off the hinges. A half-starved dog that looked like Wolf was skulking about it. Rip called him by name, but the cur snarled, showed his teeth, and passed on. This was an unkind cut indeed--"My very dog," sighed poor Rip, "has forgotten me!"

He entered the house, which, to tell the truth, Dame Van Winkle had always kept in neat order. It was empty, forlorn, and apparently abandoned. This desolateness overcame all his connubial fears--he called loudly for his wife and children--the lonely chambers rang for a moment with his voice, and then again all was silence.

He now hurried forth, and hastened to his old resort, the village inn--but it, too, was gone. A large, rickety wooden building stood in its place, with great gaping windows, some of them broken and mended with old hats and petticoats, and over the door was painted, "The Union Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle." Instead of the great tree that used to shelter the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, there now was reared a tall naked pole, with something on the top that looked like a red night-cap, and from it was fluttering a flag, on which was a singular assemblage of stars and stripes--all this was strange and incomprehensible. He recognized on the sign, however, the ruby face of King George, under which he had smoked so many a peaceful pipe; but even this was singularly metamorphosed. The red coat was changed for one of blue and buff, a sword was held in the hand instead of a sceptre, the head was decorated with a cocked hat, and underneath was painted in large characters, GENERAL WASHINGTON.

There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but none that Rip recollected. The very character of the people seemed changed. There was a busy, bustling, disputatious tone about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquillity. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his broad face, double chin, and fair long pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco-smoke instead of idle speeches; or Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, doling forth the contents of an ancient newspaper. In place of these, a lean bilious-looking fellow, with his pockets full of hand bills, was haranguing vehemently about rights of citizens--elections--members of congress--liberty--Bunker's Hill--heroes of seventy-six--and other words, which were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle.

The appearance of Rip, with his long grizzled heard, his rusty fowling-piece, his uncouth dress, and an army of women and children at his heels, soon attracted the attention of the tavern-politicians. They crowded round him, eying him from head to foot with great curiosity. The orator bustled up to him, and, drawing him partly aside, inquired "on which side he voted?" Rip stared in vacant stupidity. Another short but busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, and, rising on tiptoe, inquired in his ear, "Whether he was Federal or Democrat?" Rip was equally at a loss to comprehend the question; when a knowing, self-important old gentleman, in a sharp cocked hat, made his way through the crowd, putting them to the right and left with his elbows as he passed, and planting himself before Van Winkle, with one arm akimbo, the other resting on his cane, his keen eyes and sharp hat penetrating, as it were, into his very soul, demanded in an austere tone, "what brought him to the election with a gun on his shoulder and a mob at his heels, and whether he meant to breed a riot in the village?"--"Alas! gentlemen," cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, "I am a poor quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the king, God bless him!"

Here a general shout burst from the bystanders--"A tory! a tory! a spy! a refugee! hustle him! away with him!" It was with great difficulty that the self-important man in the cocked hat restored order; and, having assumed a tenfold austerity of brow, demanded again of the unknown culprit what he came there for, and whom he was seeking? The poor man humbly assured him that he meant no harm, but merely came there in search of some of his neighbors, who used to keep about the tavern.

There was a silence for a little while, when an old man replied, in a thin, piping voice: "Nicholas Vedder! why, he is dead and gone these eighteen years! There was a wooden tombstone in the churchyard that used to tell all about him, but that's rotten and gone too."

"Oh, he went off to the army in the beginning of the war; some say he was killed at the storming of Stony Point--others say he was drowned in a squall at the foot of Antony's Nose. I don't know--he never came back again."

"He went off to the wars too, was a great militia general, and is now in Congress."

Rip's heart died away at hearing of these sad changes in his home and friends, and finding himself thus alone in the world. Every answer puzzled him too, by treating of such enormous lapses of time, and of matters which he could not understand: war--Congress--Stony Point; he had no courage to ask after any more friends, but cried out in despair, "Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?"

"Oh, Rip Van Winkle!" exclaimed two or three, "Oh, to be sure! that's Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against the tree."

Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself, as he went up the mountain: apparently as lazy, and certainly as ragged. The poor fellow was now completely confounded. He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself or another man. In the midst of his bewilderment, the man in the cocked hat demanded who he was, and what was his name?

"God knows," exclaimed he, at his wit's end; "I'm not myself--I'm somebody else--that's me yonder--no--that's somebody else got into my shoes--I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and they've changed my gun, and everything's changed, and I'm changed, and I can't tell what's my name, or who I am!"

The bystanders began now to look at each other, nod, wink significantly, and tap their fingers against their foreheads. There was a whisper, also, about securing the gun, and keeping the old fellow from doing mischief, at the very suggestion of which the self-important man in the cocked hat retired with some precipitation. At this critical moment a fresh, comely woman pressed through the throng to get a peep at the gray-bearded man. She had a chubby child in her arms, which, frightened at his looks, began to cry. "Hush, Rip," cried she, "hush, you little fool; the old man won't hurt you." The name of the child, the air of the mother, the tone of her voice, all awakened a train of recollections in his mind. "What is your name, my good woman?" asked he.

"Ah, poor man, Rip Van Winkle was his name, but it's twenty years since he went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard of since,--his dog came home without him; but whether he shot himself, or was carried away by the Indians, nobody can tell. I was then but a little girl."

"Oh, she too had died but a short time since; she broke a blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a New England peddler."

There was a drop of comfort at least, in this intelligence. The honest man could contain himself no longer. He caught his daughter and her child in his arms. "I am your father!" cried he--"Young Rip Van Winkle once--old Rip Van Winkle now! Does nobody know poor Rip Van Winkle?"

All stood amazed, until an old woman, tottering out from among the crowd, put her hand to her brow, and peering under it in his face for a moment, exclaimed, "Sure enough, it is Rip Van Winkle--it is himself! Welcome home again, old neighbor--Why, where have you been these twenty long years?"

Rip's story was soon told, for the whole twenty years had been to him but as one night. The neighbors stared when they heard it; some were seen to wink at each other, and put their tongues in their cheeks; and the self-important man in the cocked hat, who, when the alarm was over, had returned to the field, screwed down the corners of his mouth and shook his head--upon which there was a general shaking of the head throughout the assemblage.

It was determined, however, to take the opinion of old Peter Vanderdonk, who was seen slowly advancing up the road. He was a descendant of the historian of that name, who wrote one of the earliest accounts of the province. Peter was the most ancient inhabitant of the village, and well versed in all the wonderful events and traditions of the neighborhood. He recollected Rip at once, and corroborated his story in the most satisfactory manner. He assured the company that it was a fact, handed down from his ancestor the historian, that the Kaatskill Mountains had always been haunted by strange beings. That it was affirmed that the great Hendrick Hudson, the first discoverer of the river and country, kept a kind of vigil there every twenty years, with his crew of the Half-moon; being permitted in this way to revisit the scenes of his enterprise, and keep a guardian eye upon the river and the great city called by his name. That his father had once seen them in their old Dutch dresses playing at ninepins in a hollow of the mountain; and that he himself had heard, one summer afternoon, the sound of their balls like distant peals of thunder.

To make a long story short, the company broke up, and returned to the more important concerns of the election. Rip's daughter took him home to live with her; she had a snug well-furnished house, and a stout cheery farmer for a husband, whom Rip recollected for one of the urchins that used to climb upon his back. As to Rip's son and heir, who was the ditto of himself, seen leaning against the tree, he was employed to work on the farm; but evinced an hereditary disposition to attend to anything else but his business.

Rip now resumed his old walks and habits; he soon found many of his former cronies, though all rather the worse for the wear and tear of time; and preferred making friends among the rising generation, with whom he soon grew into great favor. Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived at that happy age when a man can be idle with impunity, he took his place once more on the bench at the inn door, and was reverenced as one of the patriarchs of the village, and a chronicle of the old times "before the war." It was some time before he could get into the regular track of gossip, or could be made to comprehend the strange events that had taken place during his torpor. How that there had been a revolutionary war--that the country had thrown off the yoke of old England--and that, instead of being a subject of his Majesty George the Third, he was now a free citizen of the United States. Rip, in fact, was no politician; the changes of states and empires made but little impression on him; but there was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned, and that was--petticoat government. Happily that was at an end; he had got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go in and out whenever he pleased, without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle. Whenever her name was mentioned, however, he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and cast up his eyes, which might pass either for an expression of resignation to his fate, or joy at his deliverance.

He used to tell his story to every stranger that arrived at Mr. Doolittle's hotel. He was observed, at first, to vary on some points every time he told it, which was, doubtless, owing to his having so recently awaked. It at last settled down precisely to the tale I have related, and not a man, woman, or child in the neighborhood but knew it by heart. Some always pretended to doubt the reality of it, and insisted that Rip had been out of his head, and that this was one point on which he always remained flighty. The old Dutch inhabitants, however, almost universally gave it full credit. Even to this day they never hear a thunder-storm of a summer afternoon about the Kaatskill, but they say Hendrick Hudson and his crew are at their game of ninepins; and it is a common wish of all henpecked husbands in the neighborhood, when life hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught out of Rip Van Winkle's flagon.

The three stages of the story are: The sleep, the return, the recognition. Through them all personal identity remains.

Notes and Questions.

The autumn ramble: the woods, the dog, the gun, the Hudson, the stranger, the "ninepins" company, the flagon, the waking--the changed scenes.

The afternoon of the day, the afternoon of the year (autumn), and the afternoon of life (old man) are chosen by the author.

What is the fitness in selecting a village near the mountains? Why choose a village at all?

Note the civic progress of the people--the change from a royal dependency to an independent republic.

Locate on the map the scene of this selection and tell the period in which it occurred. Point out parts of the story that tell you when it happened.

    "puzzled"
    "peddler"
    "self-important man"
    "enormous"
    "austere"
    "vacant stupidity"
    "fatigued"
    "Tory"
    "well-oiled disposition"
    "grizzled"
    "cocked hat"
    "torrent of household eloquence"
    "transient"
    "ruby face"
    "desolateness"
    "gaping windows"

                  Ships, ships, I will descrie you
                      Amidst the main,
                  I will come and try you,
                  What you are protecting,
                  And projecting,
                      What's your end and aim.

        One goes abroad for merchandise and trading.
        Another stays to keep his country from invading,
        A third is coming home with rich and wealthy lading.
            Halloo! my fancie, whither wilt thou go?
--OLD POEM.

To an American visiting Europe, the long voyage he has to make is an excellent preparative. The temporary absence of worldly scenes and employments produces a state of mind peculiarly fitted to receive new and vivid impressions. The vast space of waters that separates the hemispheres is like a blank page in existence. There is no gradual transition, by which, as in Europe, the features and population of one country blend almost imperceptibly with those of another. From the moment you lose sight of the land you have left, all is vacancy until you step on the opposite shore, and are launched at once into the bustle and novelties of another world.

In traveling by land there is a continuity of scene and a connected succession of persons and incidents, that carry on the story of life, and lessen the effect of absence and separation. We drag, it is true, "a lengthening chain," at each remove of our pilgrimage; but the chain is unbroken: we can trace it back link by link; and we feel that the last still grapples us to home. But a wide sea voyage severs us at once. It makes us conscious of being cast loose from the secure anchorage of settled life, and sent adrift upon a doubtful world. It interposes a gulf, not merely imaginary, but real, between us and our homes--a gulf subject to tempest, and fear, and uncertainty, rendering distance palpable, and return precarious.

Such, at least, was the case with myself. As I saw the last blue line of my native land fade away like a cloud in the horizon, it seemed as if I had closed one volume of the world and its concerns, and had time for meditation, before I opened another. That land, too, now vanishing from my view, which contained all most dear to me in life; what vicissitudes might occur in it--what changes might take place in me, before I should visit it again! Who can tell, when he sets forth to wander, whither he may be driven by the uncertain currents of existence; or when he may return; or whether it may ever be his lot to revisit the scenes of his childhood?

I said that at sea all is vacancy; I should correct the expression. To one given to day-dreaming, and fond of losing himself in reveries, a sea voyage is full of subjects for meditation: but then they are the wonders of the deep, and of the air, and rather tend to abstract the mind from worldly themes. I delighted to loll over the quarter-railing, or climb to the maintop, of a calm day, and muse for hours together on the tranquil bosom of a summer's sea; to gaze upon the piles of golden clouds just peering above the horizon, fancy them some fairy realms, and people them with, a creation of my own;--to watch the gentle undulating billows, rolling their silver volumes, as if to die away on those happy shores.

There was a delicious sensation of mingled security and awe with which I looked down from my giddy height, on the monsters of the deep at their uncouth gambols. Shoals of porpoises tumbling about the bow of the ship, the grampus slowly heaving his huge form above the surface; or the ravenous shark, darting, like a spectre, through the blue waters. My imagination would conjure up all that I had heard or read of the watery world beneath me; of the finny herds that roam its fathomless valleys; of the shapeless monsters that lurk among the very foundations of the earth; and of those wild phantasms that swell the tales of fishermen and sailors.

Sometimes a distant sail, gliding along the edge of the ocean, would be another theme of idle speculation. How interesting this fragment of a world, hastening to rejoin the great mass of existence! What a glorious monument of human invention; which has in a manner triumphed over wind and wave; has brought the ends of the world into communion; has established an interchange of blessings, pouring into the sterile regions of the north all the luxuries of the south; has diffused the light of knowledge and the charities of cultivated life; and has thus bound together those scattered portions of the human race, between which nature seemed to have thrown an insurmountable barrier.

We one day descried some shapeless object drifting at a distance. At sea, everything that breaks the monotony of the surrounding expanse attracts attention. It proved to be the mast of a ship that must have been completely wrecked; for there were the remains of handkerchiefs, by which some of the crew had fastened themselves to this spar, to prevent their being washed off by the waves. There was no trace by which the name of the ship could be ascertained. The wreck had evidently drifted about for many months; clusters of shell-fish had fastened about it, and long sea-weeds flaunted at its sides! But where, thought I, is the crew? Their struggle has long been over--they have gone down amidst the roar of the tempest--their bones lie whitening among the caverns of the deep. Silence, oblivion, like the waves, have closed over them, and no one can tell the story of their end. What sighs have been wafted after that ship! what prayers offered up at the deserted fireside of home! How often has the mistress, the wife, the mother, pored over the daily news, to catch some casual intelligence of this rover of the deep! How has expectation darkened into anxiety--anxiety into dread--and dread into despair! Alas! not one memento may ever return for love to cherish. All that may ever be known, is, that she sailed from her port, "and was never heard of more!"

The sight of this wreck, as usual, gave rise to many dismal anecdotes. This was particularly the case in the evening, when the weather, which had hitherto been fair, began to look wild and threatening, and gave indications of one of those sudden storms which will sometimes break in upon the serenity of a summer voyage. As we sat round the dull light of a lamp in the cabin, that made the gloom more ghastly, every one had his tale of shipwreck and disaster. I was particularly struck with a short one related by the captain.

"As I was once sailing," said he, "in a fine stout ship across the banks of Newfoundland, one of those heavy fogs which prevail in those parts rendered it impossible for us to see far ahead even in the daytime; but at night the weather was so thick that we could not distinguish any object at twice the length of the ship. I kept lights at the mast-head, and a constant watch forward to look out for fishing smacks, which are accustomed to lie at anchor on the banks. The wind was blowing a smacking breeze, and we were going at a great fate through the water. Suddenly the watch gave the alarm of 'a sail ahead!'--it was scarcely uttered before we were upon her. She was a small schooner, at anchor, with her broadside towards us. The crew were all asleep, and had neglected to hoist a light. We struck her just amidships. The force, the size, the weight of our vessel bore her down below the waves; we passed over her and were hurried on our course. As the crashing wreck was sinking beneath us, I had a glimpse of two or three half-naked wretches rushing from her cabin; they just started from their beds to be swallowed shrieking by the waves. I heard their drowning cry mingling with the wind. The blast that bore it to our ears swept us out of all farther hearing. I shall never forget that cry! It was some time before we could put the ship about, she was under such headway. We returned, as nearly as we could guess, to the place where the smack had anchored. We cruised about for several hours in the dense fog. We fired signal guns, and listened if we might hear the halloo of any survivors: but all was silent--we never saw or heard anything of them more."

I confess these stories, for a time, put an end to all my fine fancies. The storm increased with the night. The sea was lashed into tremendous confusion. There was a fearful, sullen sound of rushing waves, and broken surges. Deep called unto deep. At times the black column of clouds overhead seemed rent asunder by flashes of lightning which quivered along the foaming billows, and made the succeeding darkness doubly terrible. The thunders bellowed over the wild waste of waters, and were echoed and prolonged by the mountain waves. As I saw the ship staggering and plunging among these roaring caverns, it seemed miraculous that she regained her balance, or preserved her buoyancy. Her yards would dip into the water: her bow was almost buried beneath the waves. Sometimes an impending surge appeared ready to overwhelm her, and nothing but a dexterous movement of the helm preserved her from the shock.

When I retired to my cabin, the awful scene still followed me. The whistling of the wind through the rigging sounded like funereal wailings. The creaking of the masts, the straining and groaning of bulk-heads, as the ship labored in the weltering sea, were frightful. As I heard the waves rushing along the sides of the ship, and roaring in my very ear, it seemed as if Death were raging round this floating prison, seeking for his prey: the mere starting of a nail, the yawning of a seam, might give him entrance.

A fine day, however, with a tranquil sea and favoring breeze, soon put all these dismal reflections to flight. It is impossible to resist the gladdening influence of fine weather and fair wind at sea. When the ship is decked out in all her canvas, every sail swelled, and careering gayly over the curling waves, how lofty, how gallant she appears--how she seems to lord it over the deep!

I might fill a volume with the reveries of a sea voyage, for with me it is almost a continual reverie--but it is time to get to shore.

It was a fine sunny morning when the thrilling cry of "land!" was given from the mast-head. None but those who have experienced it can form an idea of the delicious throng of sensations which rush into an American's bosom, when he first comes in sight of Europe. There is a volume of associations with the very name. It is the land of promise, teeming with every thing of which his childhood has heard, or on which his studious years have pondered.

From that time until the moment of arrival, it was all feverish excitement. The ships of war, that prowled like guardian giants along the coast; the headlands of Ireland, stretching out into the channel; the Welsh mountains, towering into the clouds; all were objects of intense interest. As we sailed up the Mersey I reconnoitred the shores with a telescope. My eye dwelt with delight on neat cottages, with their trim shrubberies and green grass plots. I saw the mouldering ruin of an abbey overrun with ivy, and the taper spire of a village church rising from the brow of a neighboring hill--all were characteristic of England.

The tide and wind were so favorable that the ship was enabled to come at once to the pier. It was thronged with people; some, idle lookers-on, others, eager expectants of friends or relatives. I could distinguish the merchant to whom the ship was consigned. I knew him by his calculating brow and restless air. His hands were thrust into his pockets; he was whistling thoughtfully, and walking to and fro, a small space having been accorded him by the crowd, in deference to his temporary importance. There were repeated cheerings and salutations interchanged between the shore and the ship, as friends happened to recognize each other. I particularly noticed one young woman of humble dress, but interesting demeanor. She was leaning forward from among the crowd; her eye hurried over the ship as it neared the shore, to catch some wished-for countenance. She seemed disappointed and agitated; when I heard a faint voice call her name. It was from a poor sailor who had been ill all the voyage, and had excited the sympathy of every one on board. When the weather was fine, his messmates had spread a mattress for him on deck in the shade, but of late his illness had so increased that he had taken to his hammock, and only breathed a wish that he might see his wife before he died. He had been helped on deck as we came up the river, and was now leaning against the shrouds, with a countenance so wasted, so pale, so ghastly, that it was no wonder even the eye of affection did not recognize him. But at the sound of his voice, her eye darted on his features; it read, at once, a whole volume of sorrow; she clasped her hands, uttered a faint shriek, and stood wringing them in silent agony.

All now was hurry and bustle. The meetings of acquaintances--the greetings of friends--the consultations of men of business. I alone was solitary and idle. I had no friend to meet, no cheering to receive. I stepped upon the land of my forefathers--but felt that I was a stranger in the land.

Why did the author realize so clearly the extent of the journey he had undertaken?

What change has taken place in the method of ocean travel since he made this voyage?

Find words and lines which tell you the kind of vessel in which he crossed the ocean.

Had Irving greater opportunity for observing "the monsters of the deep" than is afforded people crossing the ocean at the present day? Why do you think so?

How does this description compare with his description of the "monsters of the deep"?

    "undulating billows"
    "idle speculation"
    "reconnoitred"
    "delicious sensation"
    "dread"
    "abbey"
    "wild phantasms"
    "despair"
    "anxiety"
    "monument of human invention"
    "prowled like guardian giants"
    "light of knowledge"
    "insurmountable barrier"
    "dismal anecdotes"

The ancestors of Hawthorne, unlike those of most of the New England writers, were not of the clergy, but were seamen, soldiers, and magistrates. Concerning one of these, a judge who dealt harshly with the Salem witches, Hawthorne writes: "I take shame upon myself for their sakes and yet strong traits of their nature have intertwined themselves with mine." Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, July 4, 1804, and when only four years old lost his father, a sea captain.

The happiest years of his boyhood were spent at his uncle's home in the forests of Maine. Here he loved to wander through the woods, afterwards recording carefully his observations. His early education was rather irregular; however, for a time he had for schoolmaster, Worcester, the author of the dictionary. At Bowdoin college his studies were largely literary. His life at college is chiefly remarkable for the friendships formed there. Both Franklin Pierce, who later became president of the United States, and Longfellow, the poet, were members of his class.

After graduation in 1825, while Longfellow was traveling in many lands and yielding himself to the charm of mediæval history and legend, Hawthorne drifted into a strange mode of life, virtually disappearing from the world for a dozen years and living in actual solitude. "I have made a captive of myself," he wrote to Longfellow, "and put me into a dungeon; and now I cannot find the key to let myself out." But the key was found. The appreciation of Elizabeth and Sophia Peabody and the deep affection for the latter acted as a spur to get him into active life. At thirty-eight he married Sophia Peabody and took up courageously enough a life of poverty and hard literary work at Concord in the Old Manse, which had formerly been Emerson's home. There he came to know and value the friendship of Emerson, who we may well believe was the inspiration of the allegory of the Great Stone Face.

In curious contradiction with his natural love for solitude, Hawthorne became interested in the experiment of communal life and spent the year before his marriage at Brook Farm, where a number of literary men tried to live simply and happily by combining intellectual and manual work.

During the years of his solitude he wrote incessantly and composed many of those sketches of the fancy which won for him his peculiar place in literature. Many of these sketches appeared in the collection "Twice Told Tales." For children he has written the little stories and biographies of "Grandfather's Chair" and the story of Greek and Roman Myths in his "Wonder-Book" and "Tanglewood Tales." Sin and the effect of guilt upon human conduct are the problems in his great romances.

Many of our literary men have held public positions, sometimes to help out the meager financial returns of literary work, but more often because they would bring honor to these positions. Hawthorne successively filled the offices of weigher and gauger in the Boston Custom House, collector of customs at Salem, and American consul at Liverpool, having been appointed as consul by his old friend President Pierce. After four years' residence in England he resigned his consulship and spent several years in travel on the continent, spending two winters in Rome. Here he conceived his "Marble Faun," which, though given an Italian setting, embodies the same problem of conscience that we find in his earlier "Scarlet Letter."

In June, 1860, he returned to America. He was deeply agitated by the Civil War, the more so because his sympathies were not entirely with his Northern friends. In May, 1864, his old friend General Pierce suggested that they make a journey to the scenes of their college days. On their way they stopped at Plymouth, New Hampshire, and there, early on the morning of the nineteenth, he passed quietly away.

One afternoon, when the sun was going down, a mother and her little boy sat at the door of their cottage, talking about the Great Stone Face. They had but to lift their eyes, and there it was plainly to be seen, though miles away, with the sunshine brightening all its features.

Embosomed amongst a family of lofty mountains, there was a valley so spacious that it contained many thousand inhabitants. Some of these good people dwelt in log-huts, with the black forest all around them, on the steep and difficult hillsides. Others had their homes in comfortable farm-houses, and cultivated the rich soil on the gentle slopes or level surfaces of the valley. Others, again, were congregated into populous villages, where some wild, highland rivulet, tumbling down from its birthplace in the upper mountain region, had been caught and tamed by human cunning, and compelled to turn the machinery of cotton-factories. The inhabitants of this valley, in short, were numerous, and of many modes of life. But all of them, grown people and children, had a kind of familiarity with the Great Stone Face, although some possessed the gift of distinguishing this grand natural phenomenon more perfectly than many of their neighbors.

The Great Stone Face, then, was a work of Nature in her mood of majestic playfulness, formed on the perpendicular side of a mountain by some immense rocks, which had been thrown together in such a position as, when viewed at a proper distance, precisely to resemble the features of the human countenance. It seemed as if an enormous giant, or a Titan, had sculptured his own likeness on the precipice. There was the broad arch of the forehead, a hundred feet in height; the nose, with its long bridge; and the vast lips, which, if they could have spoken, would have rolled their thunder accents from one end of the valley to the other. True it is, that if the spectator approached too near, he lost the outline of the gigantic visage, and could discern only a heap of ponderous and gigantic rocks, piled in chaotic ruin one upon another. Retracing his steps, however, the wondrous features would again be seen; and the farther he withdrew from them, the more like a human face, with all its original divinity intact, did they appear; until, as it grew dim in the distance, with the clouds and glorified vapor of the mountains clustering about it, the Great Stone Face seemed positively to be alive.

It was a happy lot for children to grow up to manhood or womanhood with the Great Stone Face before their eyes, for all the features were noble, and the expression was at once grand and sweet, as if it were the glow of a vast, warm heart, that embraced all mankind in its affections, and had room for more. It was an education only to look at it. According to the belief of many people, the valley owed much of its fertility to this benign aspect that was continually beaming over it, illuminating the clouds, and infusing its tenderness into the sunshine.

As we began with saying, a mother and her little boy sat at their cottage-door, gazing at the Great Stone Face, and talking about it. The child's name was Ernest.

"Mother," said he, while the Titanic visage smiled on him, "I wish that it could speak, for it looks so very kindly that its voice must needs be pleasant. If I were to see a man with such a face, I should love him dearly."

"If an old prophecy should come to pass," answered his mother, "we may see a man, some time or other, with exactly such a face as that."

"What prophecy do you mean, dear mother?" eagerly inquired Ernest. "Pray tell me all about it!"

So his mother told him a story that her own mother had told to her, when she herself was younger than little Ernest; a story, not of things that were past, but of what was yet to come; a story, nevertheless, so very old, that even the Indians, who formerly inhabited this valley, had heard it from their forefathers, to whom, as they affirmed, it had been murmured by the mountain streams, and whispered by the wind among the tree-tops. The purport was, that, at some future day, a child should be born hereabouts, who was destined to become the greatest and noblest personage of his time, and whose countenance, in manhood, should bear an exact resemblance to the Great Stone Face. Not a few old-fashioned people, and young ones likewise, in the ardor of their hopes, still cherished an enduring faith in this old prophecy. But others, who had seen more of the world, had watched and waited till they were weary, and had beheld no man with such a face, nor any man that proved to be much greater or nobler than his neighbors, concluded it to be nothing but an idle tale. At all events, the great man of the prophecy had not yet appeared.

"O mother, dear mother!" cried Ernest, clapping his hands above his head, "I do hope that I shall live to see him!"

His mother was an affectionate and thoughtful woman, and felt that it was wisest not to discourage the generous hopes of her little boy. So she only said to him, "Perhaps you may."

And Ernest never forgot the story that his mother told him. It was always in his mind, whenever he looked upon the Great Stone Face. He spent his childhood in the log-cottage where he was born, and was dutiful to his mother, and helpful to her in many things, assisting her much with his little hands, and more with his loving heart. In this manner, from a happy yet often pensive child, he grew up to be a mild, quiet, unobtrusive boy, and sun-browned with labor in the fields, but with more intelligence brightening his aspect than is seen in many lads who have been taught at famous schools. Yet Ernest had had no teacher, save only that the Great Stone Face became one to him. When the toil of the day was over, he would gaze at it for hours, until he began to imagine that those vast features recognized him, and gave him a smile of kindness and encouragement, responsive to his own look of veneration. We must not take upon us to affirm that this was a mistake, although the Face may have looked no more kindly at Ernest than at all the world besides. But the secret was that the boy's tender and confiding simplicity discerned what other people could not see; and thus the love, which was meant for all, became his peculiar portion.

About this time there went a rumor throughout the valley, that the great man, foretold from ages long ago, who was to bear a resemblance to the Great Stone Face, had appeared at last. It seems that, many years before, a young man had migrated from the valley and settled at a distant seaport, where, after getting together a little money, he had set up as a shopkeeper. His name--but I could never learn whether it was his real one, or a nickname that had grown out of his habits and success in life--was Gathergold. Being shrewd and active, and endowed by Providence with that inscrutable faculty which develops itself in what the world calls luck, he became an exceedingly rich merchant, and owner of a whole fleet of bulky-bottomed ships. All the countries of the globe appeared to join hands for the mere purpose of adding heap after heap to the mountainous accumulation of this one man's wealth. The cold regions of the north, almost within the gloom and shadow of the Arctic Circle, sent him their tribute in the shape of furs; hot Africa sifted for him the golden sands of her rivers, and gathered up the ivory tusks of her great elephants out of the forests; the East came bringing him the rich shawls, and spices, and teas, and the effulgence of diamonds, and the gleaming purity of large pearls. The ocean, not to be behindhand with the earth, yielded up her mighty whales, that Mr. Gathergold might sell their oil, and make a profit on it. Be the original commodity what it might, it was gold within his grasp. It might be said of him, as of Midas in the fable, that whatever he touched with his finger immediately glistened, and grew yellow, and was changed at once into sterling metal, or, which suited him still better, into piles of coin. And, when Mr. Gathergold had become so very rich that it would have taken him a hundred years only to count his wealth, he bethought himself of his native valley, and resolved to go back thither, and end his days where he was born. With this purpose in view, he sent a skilful architect to build him such a palace as should be fit for a man of his vast wealth to live in.

As I have said above, it had already been rumored in the valley that Mr. Gathergold had turned out to be the prophetic personage so long and vainly looked for, and that his visage was the perfect and undeniable similitude of the Great Stone Face. People were the more ready to believe that this must needs be the fact, when they beheld the splendid edifice that rose, as if by enchantment, on the site of his father's old weather-beaten farm-house. The exterior was of marble, so dazzlingly white that it seemed as though the whole structure might melt away in the sunshine, like those humbler ones which Mr. Gathergold, in his young play-days, before his fingers were gifted with the touch of transmutation, had been accustomed to build of snow. It had a richly ornamented portico, supported by tall pillars, beneath which was a lofty door, studded with silver knobs, and made of a kind of variegated wood that had been brought from beyond the sea. The windows, from the floor to the ceiling of each stately apartment, were composed, respectively, of but one enormous pane of glass, so transparently pure that it was said to be a finer medium than even the vacant atmosphere. Hardly anybody had been permitted to see the interior of this palace; but it was reported, and with good semblance of truth, to be far more gorgeous than the outside, insomuch that whatever was iron or brass in other houses was silver or gold in this; and Mr. Gathergold's bedchamber, especially, made such a glittering appearance that no ordinary man would have been able to close his eyes there. But, on the other hand, Mr. Gathergold was now so inured to wealth, that perhaps he could not have closed his eyes unless where the gleam of it was certain to find its way beneath his eyelids.

In due time, the mansion was finished; next came the upholsterers, with magnificent furniture; then, a whole troop of black and white servants, the harbingers of Mr. Gathergold, who, in his own majestic person, was expected to arrive at sunset. Our friend Ernest, meanwhile, had been deeply stirred by the idea that the great man, the noble man, the man of prophecy, after so many ages of delay, was at length to be made manifest to his native valley. He knew, boy as he was, that there were a thousand ways in which Mr. Gathergold, with his vast wealth, might transform himself into an angel of beneficence, and assume a control over human affairs as wide and benignant as the smile of the Great Stone Face. Full of faith and hope, Ernest doubted not that what the people said was true, and that now he was to behold the living likeness of those wondrous features on the mountain-side. While the boy was still gazing up the valley, and fancying, as he always did, that the Great Stone Face returned his gaze and looked kindly at him, the rumbling of wheels was heard, approaching swiftly along the winding road.

"Here he comes!" cried a group of people who were assembled to witness the arrival. "Here comes the great Mr. Gathergold!" A carriage, drawn by four horses, dashed round the turn of the road. Within it, thrust partly out of the window, appeared the physiognomy of the old man, with a skin as yellow as if his own Midas-hand had transmuted it. He had a low forehead, small, sharp eyes, puckered about with innumerable wrinkles, and very thin lips, which he made still thinner by pressing them forcibly together.

"The very image of the Great Stone Face!" shouted the people. "Sure enough, the old prophecy is true; and here we have the great man come, at last!"

And, what greatly perplexed Ernest, they seemed actually to believe that here was the likeness which they spoke of. By the roadside there chanced to be an old beggar-woman and two little beggar-children, stragglers from some far-off region, who, as the carriage rolled onward, held out their hands and lifted up their doleful voices, most piteously beseeching charity. A yellow claw--the very same that had clawed together so much wealth--poked itself out of the coach-window, and dropt some copper coins upon the ground; so that, though the great man's name seems to have been Gathergold, he might just as suitably have been nicknamed Scattercopper. Still, nevertheless, with an earnest shout, and evidently with as much good faith as ever, the people bellowed,--

But Ernest turned sadly from the wrinkled shrewdness of that sordid visage, and gazed up the valley, where, amid a gathering mist, gilded by the last sun beams, he could still distinguish those glorious features which had impressed themselves into his soul. Their aspect cheered him. What did the benign lips seem to say?

The years went on, and Ernest ceased to be a boy. He had grown, to be a young man now. He attracted little notice from the other inhabitants of the valley; for they saw nothing remarkable in his way of life, save that, when the labor of the day was over, he still loved to go apart and gaze and meditate upon the Great Stone Face. According to their idea of the matter, it was a folly, indeed, but pardonable, inasmuch as Ernest was industrious, kind, and neighborly, and neglected no duty for the sake of indulging this idle habit. They knew not that the Great Stone Face had become a teacher to him, and that the sentiment which was expressed in it would enlarge the young man's heart, and fill it with wider and deeper sympathies than other hearts. They knew not that thence would come a better wisdom than could be learned from books, and a better life than could be moulded on the defaced example of other human lives. Neither did Ernest know that the thoughts and affections which came to him so naturally, in the fields and at the fireside, and wherever he communed with himself, were of a higher tone than those which all men shared with him. A simple soul,--simple as when his mother first taught him the old prophecy,--he beheld the marvelous features beaming adown the valley, and still wondered that their human counterpart was so long in making his appearance.

By this time poor Mr. Gathergold was dead and buried; and the oddest part of the matter was, that his wealth, which was the body and spirit of his existence, had disappeared before his death, leaving nothing of him but a living skeleton, covered over with a wrinkled, yellow skin. Since the melting away of his gold, it had been very generally conceded that there was no such striking resemblance, after all, betwixt the ignoble features of the ruined merchant and that majestic face upon the mountainside. So the people ceased to honor him during his lifetime, and quietly consigned him to forgetfulness after his decease. Once in a while, it is true, his memory was brought up in connection with the magnificent palace which he had built, and which had long ago been turned into a hotel for the accommodation of strangers, multitudes of whom came, every summer, to visit that famous natural curiosity, the Great Stone Face. Thus, Mr. Gathergold being discredited and thrown into the shade, the man of prophecy was yet to come.

It so happened that a native-born son of the valley, many years before, had enlisted as a soldier, and, after a great deal of hard fighting, had now become an illustrious commander. Whatever he may be called in history, he was known in camps and on the battle-field under the nickname of Old Blood-and-Thunder. This war-worn veteran, being now infirm with age and wounds, and weary of the turmoil of a military life, and of the roll of the drum and the clangor of the trumpet, that had so long been ringing in his ears, had lately signified a purpose of returning to his native valley, hoping to find repose where he remembered to have left it. The inhabitants, his old neighbors and their grown-up children, were resolved to welcome the renowned warrior with a salute of cannon and a public dinner; and all the more enthusiastically, it being affirmed that now, at last, the likeness of the Great Stone Face had actually appeared. An aid-de-camp of Old Blood-and-Thunder, traveling through the valley, was said to have been struck with the resemblance. Moreover the schoolmates and early acquaintances of the general were ready to testify, on oath, that, to the best of their recollection, the aforesaid general had been exceedingly like the majestic image, even when a boy, only that the idea had never occurred to them at that period. Great, therefore, was the excitement throughout the valley; and many people, who had never once thought of glancing at the Great Stone Face for years before, now spent their time in gazing at it, for the sake of knowing exactly how General Blood-and-Thunder looked.

On the day of the great festival, Ernest, with all the other people of the valley, left their work, and proceeded to the spot where the sylvan banquet was prepared. As he approached, the loud voice of the Rev. Dr. Battleblast was heard, beseeching a blessing on the good things set before them, and on the distinguished friend of peace in whose honor they were assembled. The tables were arranged in a cleared space of the woods, shut in by the surrounding trees, except where a vista opened eastward, and afforded a distant view of the Great Stone Face. Over the general's chair, which was a relic from the home of Washington, there was an arch of verdant boughs, with the laurel profusely intermixed, and surmounted by his country's banner, beneath which he had won his victories. Our friend Ernest raised himself on his tiptoes, in hopes to get a glimpse of the celebrated guest; but there was a mighty crowd about the tables anxious to hear the toasts and speeches, and to catch any word that might fall from the general in reply; and a volunteer company, doing duty as a guard, pricked ruthlessly with their bayonets at any particularly quiet person among the throng. So Ernest, being of an unobtrusive character, was thrust quite into the background, where he could see no more of Old Blood-and-Thunder's physiognomy than if it had been still blazing on the battle-field. To console himself, he turned towards the Great Stone Face, which, like a faithful and long-remembered friend, looked back and smiled upon him through the vista of the forest. Meanwhile, however, he could overhear the remarks of various individuals, who were comparing the features of the hero with the face on the distant mountain-side.

"Like! why, I call it Old Blood-and-Thunder himself, in a monstrous looking-glass!" cried a third. "And why not? He's the greatest man of this or any other age, beyond a doubt."

And then all three of the speakers gave a great shout, which communicated electricity to the crowd, and called forth a roar from a thousand voices, that went reverberating for miles among the mountains, until you might have supposed that the Great Stone Face had poured its thunder-breath into the cry. All these comments, and this vast enthusiasm, served the more to interest our friend; nor did he think of questioning that now, at length, the mountain-visage had found its human counterpart. It is true, Ernest had imagined that this long-looked-for personage would appear in the character of a man of peace, uttering wisdom, and doing good, and making people happy. But, taking an habitual breadth of view, with all his simplicity, he contended that Providence should choose its own method of blessing mankind, and could conceive that this great end might be effected even by a warrior and a bloody sword, should inscrutable wisdom see fit to order matters so.

"The general! the general!" was now the cry. "Hush! silence! Old Blood-and-Thunder's going to make a speech."

Even so; for, the cloth being removed, the general's health had been drunk, amid shouts of applause, and he now stood upon his feet to thank the company. Ernest saw him. There he was, over the shoulders of the crowd, from the two glittering epaulets and embroidered collar upward, beneath the arch of green boughs with intertwined laurel, and the banner drooping as if to shade his brow! And there, too, visible in the same glance, through the vista of the forest, appeared the Great Stone Face! And was there, indeed, such a resemblance as the crowd had testified? Alas, Ernest could not recognize it! He beheld a war-worn and weather-beaten countenance, full of energy, and expressive of an iron will; but the gentle wisdom, the deep, broad, tender sympathies, were altogether wanting in Old Blood-and-Thunder's visage; and even if the Great Stone Face had assumed his look of stern command, the milder traits would still have tempered it.

"This is not the man of prophecy," sighed Ernest to himself, as he made his way out of the throng. "And must the world wait longer yet?"

The mists had congregated about the distant mountain-side, and there were seen the grand and awful features of the Great Stone Face, awful but benignant, as if a mighty angel were sitting among the hills, and enrobing himself in a cloud-vesture of gold and purple. As he looked, Ernest could hardly believe but that a smile beamed over the whole visage, with a radiance still brightening, although without motion of the lips. It was probably the effect of the western sunshine, melting through the thinly diffused vapors that had swept between him and the object that he gazed at. But--as it always did--the aspect of his marvelous friend made Ernest as hopeful as if he had never hoped in vain.

"Fear not, Ernest," said his heart, even as if the Great Face were whispering him,--"fear not, Ernest; he will come." More years sped swiftly and tranquilly away. Ernest still dwelt in his native valley, and was now a man of middle age. By imperceptible degrees, he had become known among the people. Now, as heretofore, he labored for his bread, and was the same simple-hearted man that he had always been. But he had thought and felt so much, he had given so many of the best hours of his life to unworldly hopes for some great good to mankind, that it seemed as though he had been talking with the angels, and had imbibed a portion of their wisdom unawares. It was visible in the calm and well-considered beneficence of his daily life, the quiet stream of which had made a wide green margin all along its course. Not a day passed by, that the world was not the better because this man, humble as he was, had lived. He never stepped aside from his own path, yet would always reach a blessing to his neighbor. Almost involuntarily, too, he had become a preacher. The pure and high simplicity of his thought, which, as one of its manifestations, took shape in the good deeds that dropped silently from his hand, flowed also forth in speech. He uttered truths that wrought upon and moulded the lives of those who heard him. His auditors, it may be, never suspected that Ernest, their own neighbor and familiar friend, was more than an ordinary man; least of all did Ernest himself suspect it; but, inevitably as the murmur of a rivulet, came thoughts out of his mouth that no other human lips had spoken.

When the people's minds had had a little time to cool, they were ready enough to acknowledge their mistake in imagining a similarity between General Blood-and-Thunder's truculent physiognomy and the benign visage on the mountain-side. But now, again, there were reports and many paragraphs in the newspapers, affirming that the likeness of the Great Stone Face had appeared upon the broad shoulders of a certain eminent statesman. He, like Mr. Gathergold and Old Blood-and-Thunder, was a native of the valley, but had left it in his early days, and taken up the trades of law and politics. Instead of the rich man's wealth and the warrior's sword, he had but a tongue, and it was mightier than both together. So wonderfully eloquent was he, that whatever he might choose to say, his auditors had no choice but to believe him; wrong looked like right, and right like wrong; for when it pleased him, he could make a kind of illuminated fog with his mere breath, and obscure the natural daylight with it. His tongue, indeed, was a magic instrument: sometimes it rumbled like the thunder; sometimes it warbled like the sweetest music. It was the blast of war,--the song of peace; and it seemed to have a heart in it, when there was no such matter. In good truth, he was a wondrous man; and when his tongue had acquired him all other imaginable success,--when it had been heard in halls of state, and in the courts of princes and potentates,--after it had made him known all over the world, even as a voice crying from shore to shore,--it finally persuaded his countrymen to select him for the Presidency. Before this time,--indeed, as soon as he began to grow celebrated,--his admirers had found out the resemblance between him and the Great Stone Face; and so much were they struck by it, that throughout the country this distinguished gentleman was known by the name of Old Stony Phiz. The phrase was considered as giving a highly favorable aspect to his political prospects; for, as is likewise the case with the Popedom, nobody ever becomes President without taking a name other than his own.

While his friends were doing their best to make him President, Old Stony Phiz, as he was called, set out on a visit to the valley where he was born. Of course, he had no other object than to shake hands with his fellow citizens, and neither thought nor cared about any effect which his progress through the country might have upon the election. Magnificent preparations were made to receive the illustrious statesman; a cavalcade of horsemen set forth to meet him at the boundary line of the State, and all the people left their business and gathered along the wayside to see him pass. Among these was Ernest. Though more than once disappointed, as we have seen, he had such a hopeful and confiding nature, that he was always ready to believe in whatever seemed beautiful and good. He kept his heart continually open, and thus was sure to catch the blessing from on high when it should come. So now again, as buoyantly as ever, he went forth to behold the likeness of the Great Stone Face. The cavalcade came prancing along the road, with a great clattering of hoofs and a mighty cloud of dust, which rose up so dense and high that the visage of the mountain-side was completely hidden from Ernest's eyes. All the great men of the neighborhood were there on horseback; militia officers, in uniform; the member of Congress; the sheriff of the county; the editors of newspapers; and many a farmer, too, had mounted his patient steed, with his Sunday coat upon his back. It really was a very brilliant spectacle, especially as there were numerous banners flaunting over the cavalcade, on some of which were gorgeous portraits of the illustrious statesman and the Great Stone Face, smiling familiarly at one another, like two brothers. If the pictures were to be trusted, the mutual resemblance, it must be confessed, was marvelous. We must not forget to mention that there was a band of music, which made the echoes of the mountains ring and reverberate with the loud triumph of its strains; so that airy and soul-thrilling melodies broke out among all the heights and hollows, as if every nook of his native valley had found a voice, to welcome the distinguished guest. But the grandest effect was when the far-off mountain precipice flung back the music; for then the Great Stone Face itself seemed to be swelling the triumphant chorus, in acknowledgment that, at length, the man of prophecy was come.

All this while the people were throwing up their hats and shouting with enthusiasm so contagious that the heart of Ernest kindled up, and he likewise threw up his hat, and shouted, as loudly as the loudest, "Huzza for the great man! Huzza for Old Stony Phiz!" But as yet he had not seen him.

"Here he is, now!" cried those who stood near Ernest. "There! There! Look at Old Stony Phiz and then at the Old Man of the Mountain, and see if they are not as like as two twin-brothers!"

In the midst of all this gallant array came an open barouche, drawn by four white horses; and in the barouche, with his massive head uncovered, sat the illustrious statesman, Old Stony Phiz himself.

"Confess it," said one of Ernest's neighbors to him, "the Great Stone Face has met its match at last!"

Now, it must be owned that, at his first glimpse of the countenance which was bowing and smiling from the barouche, Ernest did fancy that there was a resemblance between it and the old familiar face upon the mountain-side. The brow, with its massive depth and loftiness, and all the other features, indeed, were boldly and strongly hewn, as if in emulation of a more than heroic, of a Titanic model. But the sublimity and stateliness, the grand expression of a divine sympathy, that illuminated the mountain visage and etherealized its ponderous granite substance into spirit, might here be sought in vain. Something had been originally left out, or had departed. And therefore the marvelously gifted statesman had always a weary gloom in the deep caverns of his eyes, as of a child that has outgrown its playthings or a man of mighty faculties and little aims, whose life, with all its high performances, was vague and empty, because no high purpose had endowed it with reality.

Still, Ernest's neighbor was thrusting his elbow into his side, and pressing him for an answer.

"Then so much the worse for the Great Stone Face!" answered his neighbor; and again he set up a shout for Old Stony Phiz.

But Ernest turned away, melancholy, and almost despondent: for this was the saddest of his disappointments, to behold a man who might have fulfilled the prophecy, and had not willed to do so. Meantime, the cavalcade, the banners, the music, and the barouches swept past him, with the vociferous crowd in the rear, leaving the dust to settle down, and the Great Stone Face to be revealed again, with the grandeur that it had worn for untold centuries.

"Lo, here I am, Ernest!" the benign lips seemed to say. "I have waited longer than thou, and am not yet weary. Fear not; the man will come."

The years hurried onward, treading in their haste on one another's heels. And now they began to bring white hairs, and scatter them over the head of Ernest; they made reverend wrinkles across his forehead, and furrows in his cheeks. He was an aged man. But not in vain had he grown old: more than the white hairs on his head were the sage thoughts in his mind; his wrinkles and furrows were inscriptions that Time had graved, and in which he had written legends of wisdom that had been tested by the tenor of a life. And Ernest had ceased to be obscure. Unsought for, undesired, had come the fame which so many seek, and made him known in the great world, beyond the limits of the valley in which he had dwelt so quietly. College professors, and even the active men of cities, came from far to see and converse with Ernest; for the report had gone abroad that this simple husbandman had ideas unlike those of other men, not gained from books, but of a higher tone,--a tranquil and familiar majesty, as if he had been talking with the angels as his daily friends. Whether it were sage, statesman, or philanthropist, Ernest received these visitors with the gentle sincerity that had characterized him from boyhood, and spoke freely with them of whatever came uppermost, or lay deepest in his heart or their own. While they talked together, his face would kindle, unawares, and shine upon them, as with a mild evening light. Pensive with the fulness of such discourse, his guests took leave and went their way; and passing up the valley, paused to look at the Great Stone Face, imagining that they had seen its likeness in a human countenance, but could not remember where.

While Ernest had been growing up and growing old, a bountiful Providence had granted a new poet to this earth. He, likewise, was a native of the valley, but had spent the greater part of his life at a distance from that romantic region, pouring out his sweet music amid the bustle and din of cities. Often, however, did the mountains which had been familiar to him in his childhood lift their snowy peaks into the clear atmosphere of his poetry. Neither was the Great Stone Face forgotten, for the poet had celebrated it in an ode, which was grand enough to have been uttered by its own majestic lips. This man of genius, we may say, had come down from heaven with wonderful endowments. If he sang of a mountain, the eyes of all mankind beheld a mightier grandeur reposing on its breast, or soaring to its summit, than had before been seen there. If his theme were a lovely lake, a celestial smile had now been thrown over it, to gleam forever on its surface. If it were the vast old sea, even the deep immensity of its dread bosom seemed to swell the higher, as if moved by the emotions of the song. Thus the world assumed another and a better aspect from the hour that the poet blessed it with his happy eyes. The Creator had bestowed him, as the last best touch to his own handiwork. Creation was not finished till the poet came to interpret, and so complete it.

The effect was no less high and beautiful, when his human brethren were the subject of his verse. The man or woman, sordid with the common dust of life, who crossed his daily path, and the little child who played in it, were glorified if he beheld them in his mood of poetic faith. He showed the golden links of the great chain that intertwined them with an angelic kindred; he brought out the hidden traits of a celestial birth that made them worthy of such kin. Some, indeed, there were, who thought to show the soundness of their judgment by affirming that all the beauty and dignity of the natural world existed only in the poet's fancy. Let such men speak for themselves, who undoubtedly appear to have been spawned forth by Nature with a contemptuous bitterness; she having plastered them up out of her refuse stuff, after all the swine were made. As respects all things else, the poet's ideal was the truest truth.

The songs of this poet found their way to Ernest. He read them after his customary toil, seated on the bench before his cottage-door, where for such a length of time he had filled his repose with thought, by gazing at the Great Stone Face. And now as he read stanzas that caused the soul to thrill within him, he lifted his eyes to the vast countenance beaming on him so benignantly.

"O majestic friend," he murmured, addressing the Great Stone Face, "is not this man worthy to resemble thee?"

Now it happened that the poet, though he dwelt so far away, had not only heard of Ernest, but had meditated much upon his character, until he deemed nothing so desirable as to meet this man, whose untaught wisdom walked hand in hand with the noble simplicity of his life. One summer morning, therefore, he took passage by the railroad, and, in the decline of the afternoon, alighted from the cars at no great distance from Ernest's cottage. The great hotel, which had formerly been the palace of Mr. Gathergold, was close at hand, but the poet, with his carpetbag on his arm, inquired at once where Ernest dwelt, and was resolved to be accepted as his guest.

Approaching the door, he there found the good old man, holding a volume in his hand, which alternately he read, and then, with a finger between the leaves, looked lovingly at the Great Stone Face.

"Willingly," answered Ernest; and then he added, smiling, "Methinks I never saw the Great Stone Face look so hospitably at a stranger."

The poet sat down on the bench beside him, and he and Ernest talked together. Often had the poet held intercourse with the wittiest and the wisest, but never before with a man like Ernest, whose thoughts and feelings gushed up with such a natural freedom, and who made great truths so familiar by his simple utterance of them. Angels, as had been so often said, seemed to have wrought with him at his labor in the fields; angels seemed to have sat with him by the fireside; and, dwelling with angels as friend with friends, he had imbibed the sublimity of their ideas, and imbued it with the sweet and lowly charm of household words. So thought the poet. And Ernest, on the other hand, was moved and agitated by the living images which the poet flung out of his mind, and which peopled all the air about the cottage-door with shapes of beauty, both gay and pensive. The sympathies of these two men instructed them with a profounder sense than either could have attained alone. Their minds accorded into one strain, and made delightful music which neither of them could have claimed as all his own, nor distinguished his own share from the other's. They led one another, as it were, into a high pavilion of their thoughts, so remote, and hitherto so dim, that they had never entered it before, and so beautiful that they desired to be there always.

As Ernest listened to the poet, he imagined that the Great Stone Face was bending forward to listen too. He gazed earnestly into the poet's glowing eyes.

"Who are you, my strangely gifted guest?" he said. The poet laid his finger on the volume that Ernest had been reading.

Again, and still more earnestly than before, Ernest examined the poet's features; then turned towards the Great Stone Face; then back, with an uncertain aspect, to his guest. But his countenance fell; he shook his head, and sighed.

"Because," replied Ernest, "all through life I have awaited the fulfilment of a prophecy; and, when I read these poems, I hoped that it might be fulfilled in you."

"You hoped," answered the poet, faintly smiling, "to find in me the likeness of the Great Stone Face. And you are disappointed, as formerly with Mr. Gathergold, and Old Blood-and-Thunder, and Old Stony Phiz. Yes, Ernest, it is my doom. You must add my name to the illustrious three, and record another failure of your hopes. For--in shame and sadness do I speak it, Ernest--I am not worthy to be typified by yonder benign and majestic image."

"And why?" asked Ernest. He pointed to the volume. "Are not those thoughts divine?"

"They have a strain of the Divinity," replied the poet. "You can hear in them the far-off echo of a heavenly song. But my life, dear Ernest, has not corresponded with my thought. I have had grand dreams, but they have been only dreams, because I have lived--and that, too, by my own choice--among poor and mean realities. Sometimes even--shall I dare to say it?--I lack faith in the grandeur, the beauty, and the goodness, which my own works are said to have made more evident in nature and in human life. Why, then, pure seeker of the good and true, shouldst thou hope to find me, in yonder image of the divine?"

The poet spoke sadly, and his eyes were dim with tears. So, likewise, were those of Ernest.

At the hour of sunset, as had long been his frequent custom, Ernest was to discourse to an assemblage of the neighboring inhabitants in the open air. He and the poet, arm in arm, still talking together as they went along, proceeded to the spot. It was a small nook among the hills, with a gray precipice behind, the stern front of which was relieved by the pleasant foliage of many creeping plants that made a tapestry for the naked rock, by hanging their festoons from all its rugged angles. At a small elevation above the ground, set in a rich framework of verdure, there appeared a niche, spacious enough to admit a human figure, with freedom for such gestures as spontaneously accompany earnest thought and genuine emotion. Into this natural pulpit Ernest ascended, and threw a look of familiar kindness around upon his audience. They stood, or sat, or reclined upon the grass, as seemed good to each, with the departing sunshine falling obliquely over them, and mingling its subdued cheerfulness with the solemnity of a grove of ancient trees, beneath and amid the boughs of which the golden rays were constrained to pass. In another direction was seen the Great Stone Face, with the same cheer, combined with the same solemnity, in its benignant aspect.

Ernest began to speak, giving to the people of what was in his heart and mind. His words had power, because they accorded with his thoughts; and his thoughts had reality and depth, because they harmonized with the life which he had always lived. It was not mere breath that this preacher uttered; they were the words of life, because a life of good deeds and holy love was melted into them. Pearls, pure and rich, had been dissolved into this precious draught. The poet, as he listened, felt that the being and character of Ernest were a nobler strain of poetry than he had ever written. His eyes glistening with tears, he gazed reverentially at the venerable man, and said within himself that never was there an aspect so worthy of a prophet and a sage as that mild, sweet, thoughtful countenance, with the glory of white hair diffused about it. At a distance, but distinctly to be seen, high up in the golden light of the setting sun, appeared the Great Stone Face, with hoary mists around it, like the white hairs around the brow of Ernest. Its look of grand beneficence seemed to embrace the world.

At that moment, in sympathy with a thought which he was about to utter, the face of Ernest assumed a grandeur of expression, so imbued with benevolence, that the poet, by an irresistible impulse, threw his arms aloft, and shouted,--

Then all the people looked, and saw that what the deep-sighted poet said was true. The prophecy was fulfilled. But Ernest, having finished what he had to say, took the poet's arm, and walked slowly homeward, still hoping that some wiser and better man than himself would by and by appear, bearing a resemblance to the GREAT STONE FACE.

What influence had this Face upon the valley? Upon the clouds? Upon the sunshine?

Why did so many people think that each of these men was the image of the Great Stone Face?

    "infusing its tenderness into the sunshine"
    "transform himself into an angel of beneficence"
    "the mountain visage had found its human counterpart"
    "a kind of illuminated fog"
    "the prophecy was fulfilled"

Never did a pilgrim approach Niagara with deeper enthusiasm than mine. I had lingered away from it, and wandered to other scenes, because my treasury of anticipated enjoyments, comprising all the wonders of the world, had nothing else so magnificent, and I was loath to exchange the pleasures of hope for those of memory so soon. At length the day came. The stage-coach, with a Frenchman and myself on the back seat, had already left Lewiston, and in less than an hour would set us down in Manchester. I began to listen for the roar of the cataract, and trembled with a sensation like dread, as the moment drew nigh, when its voice of ages must roll, for the first time, on my ear. The French gentleman stretched himself from the window, and expressed loud admiration, while, by a sudden impulse, I threw myself back and closed my eyes. When the scene shut in, I was glad to think, that for me the whole burst of Niagara was yet in futurity. We rolled on, and entered the village of Manchester, bordering on the falls.

I am quite ashamed of myself here. Not that I ran like a madman to the falls, and plunged into the thickest of the spray,--never stopping to breathe, till breathing was impossible; not that I committed this, or any other suitable extravagance. On the contrary, I alighted with perfect decency and composure, gave my cloak to the black waiter, pointed out my baggage, and inquired, not the nearest way to the cataract, but about the dinner-hour. The interval was spent in arranging my dress. Within the last fifteen minutes, my mind had grown strangely benumbed, and my spirits apathetic, with a slight depression, not decided enough to be termed sadness. My enthusiasm was in a deathlike slumber. Without aspiring to immortality, as he did, I could have imitated that English traveller, who turned back from the point where he first heard the thunder of Niagara, after crossing the ocean to behold it. Many a Western trader, by the by, has performed a similar act of heroism with more heroic simplicity, deeming it no such wonderful feat to dine at the hotel and resume his route to Buffalo or Lewiston, while the cataract was roaring unseen.

Such has often been my apathy, when objects, long sought, and earnestly desired, were placed within my reach. After dinner--at which an unwonted and perverse epicurism detained me longer than usual--I lighted a cigar and paced the piazza, minutely attentive to the aspect and business of a very ordinary village. Finally, with reluctant step, and the feeling of an intruder, I walked towards Goat Island. At the toll-house, there were farther excuses for delaying the inevitable moment. My signature was required in a huge ledger, containing similar records innumerable, many of which I read. The skin of a great sturgeon, and other fishes, beasts, and reptiles; a collection of minerals, such as lie in heaps near the falls; some Indian moccasins, and other trifles, made of deer-skin and embroidered with beads; several newspapers, from Montreal, New York, and Boston,--all attracted me in turn. Out of a number of twisted sticks, the manufacture of a Tuscarora Indian, I selected one of curled maple, curiously convoluted, and adorned with the carved images of a snake and a fish. Using this as my pilgrim's staff, I crossed the bridge. Above and below me were the rapids, a river of impetuous snow, with here and there a dark rock amid its whiteness, resisting all the physical fury, as any cold spirit did the moral influences of the scene. On reaching Goat Island, which separates the two great segments of the falls, I chose the right-hand path, and followed it to the edge of the American cascade. There, while the falling sheet was yet invisible, I saw the vapor that never vanishes, and the Eternal Rainbow of Niagara.

It was an afternoon of glorious sunshine, without a cloud, save those of the cataracts. I gained an insulated rock, and beheld a broad sheet of brilliant and unbroken foam, not shooting in a curbed line from the top of the precipice, but falling, headlong down from height to depth. A narrow stream diverged from the main branch, and hurried over the crag by a channel of its own, leaving a little pine-clad island and a streak of precipice between itself and the larger sheet. Below arose the mist, on which was painted a dazzling sunbow with two concentric shadows,--one, almost as perfect as the original brightness; and the other, drawn faintly round the broken edge of the cloud.

Still I had not half seen Niagara. Following the verge of the island, the path led me to the Horseshoe, where the real, broad St. Lawrence, rushing along on a level with its banks, pours its whole breadth over a concave line of precipice, and thence pursues its course between lofty crags towards Ontario. A sort of bridge, two or three feet wide, stretches out along the edge of the descending sheet, and hangs upon the rising mist, as if that were the foundation of the frail structure. Here I stationed myself in the blast of wind, which the rushing river bore along with it. The bridge was tremulous beneath me, and marked the tremor of the solid earth. I looked along the whitening rapids, and endeavored to distinguish a mass of water far above the falls, to follow it to their verge, and go down with it, in fancy, to the abyss of clouds and storm. Casting my eyes across the river, and every side, I took in the whole scene at a glance, and tried to comprehend it in one vast idea. After an hour thus spent, I left the bridge, and by a staircase, winding almost interminably round a post, descended to the base of the precipice. From that point, my path lay over slippery stones, and among great fragments of the cliff, to the edge of the cataract, where the wind at once enveloped me in spray, and perhaps dashed the rainbow round me. Were my long desires fulfilled? And had I seen Niagara?

Oh that I had never heard of Niagara till I beheld it! Blessed were the wanderers of old, who heard its deep roar, sounding through the woods, as the summons to an unknown wonder, and approached its awful brink, in all the freshness of native feeling. Had its own mysterious voice been the first to warn me of its existence, then, indeed, I might have knelt down and worshipped. But I had come thither, haunted with a vision of foam and fury, and dizzy cliffs, and an ocean tumbling down out of the sky,--a scene, in short, which nature had too much good taste and calm simplicity to realize. My mind had struggled to adapt these false conceptions to the reality, and finding the effort vain, a wretched sense of disappointment weighed me down. I climbed the precipice, and threw myself on the earth, feeling that I was unworthy to look at the Great Falls, and careless about beholding them again.

All that night, as there has been and will be for ages past and to come, a rushing sound was heard, as if a great tempest were sweeping through the air. It mingled with my dreams, and made them full of storm and whirlwind. Whenever I awoke, and heard this dread sound in the air, and the windows rattling as with a mighty blast, I could not rest again, till looking forth, I saw how bright the stars were, and that every leaf in the garden was motionless. Never was a summer night more calm to the eye, nor a gale of autumn louder to the ear. The rushing sound proceeds from the rapids, and the rattling of the casements is but an effect of the vibration of the whole house, shaken by the jar of the cataract. The noise of the rapids draws the attention from the true voice of Niagara, which is a dull, muffled thunder, resounding between the cliffs. I spent a wakeful hour at midnight, in distinguishing its reverberations, and rejoiced to find that my former awe and enthusiasm were reviving.

Gradually, and after much contemplation, I came to know, by my own feelings, that Niagara is indeed a wonder of the world, and not the less wonderful, because time and thought must be employed in comprehending it. Casting aside all preconceived notions, and preparation to be dire-struck or delighted, the beholder must stand beside it in the simplicity of his heart, suffering the mighty scene to work its own impression. Night after night, I dreamed of it, and was gladdened every morning by the consciousness of a growing capacity to enjoy it. Yet I will not pretend to the all-absorbing enthusiasm of some more fortunate spectators, nor deny that very trifling causes would draw my eyes and thoughts from the cataract.

The last day that I was to spend at Niagara, before my departure for the Far West, I sat upon the Table Rock. This celebrated station did not now, as of old, project fifty feet beyond the line of the precipice, but was shattered by the fall of an immense fragment, which lay distant on the shore below. Still, on the utmost verge of the rock, with my feet hanging over it, I felt as if suspended in the open air. Never before had my mind been in such perfect unison with the scene. There were intervals, when I was conscious of nothing but the great river, lolling calmly into the abyss, rather descending than precipitating itself, and acquiring tenfold majesty from its unhurried motion. It came like the march of Destiny. It was not taken by surprise, but seemed to have anticipated, in all its course through the broad lakes, that it must pour their collected waters down this height. The perfect foam of the river, after its descent, and the ever-varying shapes of mist, rising up, to become clouds in the sky, would be the very picture of confusion, were it merely transient, like the rage of a tempest. But when the beholder has stood awhile, and perceives no lull in the storm, and considers that the vapor and the foam are as everlasting as the rocks which produce them, all this turmoil assumes a sort of calmness. It soothes, while it awes the mind.

Leaning over the cliff, I saw the guide conducting two adventurers behind the falls. It was pleasant, from that high seat in the sunshine, to observe them struggling against the eternal storm of the lower regions, with heads bent down, now faltering, now pressing forward, and finally swallowed up in their victory. After their disappearance, a blast rushed out with an old hat, which it had swept from one of their heads. The rock, to which they were directing their unseen course, is marked, at a fearful distance on the exterior of the sheet, by a jet of foam. The attempt to reach it appears both poetical and perilous to a looker-on, but may be accomplished without much more difficulty or hazard than in stemming a violent northeaster. In a few moments, forth came the children of the mist. Dripping and breathless, they crept along the base of the cliff, ascended to the guide's cottage, and received, I presume, a certificate of their achievement, with three verses of sublime poetry on the back.

My contemplations were often interrupted by strangers who came down from Forsyth's to take their first view of the falls. A short, ruddy, middle-aged gentleman, fresh from Old England, peeped over the rock, and evinced his approbation by a broad grin. His spouse, a very robust lady, afforded a sweet example of maternal solicitude, being so intent on the safety of her little boy that she did not even glance at Niagara. As for the child,--he gave himself wholly to the enjoyment of a stick of candy. Another traveller, a native American, and no rare character among us, produced a volume of Captain Hall's tour, and labored earnestly to adjust Niagara to the captain's description, departing, at last, without one new idea or sensation of his own. The next comer was provided, not with a printed book, but with a blank sheet of foolscap, from top to bottom of which, by means of an ever-pointed pencil, the cataract was made to thunder. In a little talk which we had together, he awarded his approbation to the general view, but censured the position of Goat Island, observing that it should have been thrown farther to the right, so as to widen the American falls, and contract those of the Horseshoe. Next appeared two traders of Michigan, who declared, that, upon the whole, the sight was worth looking at; there certainly was an immense water-power here; but that, after all, they would go twice as far to see the noble stone-works of Lockport, where the Grand Canal is locked down a descent of sixty feet. They were succeeded by a young fellow, in a homespun cotton dress, with a staff in his hand, and a pack over his shoulders. He advanced close to the edge of the rock, where his attention, at first wavering among the different components of the scene, finally became fixed in the angle of the Horseshoe falls, which is, indeed the central point of interest. His whole soul seemed to go forth and be transported thither, till the staff slipped from his relaxed grasp, and falling down--down--down--struck upon the fragment of the Table Rock.

In this manner I spent some hours, watching the varied impression, made by the cataract, on those who disturbed me, and returning to unwearied contemplation, when left alone. At length my time came to depart. There is a grassy footpath through the woods, along the summit of the bank, to a point whence a causeway, hewn in the side of the precipice, goes winding down to the Ferry, about half a mile below the Table Rock. The sun was near setting, when I emerged from the shadow of the trees, and began the descent. The indirectness of my downward road continually changed the point of view, and showed me, in rich and repeated succession, now, the whitening rapids and majestic leap of the main river, which appeared more deeply massive as the light departed; now, the lovelier picture, yet still sublime, of Goat Island, with its rocks and grove, and the lesser falls, tumbling over the right bank of the St. Lawrence, like a tributary stream; now, the long vista of the river, as it eddied and whirled between the cliffs, to pass through Ontario toward the sea, and everywhere to be wondered at, for this one unrivalled scene. The golden sunshine tinged the sheet of the American cascade, and painted on its heaving spray the broken semi-circle of a rainbow, heaven's own beauty crowning earth's sublimity. My steps were slow, and I paused long at every turn of the descent, as one lingers and pauses who discerns a brighter and brightening excellence in what he must soon behold no more. The solitude of the old wilderness now reigned over the whole vicinity of the falls. My enjoyment became the more rapturous, because no poet shared it, nor wretch devoid of poetry profaned it; but the spot so famous through the world was all my own!

What relation has Niagara to the geography of the country, its animal and vegetable life, its trade and industry?

What is the effect on one's feelings when he "considers that the vapor and the foam are as everlasting as the rocks which produce them"?

Note the comments of other observers based upon their interpretation of Niagara.

Do you think one who sees nothing in Niagara except a mass of rock and water, vapor and sunshine, could appreciate its beauty, grandeur, and sublimity?

    "insulated"
    "rapturous"
    "abyss of clouds"
    "eddied and whirled"
    "epicurism"
    "convoluted"
    "voice of ages"
    "mysterious voice"
    "unrivaled scene"
    "Eternal Rainbow"
    "majestic leap"

So irregular was the life of Edgar Allan Poe and so strong were the prejudices of his critics that not only his character and habits of life, but even the simplest facts of his biography, are surrounded with mystery and are subjects of doubt and dispute.

By everything, but the accident of birth, Poe belongs to the South. His father was from Baltimore and his mother was of English birth. They were both members of a theatrical company playing in Boston at the time of Poe's birth, January 19, 1809. At the age of three he was left an orphan by the death of his mother. A wealthy Scotchman of Virginia, Mr. John Allan, adopted him and brought him up in luxury--a much spoiled child, everywhere petted for his beauty and precocity.

He was sent to school in a suburb of London and upon his return to America entered the University of Virginia, a proud, reserved, and self-willed youth. Here he led an irregular life, so that Mr. Allan was forced to withdraw him from school and gave him work in his office. The routine of office work was very distasteful to Poe and he ran away to Boston, where he published his first volume of poems. Here he enlisted in the army, but when Mr. Allan heard of his whereabouts he secured his discharge and obtained an appointment for him, as a cadet, at West Point. The severe discipline of that school proved irksome to his restless nature and after a few months he brought upon himself his dismissal. At the age of twenty-two he found himself adrift with nothing further to expect from Mr. Allan.

Literature presented itself as his most natural vocation. He had written poetry from the pure love of it, but now actual poverty drove him to the more remunerative prose writing. He engaged in journalistic work in Baltimore, living with his aunt, Mrs. Clemm, and her daughter, Virginia. Two years later he married Virginia Clemm, a mere child; but Poe, whose reverence for women was his noblest trait, loved her and cared for her through poverty and ill-health, until her death eleven years later, a short time before his own. His life was a melancholy one, a fierce struggle and final defeat. In 1849, on his way to New York from Richmond, chance brought him and election day together in the city of Baltimore. He was found in an election booth, delirious, and died a few days later.

Poe was a keen critic of the literary men of his day, but he applied the same standards to himself. He was constantly re-writing and polishing what he had written. Poe's greatness lay in his imaginative, work--his tales and his poems. The tales may be said to constitute a distinct addition to the world's literature. From time immemorial, there have been tales in prose and in verse, tales legendary, romantic, and humorous, but never any quite like Poe's.

The appeal of his poetry is to the sentiment of beauty--the one appeal, which according to his theory is the final justification of any poem. Language is made to yield its utmost of melody. "The Raven" was first published in January, 1845, and immediately became and remains one of the most widely known of English poems. It can be mentioned anywhere, without apology or explanation and there is scarcely a lover of melodious verse who cannot repeat many of its lines and stanzas.

Every reader of Poe's prose will be impressed with the charm of the language itself, the fascination of the vivid scenes and the magic touch like the Necromancer's wand, which removes these scenes into the uncharted realm of the supernatural and invests them with a kind of sacred awe.

We had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For some minutes the old man seemed too much exhausted to speak.

"Not long ago," said he at length, "and I could have guided you on this route as well as the youngest of my sons; but, about three years past, there happened to me an event such as never happened before to mortal man--or at least such as no man ever survived to tell of--and the six hours of deadly terror which I then endured have broken me up body and soul. You suppose me a very old man--but I am not. It took less than a single day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the least exertion, and am frightened at a shadow. Do you know I can scarcely look over this little cliff without getting giddy?"

The "little cliff," upon whose edge he had so carelessly thrown himself down to rest that the weightier portion of his body hung over it, while he was only kept from falling by the tenure of his elbow on its extreme and slippery edge--this "little cliff" arose, a sheer unobstructed precipice of black shining rock, some fifteen or sixteen hundred feet from the world of crags beneath us. Nothing would have tempted me to within half a dozen yards of its brink. In truth so deeply was I excited by the perilous position of my companion, that I fell at full length upon the ground, clung to the shrubs around me, and dared not even glance upward at the sky--while I struggled in vain to divest myself of the idea that the very foundations of the mountain were in danger from the fury of the winds. It was long before I could reason myself into sufficient courage to sit up and look out into the distance.

"You must get over these fancies," said the guide, "for I have brought you here that you might have the best possible view of the scene of that event I mentioned--and to tell you the whole story with the spot just under your eye.

"We are now," he continued, in that particularizing manner which distinguished him--"we are now close upon the Norwegian coast--in the sixty-eighth degree of latitude--in the great province of Nordland--and in the dreary district of Lofoden. The mountain upon whose top we sit is Helseggen, the Cloudy. Now raise yourself up a little higher--hold on to the grass if you feel giddy--so--and look out, beyond the belt of vapor beneath us, into the sea."

I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose waters wore so inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the Nubian geographer's account of the Mare Tenebrarum. A panorama more deplorably desolate no human imagination can conceive. To the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines of horridly black and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but the more forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up against it its white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking forever. Just opposite the promontory upon whose apex we were placed, and at a distance of some five or six miles out at sea, there was visible a small, bleak-looking island; or, more properly, its position was discernible through the wilderness of surge in which it was enveloped. About two miles nearer the land arose another of smaller size, hideously craggy and barren, and encompassed at various intervals by a cluster of dark rocks.

The appearance of the ocean, in the space between the more distant island and the shore, had something very unusual about it. Although, at the time, so strong a gale was blowing landward that a brig in the remote offing lay to under a double-reefed trysail, and constantly plunged her whole hull out of sight, still there was here nothing like a regular swell, but only a short, quick, angry cross-dashing of water in every direction--as well in the teeth of the wind as otherwise. Of foam there was little except in the immediate vicinity of the rocks.

"The island in the distance," resumed the old man, "is called by the Norwegians Vurrgh. The one midway is Moskoe. That a mile to the northward is Ambaaren. Yonder are Iflesen, Hoeyholm, Kieldholm, Suarven, and Buckholm. Farther off--between Moskoe and Vurrgh--are Otterholm, Flimen, Sandflesen, and Skarholm. These are the true names of the places--but why it has been thought necessary to name them at all is more than either you or I can understand. Do you hear anything? Do you see any change in the water?"

We had now been about ten minutes upon the top of Helseggen, to which we had ascended from the interior of Lofoden, so that we had caught no glimpse of the sea until it had burst upon us from the summit. As the old man spoke, I became aware of a loud and gradually increasing sound, like the moaning of a vast herd of buffaloes upon an American prairie; and at the same moment I perceived that what seamen term the chopping character of the ocean beneath us, was rapidly changing into a current which set to the eastward. Even while I gazed, this current acquired a monstrous velocity. Each moment added to its speed--to its headlong impetuosity. In five minutes the whole sea, as far as Vurrgh, was lashed into ungovernable fury; but it was between Moskoe and the coast that the main uproar held its sway. Here the vast bed of the waters, seamed and scarred into a thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly into frenzied convulsion--heaving, boiling, hissing--gyrating in gigantic and innumerable vortices, and all whirling and plunging on to the eastward with a rapidity which water never elsewhere assumes, except in precipitous descents.

In a few minutes more there came over the scene another radical alteration. The general surface grew somewhat more smooth, and the whirlpools, one by one, disappeared, while prodigious streaks of foam became apparent where none had been seen before. These streaks, at length, spreading out to a great distance, and entering into combination, took unto themselves the gyratory motion of the subsided vortices, and seemed to form the germ of another more vast. Suddenly--very suddenly--this assumed a distinct and definite existence, in a circle of more than a mile in diameter. The edge of the whirl was represented by a broad belt of gleaming spray; but no particle of this slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining and jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five degrees, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice, half shriek, half roar, such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever lifts up in its agony to Heaven.

The mountain trembled to its very base, and the rock rocked. I threw myself upon my face, and clung to the scant herbage in an excess of nervous agitation.

"This," said I at length, to the old man--"this can be nothing else than the great whirlpool of the Maelström."

"So it is sometimes termed," said he. "We Norwegians call it the Moskoe-ström, from the island of Moskoe in the midway."

The ordinary accounts of this vortex had by no means prepared me for what I saw. That of Jonas Ramus, which, is perhaps the most circumstantial of any, cannot impart the faintest conception either of the magnificence or of the horror of the scene--or of the wild bewildering sense of the novel which confounds the beholder. I am not sure from what point of view the writer in question surveyed it, nor at what time; but it could neither have been from the summit of Helseggen, nor during a storm. There are some passages of his description, nevertheless, which may be quoted for their details, although their effect is exceedingly feeble in conveying an impression of the spectacle.

"Between Lofoden and Moskoe," he says, "the depth of the water is between thirty-six and forty fathoms; but on the other side, toward Ver (Vurrgh) this depth decreases so as not to afford a convenient passage for a vessel, without the risk of splitting on the rocks, which happens even in the calmest weather. When it is flood, the stream runs up the country between Lofoden and Moskoe with a boisterous rapidity; but the roar of its impetuous ebb to the sea is scarce equaled by the loudest and most dreadful cataracts, the noise being heard several leagues off; and the vortices or pits are of such an extent and depth that if a ship comes within its attraction it is inevitably absorbed and carried down to the bottom, and there beat to pieces against the rocks; and when the water relaxes, the fragments thereof are thrown up again. But these intervals of tranquillity are only at the turn of the ebb and flood, and in calm weather, and last but a quarter of an hour, its violence gradually returning. When the stream is most boisterous, and its fury heightened by a storm, it is dangerous to come within a Norway mile of it. Boats, yachts, and ships have been carried away by not guarding against it before they were within its reach. It likewise happens frequently that whales come too near the stream, and are overpowered by its violence; and then it is impossible to describe their howling and bellowings in their fruitless struggles to disengage themselves. A bear once, attempting to swim from Lofoden to Moskoe, was caught by the stream and borne down, while he roared terribly, so as to be heard on shore. Large stocks of firs and pine trees, after being absorbed by the current, rise again broken and torn to such a degree as if bristles grew upon them. This plainly shows the bottom to consist of craggy rocks, among which they are whirled to and fro. This stream is regulated by the flux and reflux of the sea--it being constantly high and low water every six hours. In the year 1645, early in the morning of Sexagesima Sunday, it raged with such noise and impetuosity that the very stones of the houses on the coast fell to the ground."

In regard to the depth of the water, I could not see how this could have been ascertained at all in the immediate vicinity of the vortex. The "forty fathoms" must have reference only to portions of the channel close upon the shore either of Moskoe or Lofoden. The depth in the center of the Moskoe-ström must be immeasurably greater; and no better proof of this fact is necessary than can be obtained from even the sidelong glance into the abyss of the whirl which may be had from the highest crag of Helseggen. Looking down from this pinnacle upon the howling Phlegethon below, I could not help smiling at the simplicity with which the honest Jonas Ramus records, as a matter difficult of belief, the anecdotes of the whales and the bears; for it appeared to me, in fact, a self-evident thing that the largest ships of the line in existence, coming within the influence of that deadly attraction, could resist it as little as a feather the hurricane, and must disappear bodily and at once.

The attempts to account for the phenomenon--some of which, I remember, seemed to me sufficiently plausible in perusal--now wore a very different and unsatisfactory aspect. The idea generally received is that this, as well as three smaller vortices among the Feroe Islands, "have no other cause than the collision of waves rising and falling, at flux and reflux, against a ridge of rocks and shelves, which confines the water so that it precipitates itself like a cataract; and thus the higher the flood rises, the deeper must the fall be, and the natural result of all is a whirlpool or vortex, the prodigious suction of which is sufficiently known by lesser experiments."--These are the words of the "Encyclopaedia Brittanica." Kircher and others imagine that in the center of the channel of the Maelström is an abyss penetrating the globe, and issuing in some very remote part--the Gulf of Bothnia being somewhat decidedly named in one instance. This opinion, idle in itself, was the one to which, as I gazed, my imagination most readily assented; and, mentioning it to the guide, I was rather surprised to hear him say that, although it was the view almost universally entertained of the subject by the Norwegians, it nevertheless was not his own. As to the former notion he confessed his inability to comprehend it; and here I agreed with him--for, however conclusive on paper, it becomes altogether unintelligible, and even absurd, amid the thunder of the abyss.

"You have had a good look at the whirl now," said the old man, "and if you will creep round this crag, so as to get in its lee, and deaden the roar of the water, I will tell you a story that will convince you I ought to know something of the Moskoe-ström."

"Myself and my two brothers once owned a schooner-rigged smack of about seventy tons burden, with which we were in the habit of fishing among the islands beyond Moskoe, nearly to Vurrgh. In all violent eddies at sea there is good fishing, at proper opportunities, if one has only the courage to attempt it; but among the whole of the Lofoden coastmen we three were the only ones who made a regular business of going out to the islands, as I tell you. The usual grounds are a great way lower down to the southward. There fish can be got at all hours, without much risk, and therefore these places are preferred. The choice spots over here among the rocks, however, not only yield the finest variety, but in far greater abundance; so that we often got in a single day what the more timid of the craft could not scrape together in a week. In fact, we made it a matter of desperate speculation--the risk of life standing instead of labor, and courage answering for capital.

"We kept the smack in a cove about five miles higher up the coast than this; and it was our practice, in fine weather, to take advantage of the fifteen minutes' slack to push across the main channel of the Moskoe-ström, far above the pool, and then drop down upon anchorage somewhere near Otterholm, or Sandflesen, where the eddies are not so violent as elsewhere. Here we used to remain until nearly time for slack-water again, when we weighed and made for home. We never set out upon this expedition without a steady side wind for going and coming--one that we felt sure would not fail us before our return--and we seldom made a miscalculation upon this point. Twice, during six years, we were forced to stay all night at anchor on account of a dead calm, which is a rare thing indeed just about here; and once we had to remain on the grounds nearly a week, starving to death, owing to a gale which blew up shortly after our arrival, and made the channel too boisterous to be thought of. Upon this occasion we should have been driven out to sea in spite of everything (for the whirlpools threw us round and round so violently that, at length, we fouled our anchor and dragged it) if it had not been that we drifted into one of the innumerable cross currents--here to-day and gone to-morrow--which drove us under the lee of Flimen, where, by good luck, we brought up.

"I could not tell you the twentieth part of the difficulties we encountered 'on the ground'--it is a bad spot to be in, even in good weather--but we made shift always to run the gauntlet of the Moskoe-ström itself without accident; although at times my heart has been in my mouth when we happened to be a minute or so behind or before the slack. The wind sometimes was not as strong as we thought it at starting, and then we made rather less way than we could wish, while the current rendered the smack unmanageable. My eldest brother had a son eighteen years old, and I had two stout boys of my own. These would have been of great assistance at such times, in using the sweeps, as well as afterward in fishing--but, somehow, although we ran the risk ourselves, we had not the heart to let the young ones get into the danger--for, after all said and done, it was a horrible danger, and that is the truth.

"It is now within a few days of three years since what I am going to tell you occurred. It was on the tenth of July, 18--, a day which the people of this part of the world will never forget--for it was one in which blew the most terrible hurricane that ever came out of the heavens. And yet all the morning, and indeed until late in the afternoon, there was a gentle and steady breeze from the southwest, while the sun shone brightly, so that the oldest seaman among us could not have foreseen what was to follow.

"The three of us--my two brothers and myself--had crossed over to the islands about two o'clock P.M., and soon nearly loaded the smack with fine fish, which, we all remarked, were more plenty that day than we had ever known them. It was just seven, by my watch, when we weighed and started for home, so as to make the worst of the Ström at slack water, which we knew would be at eight.

"We set out with a fresh wind on our starboard quarter, and for some time spanked along at a great rate, never dreaming of danger, for indeed we saw not the slightest reason to apprehend it. All at once we were taken aback by a breeze from over Helseggen. This was most unusual--something that had never happened to us before--and I began to feel a little uneasy, without exactly knowing why. We put the boat on the wind, but could make no headway at all for the eddies, and I was upon the point of proposing to return to the anchorage, when, looking astern, we saw the whole horizon covered with a singular copper-colored cloud that rose with the most amazing velocity.

"In the meantime the breeze that had headed us off fell away, and we were dead becalmed, drifting about in every direction. This state of things, however, did not last long enough to give us time to think about it. In less than a minute the storm was upon us--in less than two the sky was entirely overcast--and what with this and the driving spray, it became suddenly so dark that we could not see each other in the smack.

"Such a hurricane as then blew it is folly to attempt describing. The oldest seaman in Norway never experienced anything like it. We had let our sails go by the run before it cleverly took us; but, at the first puff, both our masts went by the board as if they had been sawed off--the mainmast taking with it my youngest brother, who had lashed himself to it for safety.

"Our boat was the lightest feather of a thing that ever sat upon water. It had a complete flush deck, with only a small hatch near the bow, and this hatch it had always been our custom to batten down when about to cross the Ström, by way of precaution against the chopping seas. But for this circumstance we should have foundered at once--for we lay entirely buried for some moments. How my elder brother escaped destruction I cannot say, for I never had an opportunity of ascertaining. For my part, as soon as I had let the foresail run, I threw myself flat on deck, with my feet against the narrow gunwale of the bow, and with my hands grasping a ringbolt near the foot of the foremast. It was mere instinct that prompted me to do this--which was undoubtedly the very best thing I could have done--for I was too much flurried to think.

"For some moments we were completely deluged, as I say, and all this time I held my breath, and clung to the bolt. When I could stand it no longer I raised myself upon my knees, still keeping hold with my hands, and thus got my head clear. Presently our little boat gave herself a shake, just as a dog does in coming out of the water, and thus rid herself, in some measure, of the seas. I was now trying to get the better of the stupor that had come over me, and to collect my senses so as to see what was to be done, when I felt somebody grasp my arm. It was my elder brother, and my heart leaped for joy, for I had made sure that he was overboard--but the next moment all this joy was turned into horror--for he put his mouth close to my ear, and screamed out the word 'Moskoe-ström!'

"No one will ever know what my feelings were at that moment. I shook from head to foot as if I had had the most violent fit of the ague. I knew what he meant by that one word well enough--I knew what he wished to make me understand. With the wind that now drove us on, we were bound for the whirl of the Ström, and nothing could save us!

"You perceive that in crossing the Ström channel, we always went a long way up above the whirl, even in the calmest weather, and then had to wait and watch carefully for the slack--but now we were driving right upon the pool itself, and in such a hurricane as this! 'To be sure,' I thought, 'we shall get there just about the slack--there is some little hope in that'--but in the next moment I cursed myself for being so great a fool as to dream of hope at all. I knew very well that we were doomed, had we been ten times a ninety-gun ship.

"By this time the first fury of the tempest had spent itself, or perhaps we did not feel it so much as we scudded before it; but at all events the seas, which at first had been kept down by the wind, and lay flat and frothing, now got up into absolute mountains. A singular change, too, had come over the heavens. Around in every direction it was still as black as pitch, but nearly overhead there burst out, all at once, a circular rift of clear sky--as clear as I ever saw--and of a deep bright blue--and through it there blazed forth the full moon with a luster that I never before knew her to wear. She lit up everything about us with the greatest distinctness--but, oh God, what a scene it was to light up!

"I now made one or two attempts to speak to my brother--but, in some manner which I could not understand, the din had so increased that I could not make him hear a single word, although I screamed at the top of my voice in his ear. Presently he shook his head, looking as pale as death, and held up one of his fingers, as if to say listen!

"At first I could not make out what he meant--but soon a hideous thought flashed upon me. I dragged my watch from its fob. It was not going. I glanced at its face by the moonlight, and then burst into tears as I flung it far away into the ocean. It had run down at seven o'clock! We were behind the time of the slack, and the whirl of the Ström was in full fury!

"When a boat is well built, properly trimmed, and not deep laden, the waves in a strong gale, when she is going large, seem always to slip from beneath her--which appears very strange to a landsman--and this is what is called riding, in sea phrase.

"Well, so far we had ridden the swells very cleverly; but presently a gigantic sea happened to take us right under the counter, and bore us with it as it rose--up--up--as if into the sky. I would not have believed that any wave could rise so high. And then down we came with a sweep, a slide, and a plunge, that made me feel sick and dizzy, as if I was falling from some lofty mountain-top in a dream. But while we were up I had thrown a quick glance around--and that one glance was all-sufficient. I saw our exact position in an instant. The Moskoe-ström whirlpool was about a quarter of a mile dead ahead--but no more like the everyday Moskoe-ström, than the whirl as you now see it is like a mill-race. If I had not known where we were, and what we had to expect, I should not have recognized the place at all. As it was, I involuntarily closed my eyes in horror. The lids clenched themselves together as if in a spasm.

"It could not have been more than two minutes afterwards until we suddenly felt the waves subside, and were enveloped in foam. The boat made a sharp half turn to larboard, and then shot off in its new direction like a thunderbolt. At the same moment the roaring noise of the water was completely drowned in a kind of shrill shriek--such a sound as you might imagine given out by the waterpipes of many thousand steam vessels, letting off their steam all together. We were now in the belt of surf that always surrounds the whirl; and I thought, of course, that another moment would plunge us into the abyss--down which we could only see indistinctly on account of the amazing velocity with which we were borne along. The boat did not seem to sink into the water at all, but to skim like an air-bubble upon the surface of the surge. Her starboard side was next the whirl, and on the larboard arose the world of ocean we had left. It stood like a huge writhing wall between us and the horizon.

"It may appear strange, but now, when we were in the very jaws of the gulf, I felt more composed than when we were only approaching it. Having made up my mind to hope no more, I got rid of a great deal of that terror which unmanned me at first. I suppose it was despair that strung my nerves.

"It may look like boasting--but what I tell you is truth--I began to reflect how magnificent a thing it was to die in such a manner, and how foolish it was in me to think of so paltry a consideration as my own individual life, in view of so wonderful a manifestation of God's power. I do believe that I blushed with shame when this idea crossed my mind. After a little while I became possessed with the keenest curiosity about the whirl itself. I positively felt a wish to explore its depths, even at the sacrifice I was going to make; and my principal grief was that I should never be able to tell my old companions on shore about the mysteries I should see. These, no doubt, were singular fancies to occupy a man's mind in such extremity--and I have often thought since, that the revolutions of the boat around the pool might have rendered me a little light-headed.

"There was another circumstance which tended to restore my self-possession; and this was the cessation of the wind, which could not reach us in our present situation--for, as you saw yourself, the belt of surf is considerably lower than the general bed of the ocean, and this latter now towered above us, a high, black, mountainous ridge. If you have never been at sea in a heavy gale, you can form no idea of the confusion of mind occasioned by the wind and spray together. They blind, deafen, and strangle you, and take away all power of action or reflection. But we were now, in a great measure, rid of these annoyances--just as death-condemned felons in prisons are allowed petty indulgences, forbidden them while their doom is yet uncertain.

"How often we made the circuit of the belt it is impossible to say. We careered round and round for perhaps an hour, flying rather than floating, getting gradually more and more into the middle of the surge, and then nearer and nearer to its horrible inner edge. All this time I had never let go of the ringbolt. My brother was at the stern, holding on to a small empty water-cask which had been securely lashed under the coop of the counter, and was the only thing on deck that had not been swept overboard when the gale first took us. As we approached the brink of the pit he let go his hold upon this, and made for the ring, from which, in the agony of his terror, he endeavored to force my hands, as it was not large enough to afford us both a secure grasp. I never felt deeper grief than when I saw him attempt this act--although I knew he was a madman when he did it--a raving maniac through sheer fright. I did not care, however, to contest the point with him. I knew it could make no difference whether either of us held on at all; so I let him have the bolt, and went astern to the cask. This there was no great difficulty in doing; for the smack flew round steadily enough, and upon an even keel--only swaying to and fro, with the immense sweeps and swelters of the whirl. Scarcely had I secured myself in my new position, when we gave a wild lurch to starboard, and rushed headlong into the abyss. I muttered a hurried prayer to God, and thought all was over.

"As I felt the sickening sweep of the descent, I had instinctively tightened my hold upon the barrel, and closed my eyes. For some seconds I dared not open them--while I expected instant destruction, and wondered that I was not already in my death-struggles with the water. But moment after moment elapsed. I still lived. The sense of falling had ceased; and the motion of the vessel seemed much as it had been before, while in the belt of foam, with the exception that she now lay more along. I took courage and looked once again upon the scene.

"Never shall I forget the sensations of awe, horror, and admiration with which I gazed about me. The boat appeared to be hanging, as if by magic, midway down, upon the interior surface of a funnel vast in circumference, prodigious in depth, and whose perfectly smooth sides might have been mistaken for ebony, but for the bewildering rapidity with which they spun around, and for the gleaming and ghastly radiance they shot forth, as the rays of the full moon, from that circular rift amid the clouds which I have already described, streamed in a flood of golden glory along the black walls, and far away down into the inmost recesses of the abyss.

"At first I was too much confused to observe anything accurately. The general burst of terrific grandeur was all that I beheld. When I recovered myself a little, however, my gaze fell instinctively downward. In this direction I was able to obtain an unobstructed view, from the manner in which the smack hung on the inclined surface of the pool. She was quite upon an even keel--that is to say, her deck lay in a plane parallel with that of the water--but this latter sloped at an angle of more than forty-five degrees, so that we seemed to be lying upon our beam-ends. I could not help observing, nevertheless, that I had scarcely more difficulty in maintaining my hold and footing in this situation, than if we had been upon a dead level; and this, I suppose, was owing to the speed at which we revolved.

"The rays of the moon seemed to search the very bottom of the profound gulf; but still I could make out nothing distinctly, on account of a thick mist in which everything there was enveloped, and over which there hung a magnificent rainbow, like that narrow and tottering bridge which Mussulmans say is the only pathway between Time and Eternity. This mist, or spray, was no doubt occasioned by the clashing of the great walls of the funnel, as they all met together at the bottom--but the yell that went up to the heavens from out of that mist, I dare not attempt to describe.

"Our first slide into the abyss itself, from the belt of foam above, had carried us to a great distance down the slope; but our farther descent was by no means proportionate. Round and round we swept--not with any uniform movement, but in dizzying swings and jerks, that sent us sometimes only a few hundred yards--sometimes nearly the complete circuit of the whirl. Our progress downward, at each revolution, was slow, but very perceptible.

"Looking about me upon the wide waste of liquid ebony on which we were thus borne, I perceived that our boat was not the only object in the embrace of the whirl. Both above and below us were visible fragments of vessels, large masses of building timber and trunks of trees, with many smaller articles, such as pieces of house furniture, broken boxes, barrels, and staves. I have already described the unnatural curiosity which had taken the place of my original terrors. It appeared to grow upon me as I drew nearer and nearer to my dreadful doom. I now began to watch, with a strange interest, the numerous things that floated in our company. I must have been delirious--for I even sought amusement in speculating upon the relative velocities of their several descents toward the foam below. 'This fir tree,' I found myself at one time saying, 'will certainly be the next thing that takes the awful plunge and disappears,'--and then I was disappointed to find that the wreck of a Dutch merchant ship overtook it and went down before. At length, after making several guesses of this nature, and being deceived in all--this fact--the fact of my invariable miscalculation, set me upon a train of reflection that made my limbs again tremble, and my heart beat heavily once more.

"It was not a new terror that thus affected me, but the dawn of a more exciting hope. This hope arose partly from memory, and partly from present observation. I called to mind the great variety of buoyant matter that strewed the coast of Lofoden, having been absorbed and then thrown forth by the Moskoe-ström. By far the greater number of the articles were shattered in the most extraordinary way--so chafed and roughened as to have the appearance of being stuck full of splinters--but then I distinctly recollected that there were some of them which were not disfigured at all. Now I could not account for this difference except by supposing that the roughened fragments were the only ones which had been completely absorbed--that the others had entered the whirl at so late a period of the tide, or, from some reason, had descended so slowly after entering, that they did not reach the bottom before the turn of the flood came, or of the ebb, as the case might be. I conceived it possible, in either instance, that they might thus be whirled up again to the level of the ocean, without undergoing the fate of those which had been drawn in more early or absorbed more rapidly. I made, also, three important observations. The first was, that as a general rule, the larger the bodies were, the more rapid their descent; the second, that, between two masses of equal extent, the one spherical, and the other of any other shape, the superiority in speed of descent was with the sphere; the third, that, between two masses of equal size, the one cylindrical, and the other of any other shape, the cylinder was absorbed the more slowly. Since my escape, I have had several conversations on this subject with an old schoolmaster of the district; and it was from him that I learned the use of the words 'cylinder' and 'sphere.' He explained to me--although I have forgotten the explanation--how what I observed was, in fact, the natural consequence of the forms of the floating fragments, and showed me how it happened that a cylinder, swimming in a vortex, offered more resistance to its suction, and was drawn in with greater difficulty, than an equally bulky body, of any form whatever.

"There was one startling circumstance which went a great way in enforcing these observations, and rendering me anxious to turn them to account, and this was that, at every revolution, we passed something like a barrel, or else the yard or the mast of a vessel, while many of these things, which had been on our level when I first opened my eyes upon the wonders of the whirlpool, were now high up above us, and seemed to have moved but little from their original station.

"I no longer hesitated what to do. I resolved to lash myself securely to the water-cask upon which I now held, to cut it loose from the counter, and to throw myself with it into the water. I attracted my brother's attention by signs, pointed to the floating barrels that came near us, and did everything in my power to make him understand what I was about to do. I thought at length that he comprehended my design--but, whether this was the case or not, he shook his head despairingly, and refused to move from his station by the ringbolt. It was impossible to reach him; the emergency admitted of no delay; and so, with a bitter struggle, I resigned him to his fate, fastened myself to the cask by means of the lashings which secured it to the counter, and precipitated myself with it into the sea, without another moment's hesitation.

"The result was precisely what I had hoped it might be. As it is myself who now tell you this tale--as you see that I did escape--and as you are already in possession of the mode in which this escape was effected, and must therefore anticipate all that I have farther to say-I will bring my story quickly to conclusion. It might have been an hour, or thereabout, after my quitting the smack, when, having descended to a vast distance beneath me, it made three or four wild gyrations in rapid succession, and, bearing my loved brother with it, plunged headlong, at once and forever, into the chaos of foam below. The barrel to which I was attached sunk very little farther than half the distance between the bottom of the gulf and the spot at which I leaped overboard, before a great change took place in the character of the whirlpool. The slope of the sides of the vast funnel became momently less and less steep. The gyrations of the whirl grew, gradually, less and less violent. By degrees, the froth and the rainbow disappeared, and the bottom of the gulf seemed slowly to uprise. The sky was clear, the winds had gone down, and the full moon was setting radiantly in the west, when I found myself on the surface of the ocean, in full view of the shores of Lofoden, and above the spot where the pool of the Moskoe-ström had been. It was the hour of the slack, but the sea still heaved in mountainous waves from the effects of the hurricane. I was borne violently into the channel of the Ström, and in a few minutes was hurried down the coast into the 'grounds' of the fishermen. A boat picked me up--exhausted from fatigue--and (now that the danger was removed) speechless from the memory of its horror. Those who drew me on board were my old mates and daily companions, but they knew me no more than they would have known a traveler from the spirit-land. My hair, which had been raven-black the day before, was as white as you see it now. They say, too, that the whole expression of my countenance had changed. I told them my story--they did not believe it. I now tell it to you--and I can scarcely expect you to put more faith in it than did the merry fishermen of Lofoden."

Briefly relate in your own words the hero's story of his experience in the Maelström.

From this story what do you think of Poe's powers of imagination and description?

    "circumstantial"
    "bleak-looking"
    "double-reefed"
    "gyrating"
    "prodigious"
    "impetuosity"
    "promontory"
    "encompassed"
    "inevitably"
    "deplorably desolate"
    "gleaming spray"
    "boisterous rapidity"
    "fruitless struggles"
    "desperate speculation"
    "terrific grandeur"
    "frenzied convulsions"
    "precipitous descents"
    "sufficiently plausible"
    "belt of foam"
    "collision of waves"
    "flood of golden glory"
    "wild waste of liquid ebony"
    "chaos of foam"
    "the gyrations of the whirl"

    Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
    Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,--
    While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
    As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
    "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door:
            Only this and nothing more."

    Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
    And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
    Eagerly I wished the morrow;--vainly I had sought to borrow
    From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore,
    For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore:
            Nameless here for evermore.

    And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
    Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
    So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
    "'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door,
    Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door:
            This it is and nothing more."

    Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
    "Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
    But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
    And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
    That I scarce was sure I heard you"--here I opened wide the door:--
            Darkness there and nothing more.

    Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
    Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
    But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
    And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"
    This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore":
            Merely this and nothing more.

    Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
    Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
    "Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice;
    Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore;
    Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore:
            'Tis the wind and nothing more."

    Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
    In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore.
    Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
    But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door,
    Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door:
            Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

    Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling
    By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,--
    "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,
    Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore:
    Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
            Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

    Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
    Though its answer little meaning--little relevancy bore;
    For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
    Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door,
    Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
            With such name as "Nevermore."

    But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
    That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour,
    Nothing further then he uttered, not a feather then he fluttered,
    Till I scarcely more than muttered,--"Other friends have flown before;
    On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before."
            Then the bird said, "Nevermore."

    Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
    "Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store,
    Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
    Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore:
    Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
            Of 'Never--nevermore.'"

    But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
    Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
    Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
    Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of 'yore,
    What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
            Meant in croaking "Nevermore."

    This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
    To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
    This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
    On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
    But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er
            She shall press,' ah, nevermore!

    Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
    Swung by seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
    "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee by these angels he hath sent thee
    Respite--respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
    Quaff, oh, quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!"
            Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

    "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! prophet still, if bird or devil!
    Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
    Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted
    On this home by Horror haunted--tell me truly, I implore:
    Is there, is there balm in Gilead?--tell me--tell me, I implore!"
            Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

    "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! prophet still, if bird or devil!
    By that Heaven that bends above us, by that God we both adore,
    Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
    It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore:
    Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore!"
            Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

    "Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting:
    "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
    Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
    Leave my loneliness unbroken! quit the bust above my door!
    Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
            Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

    And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
    On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
    And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
    And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor:
    And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
            Shall be lifted--nevermore!

    "ghost"
    "surcease"
    "entreating"
    "obeisance"
    "craven"
    "ominous"
    "censer"
    "seraphim"
    "nepenthe"
    "dying ember"
    "fantastic terrors"
    "saintly days"
    "tufted floor"
    "pallid bust"
    "radiant maiden"
    "dirges of his Hope"
    "bird of yore"
    "balm in Gilead"

In "The Courtship of Miles Standish" Longfellow has made us acquainted with his ancestors, John Alden and Priscilla Mullens, passengers of the Mayflower. Of such ancestry Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, February 27, 1807. His birthplace was at that time a beautiful and busy town, a forest city with miles of sea beach and a port where merchant vessels from the West Indies exchanged sugar and rum for the products of the forest and the fisheries of Maine.

We are told that he was a boy "true, high-minded and noble"; "active, eager, often impatient"; "handsome in appearance" and the "sunlight of the home." His conduct at school was "very correct and amiable"--he read much and was always studious and thoughtful. The first book which fascinated his imagination was Irving's "Sketch-Book." Indeed there is a resemblance between the gentle Irving and the gentle Longfellow which is expressed in the prose of one and the poetry of the other.

Longfellow's education was obtained in Portland and at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, where he had for classmates several youths who afterward became famous, Nathaniel Hawthorne, J. S. C. Abbott, and Franklin Pierce. Upon Longfellow's graduation, the trustees of the college, having decided to establish a chair of modern languages, proposed that this young graduate, of scholarly and literary tastes, should fit himself for this position. Three years, therefore, he spent in delightful study and travel in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany. Here was laid the foundation for his scholarship, and, as in Irving on his first European trip, there was kindled that passion for romantic lore which followed him through life and which gave color and direction to much of his work. He mastered the language of each country visited in a remarkably short time, and many of the choicer poems found in these languages he has given to us in the English.

After five years at Bowdoin, Longfellow was invited in 1834 to the chair of modern languages in Harvard College. Again he was given an opportunity to prepare himself by a year of study abroad. In 1836 he began his active work at Harvard and took up his residence in the historic Craigie House, overlooking the Charles River--a house in which Washington had been quartered for some months when he came to Cambridge in 1775 to take command of the Continental forces. Longfellow was thenceforth one of the most prominent members of that group of men including Sumner, Hawthorne, Agassiz, Lowell, and Holmes, who gave distinction to the Boston and Cambridge of earlier days.

For twenty years Longfellow filled the professorship of modern languages at Harvard and was one of the best beloved instructors at the university. He resigned that he might devote himself to writing and was succeeded at Harvard by James Russell Lowell.

Though Longfellow wrote in prose and is the author of many shorter poems, his reputation is mainly based upon his longer poems. Longfellow was a great admirer of the German poet, Goethe, to whose "Hermann and Dorothea" we are indebted for much of the form and no doubt some of the story of Evangeline. The story of Acadie was told first to Hawthorne by a friend of both authors; but the tale was hardly dark enough to suit the fancy of Hawthorne, whereas to Longfellow it seemed to have in it precisely those elements of faith and devotion that make the widest appeal. In a collection of poems published in 1850 appeared the poem of Longfellow's highest patriotic reach, the allegory of "The Building of the Ship." A friend of Lincoln recited this poem to him, and when the lines of its closing apostrophe to the ship of state were reached, with tears in his eyes the president said, "It is a great gift to be able to stir men like that." In his poem, "Hiawatha," Longfellow chose the metre of the Finnish epic "Kalevala," which is peculiarly suited to the tales of primitive people. The worthiest and most picturesque traditions of the American Indian are woven into a connected story whose charm is greatly heightened by the novel melody of the verse.

In 1861 the happiness of Longfellow's home life was broken by the death of his wife, who was fatally burned. He turned from this sorrow and the anxieties of the Civil War to the more mechanical work of writing tales and making translations. The "Tales of a Wayside Inn" appeared in 1863, and seven years later he published his translation of Dante's "Divine Comedy."

On Longfellow's seventy-second birthday the children of Cambridge presented him with a chair made from the wood of the "Village Blacksmith's" chestnut tree. He died March 24, 1882, aged seventy-five. In 1884 a bust of him was placed in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey--England's gracious tribute to the renown of America's best loved poet.

    This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
    Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
    Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
    Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
    Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
    Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

    This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it
    Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman?
    Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers,--
    Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands,
    Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven?
    Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed!
    Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October
    Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o'er the ocean.
    Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand-Pré.

    Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient,
    Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman's devotion,
    List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest;
    List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy.

    In the Acadian land, on the shores of the Basin of Minas,
    Distant, secluded, still, the little village of Grand-Pré
    Lay in the fruitful valley. Vast meadows stretched to the eastward,
    Giving the village its name, and pasture to flocks without number.
    Dikes, that the hands of the farmers had raised with labor incessant,
    Shut out the turbulent tides; but at stated seasons the floodgates
    Opened and welcomed the sea to wander at will o'er the meadows.
    West and south there were fields of flax, and orchards and cornfields
    Spreading afar and unfenced o'er the plain; and away to the northward
    Blomidon rose, and the forests old, and aloft on the mountains
    Sea-fogs pitched their tents, and mists from the mighty Atlantic
    Looked on the happy valley, but ne'er from their station descended.
    There, in the midst of its farms, reposed the Acadian village.
    Strongly built were the houses, with frames of oak and of chestnut,
    Such as the peasants of Normandy built in the reign of the Henries.
    Thatched were the roofs, with dormer-windows; and gables projecting
    Over the basement below protected and shaded the doorway.
    There in the tranquil evenings of summer, when brightly the sunset
    Lighted the village street, and gilded the vanes on the chimneys,
    Matrons and maidens sat in snow-white caps and in kirtles
    Scarlet and blue and green, with distaffs spinning the golden
    Flax for the gossiping looms, whose noisy shuttles within doors
    Mingled their sound with the whir of the wheels and the songs of the maidens.
    Solemnly down the street came the parish priest, and the children
    Paused in their play to kiss the hand he extended to bless them.
    Reverend walked he among them; and up rose matrons and maidens,
    Hailing his slow approach with words of affectionate welcome.
    Then came the laborers home from the field, and serenely the sun sank
    Down to his rest, and twilight prevailed. Anon from the belfry
    Softly the Angelus sounded, and over the roofs of the village
    Columns of pale blue smoke, like clouds of incense ascending,
    Rose from a hundred hearths, the homes of peace and contentment.
    Thus dwelt together in love these simple Acadian farmers,--
    Dwelt in the love of God and of man. Alike were they free from
    Fear, that reigns with the tyrant, and envy, the vice of republics.
    Neither locks had they to their doors, nor, bars to their windows;
    But their dwellings were open as day and the hearts of the owners;
    There the richest was poor, and the poorest lived in abundance.

    Somewhat apart from the village, and nearer the Basin of Minas,
    Benedict Bellefontaine, the wealthiest farmer of Grand-Pré,
    Dwelt on his goodly acres; and with him, directing his household,
    Gentle Evangeline lived, his child, and the pride of the village.
    Stalworth and stately in form was the man of seventy winters;
    Hearty and hale was he, an oak that is covered with snow-flakes;
    White as the snow were his locks, and his cheeks as brown as the oak-leaves.
    Fair was she to behold, that maiden of seventeen summers;
    Black were her eyes as the berry that grows on the thorn by the wayside,
    Black, yet how softly they gleamed beneath the brown shade of her tresses!
    Sweet was her breath as the breath of kine that feed in the meadows.
    When in the harvest heat she bore to the reapers at noontide
    Flagons of home-brewed ale, ah! fair in sooth was the maiden.
    Fairer was she when, on Sunday morn, while the bell from its turret
    Sprinkled with holy sounds the air, as the priest with his hyssop
    Sprinkles the congregation, and scatters blessings upon them,
    Down the long street she passed, with her chaplet of beads and her missal,
    Wearing her Norman cap and her kirtle of blue, and the ear-rings
    Brought in the olden time from France, and since, as an heir-loom,
    Handed down from mother to child, through long generations.
    But a celestial brightness--a more ethereal beauty--
    Shone on her face and encircled her form, when, after confession,
    Homeward serenely she walked with God's benediction upon her.
    When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.

    Firmly builded with rafters of oak, the house of the farmer
    Stood on the side of a hill commanding the sea; and a shady
    Sycamore grew by the door, with a woodbine wreathing around it.
    Rudely carved was the porch, with seats beneath; and a footpath
    Led through an orchard wide, and disappeared in the meadow.
    Under the sycamore-tree were hives overhung by a penthouse,
    Such as the traveler sees in regions remote by the roadside,
    Built o'er a box for the poor, or the blessed image of Mary.
    Farther down, on the slope of the hill, was the well with its moss-grown
    Bucket, fastened with iron, and near it a trough for the horses.
    Shielding the house from storms, on the north, were the barns and the farm-yard;
    There stood the broad-wheeled wains and the antique ploughs and the harrows;
    There were the folds for the sheep; and there, in his feathered seraglio,
    Strutted the lordly turkey, and crowed the cock, with the self-same
    Voice that in ages of old had startled the penitent Peter.
    Bursting with hay were the barns, themselves a village. In each one
    Far o'er the gable projected a roof of thatch; and a staircase,
    Under the sheltering eaves, led up to the odorous cornloft.
    There too the dove-cot stood, with its meek and innocent inmates
    Murmuring ever of love; while above in the variant breezes
    Numberless noisy weathercocks rattled and sang of mutation.

    Thus, at peace with God and the world, the farmer of Grand-Pré
    Lived on his sunny farm, and Evangeline governed his house-hold.
    Many a youth, as he knelt in the church and opened his missal,
    Fixed his eyes upon her as the saint of his deepest devotion;
    Happy was he who might touch her hand or the hem of her garment!
    Many a suitor came to her door, by the darkness befriended,
    And, as he knocked and waited to hear the sound of her foot-steps,
    Knew not which beat the louder, his heart or the knocker of iron;
    Or, at the joyous feast of the Patron Saint of the village,
    Bolder grew, and pressed her hand in the dance as he whispered
    Hurried words of love, that seemed a part of the music.
    But among all who came young Gabriel only was welcome;
    Gabriel Lajeunesse, the son of Basil the blacksmith,
    Who was a mighty man in the village, and honored of all men;
    For since the birth of time, throughout all ages and nations,
    Has the craft of the smith been held in repute by the people.
    Basil was Benedict's friend--Their children from earliest child-hood
    Grew up together as brother and sister; and Father Felician,
    Priest and pedagogue both in the village, had taught them their letters
    Out of the selfsame book, with the hymns of the church and the plain-song.
    But when the hymn was sung, and the daily lesson completed,
    Swiftly they hurried away to the forge of Basil the blacksmith.
    There at the door they stood, with wondering eyes to behold him
    Take in his leathern lap the hoof of the horse as a plaything,
    Nailing the shoe in its place; while near him the tire of the cartwheel
    Lay like a fiery snake, coiled round in a circle of cinders.
    Oft on autumnal eyes, when without in the gathering darkness
    Bursting with light seemed the smithy, through every cranny and crevice,
    Warm by the forge within they watched the laboring bellows,
    And as its panting ceased, and the sparks expired in the ashes,
    Merrily laughed, and said they were nuns going into the chapel.
    Oft on sledges in winter, as swift as the swoop of the eagle,
    Down the hillside bounding, they glided away o'er the meadow.
    Oft in the barns they climbed to the populous nests on the rafters,
    Seeking with eager eyes that wondrous stone, which the swallow
    Brings from the shore of the sea to restore the sight of its fledglings;
    Lucky was he who found that stone in the nest of the swallow!
    Thus passed a few swift years, and they no longer were children.
    He was a valiant youth, and his face, like the face of the morning,
    Gladdened the earth with its light, and ripened thought into action.
    She was a woman now, with the heart and hopes of a woman.
    "Sunshine of Saint Eulalie" was she called; for that was the sunshine
    Which, as the farmers believed, would load their orchards with apples;
    She too would bring to her husband's house delight and abundance,
    Filling it full of love and the ruddy faces of children.

Now had the season returned, when the nights grow colder and longer,
    And the retreating sun the sign of the Scorpion enters.
    Birds of passage sailed through the leaden air, from the icebound,
    Desolate northern bays to the shores of tropical islands.
    Harvests were gathered in; and wild with the winds of September
    Wrestled the trees of the forest, as Jacob of old with the angel.
    All the signs foretold a winter long and inclement.
    Bees, with prophetic instinct of want, had hoarded their honey
    Till the hives overflowed; and the Indian hunters asserted
    Cold would the winter be, for thick was the fur of the foxes.
    Such was the advent of autumn. Then followed that beautiful season,
    Called by the pious Acadian peasants the Summer of All-Saints!
    Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape
    Lay as if new-created in all the freshness of childhood.
    Peace seemed to reign upon earth, and the restless heart of the ocean
    Was for a moment consoled. All sounds were in harmony blended.
    Voices of children at play, the crowing of cocks in the farmyards,
    Whir of wings in the drowsy air, and the cooing of pigeons,
    All were subdued and low as the murmurs of love, and the great sun
    Looked with the eye of love through the golden vapors around him;
    While arrayed in its robes of russet and scarlet and yellow,
    Bright with the sheen of the dew, each glittering tree of the forest
    Flashed like the plane-tree the Persian adorned with mantles and jewels.

    Now recommenced the reign of rest and affection and stillness.
    Day with its burden and heat had departed, and twilight descending
    Brought back the evening star to the sky, and the herds to the homestead.
    Pawing the ground they came, and resting their necks on each other,
    And with their nostrils distended inhaling the freshness of evening.
    Foremost, bearing the bell, Evangeline's beautiful heifer,
    Proud of her snow-white hide, and the ribbon that waved from her collar,
    Quietly paced and slow, as if conscious of human affection.
    Then came the shepherd back with his bleating flocks from the seaside,
    Where was their favorite pasture. Behind them followed the watch-dog,
    Patient, full of importance, and grand in the pride of his instinct,
    Walking from side to side with a lordly air, and superbly
    Waving his bushy tail, and urging forward the stragglers;
    Regent of flocks was he when the shepherd slept; their protector,
    When from the forest at night, through the starry silence, the wolves howled.
    Late, with the rising moon, returned the wains from the marshes,
    Laden with briny hay, that filled the air with its odor.
    Cheerily neighed the steeds, with dew on their manes and their fetlocks,
    While aloft on their shoulders the wooden and ponderous saddles,
    Painted with brilliant dyes, and adorned with tassels of crimson
    Nodded in bright array, like hollyhocks heavy with blossoms.
    Patiently stood the cows meanwhile, and yielded their udders
    Unto the milkmaid's hand; whilst loud and in regular cadence
    Into the sounding pails the foaming streamlets descended.
    Lowing of cattle and peals of laughter were heard in the farmyard,
    Echoed back by the barns. Anon they sank into stillness;
    Heavily closed, with a jarring sound, the valves of the barn doors,
    Battled the wooden bars, and all for a season was silent.

    In-doors, warm by the wide-mouthed fireplace, idly the farmer
    Sat in his elbow-chair, and watched how the flames and the smoke-wreaths
    Struggled together like foes in a burning city. Behind him,
    Nodding and mocking along the wall with gestures fantastic,
    Darted his own huge shadow, and vanished away into darkness.
    Faces, clumsily carved in oak, on the back of his arm-chair
    Laughed in the nickering light, and the pewter plates on the dresser
    Caught and reflected the flame, as shields of armies the sunshine.
    Fragments of song the old man sang, and carols of Christmas,
    Such as at home, in the olden time, his fathers before him
    Sang in their Norman orchards and bright Burgundian vineyards.
    Close at her father's side was the gentle Evangeline seated,
    Spinning flax for the loom that stood in the corner behind her.
    Silent awhile were its treadles, at rest was its diligent shuttle,
    While the monotonous drone of the wheel, like the drone of a bagpipe,
    Followed the old man's song, and united the fragments together.
    As in a church, when the chant of the choir at intervals ceases,
    Footfalls are heard in the aisles, or words of the priest at the altar,
    So, in each pause of the song, with measured motion the clock clicked.

    Thus as they sat, there were footsteps heard, and, suddenly lifted,
    Sounded the wooden latch, and the door swung back on its hinges.
    Benedict knew by the hob-nailed shoes it was Basil the blacksmith,
    And by her beating heart Evangeline knew who was with him.
    "Welcome!" the farmer exclaimed, as their footsteps paused on the threshold,
    "Welcome, Basil, my friend! Come, take thy place on the settle
    Close by the chimney-side, which is always empty without thee;
    Take from the shelf overhead thy pipe and the box of tobacco;
    Never so much thyself art thou as when, through the curling
    Smoke of the pipe or the forge, thy friendly and jovial face gleams
    Round and red as the harvest moon through the mist of the marshes."
    Then, with a smile of content, thus answered Basil the blacksmith,
    Taking with easy air the accustomed seat by the fireside:--
    "Benedict Bellefontaine, thou hast ever thy jest and thy ballad!
    Ever in cheerfullest mood art thou, when others are filled with
    Gloomy forebodings of ill, and see only ruin before them.
    Happy art thou, as if every day thou hadst packed up a horseshoe."
    Pausing a moment, to take the pipe that Evangeline brought him,
    And with a coal from the embers had lighted, he slowly continued:--
    "Four days now are passed since the English ships at their anchors
    Ride in the Gaspereau's mouth, with their cannon pointed against us.
    What their design may be is unknown; but all are commanded
    On the morrow to meet in the church, where his Majesty's mandate
    Will be proclaimed as law in the land. Alas! in the meantime
    Many surmises of evil alarm the hearts of the people."
    Then made answer the farmer:--"Perhaps some friendlier purpose
      Brings these ships to our shores. Perhaps the harvests in England
    By the untimely rains or untimelier heat have been blighted,
    And from our bursting barns they would feed their cattle and children."
    "Not so thinketh the folk in the village," said warmly the blacksmith,
    Shaking his head as in doubt; then, heaving a sigh, he continued:--
    "Louisburg is not forgotten, nor Beau Séjour, nor Port Royal.
    Many already have fled to the forest, and lurk on its outskirts,
    Waiting with anxious hearts the dubious fate of tomorrow.
    Arms have been taken from us, and warlike weapons of all kinds;
    Nothing is left but the blacksmith's sledge and the scythe of the mower."
    Then with a pleasant smile made answer the jovial farmer:--
    "Safer are we unarmed, in the midst of our flocks and our cornfields,
    Safer within these peaceful dikes besieged by the ocean,
    Than were our fathers in forts, besieged by the enemy's cannon.
    Fear no evil, my friend, and tonight may no shadow of sorrow
    Fall on this house and hearth; for this is the night of the contract.
    Built are the house and the barn. The merry lads of the village
    Strongly have built them and well; and, breaking the glebe round about them,
    Filled the barn with hay, and the house with food for a twelvemonth.
    Bené Leblanc will be here anon, with his papers and inkhorn.
    Shall we not then be glad, and rejoice in the joy of our children?"
    As apart by the window she stood, with her hand in her lover's,
    Blushing Evangeline heard the words that her father had spoken,
    And, as they died on his lips, the worthy notary entered.

    Bent like a laboring oar, that toils in the surf of the ocean,
    Bent, but not broken, by age was the form of the notary public;
    Shocks of yellow hair, like the silken floss of the maize, hung
    Over his shoulders; his forehead was high; and glasses with horn bows
    Sat astride on his nose, with a look of wisdom supernal.
    Father of twenty children was he, and more than a hundred
    Children's children rode on his knee, and heard his great watch tick.
    Four long years in the times of the war had he languished a captive,
    Suffering much in an old French fort as the friend of the English.
    Now, though warier grown, without all guile or suspicion,
    Ripe in wisdom was he, but patient, and simple, and childlike.
    He was beloved by all, and most of all by the children;
    For he told them tales of the Loup-garou in the forest,
    And of the goblin that came in the night to water the horses,
    And of the white Létiche, the ghost of a child who unchristened
    Died, and was doomed to haunt unseen the chambers of children;
    And how on Christmas eve the oxen talked in the stable,
    And how the fever was cured by a spider shut up in a nutshell,
    And of the marvelous powers of four-leaved clover and horseshoes,
    With whatsoever else was writ in the lore of the village.
    Then up rose from his seat by the fireside Basil the blacksmith,
    Knocked from his pipe the ashes, and slowly extending his right hand,
    "Father Leblanc," he exclaimed, "thou hast heard the talk in the village,
    And, perchance, canst tell us some news of these ships and their errand."
    Then with modest demeanor made answer the notary public,--
    "Gossip enough have I heard, in sooth, yet am never the wiser;
    And what their errand may be I know not better than others.
    Yet am I not of those who imagine some evil intention
    Brings them here, for we are at peace; and why then molest us?"
    "God's name!" shouted the hasty and somewhat irascible blacksmith;
    "Must we in all things look for the how, and the why, and the wherefore?
    Daily injustice is done, and might is the right of the strongest!"
    But, without heeding his warmth, continued the notary public,--
    "Man is unjust, but God is just; and finally justice
    Triumphs; and well I remember a story, that often consoled me,
    When as a captive I lay in the old French fort at Port Royal."
    This was the old man's favorite tale, and he loved to repeat it
    When his neighbors complained that any injustice was done them.
    "Once in an ancient city, whose name I no longer remember,
    Raised aloft on a column, a brazen statue of Justice
    Stood in the public square, upholding the scales in its left hand,
    And in its right a sword, as an emblem that justice presided
    Over the laws of the land, and the hearts and homes of the people.
    Even the birds had built their nests in the scales of the balance,
    Having no fear of the sword that flashed in the sunshine above them.
    But in the course of time the laws of the land were corrupted;
    Might took the place of right, and the weak were oppressed, and the mighty
    Ruled with an iron rod. Then it chanced in a nobleman's palace
    That a necklace of pearls was lost, and ere long a suspicion
    Fell on an orphan girl who lived as maid in the household.
    She, after form of trial condemned to die on the scaffold,
    Patiently met her doom at the foot of the statue of Justice.
    As to her Father in heaven her innocent spirit ascended,
    Lo! o'er the city a tempest rose; and the bolts of the thunder
    Smote the statue of bronze, and hurled in wrath from its left hand
    Down on the pavement below the clattering scales of the balance,
    And in the hollow thereof was found the nest of a magpie,
    Into whose clay-built walls the necklace of pearls was inwoven."
    Silenced, but not convinced, when the story was ended, the blacksmith
    Stood like a man who fain would speak, but findeth no language;
    All his thoughts were congealed into lines on his face, as the vapors
    Freeze in fantastic shapes on the window-panes in the winter.

    Then Evangeline lighted the Brazen lamp on the table,
    Filled, till it overflowed, the pewter tankard with home-brewed
    Nut-brown ale, that was famed for its strength in the village of Grand-Pré;
    While from his pocket the notary drew his papers and inkhorn,
    Wrote with a steady hand the date and the age of the parties,
    Naming the dower of the bride in flocks of sheep and in cattle.
    Orderly all things proceeded, and duly and well were completed,
    And the great seal of the law was set like a sun on the margin.
    Then from his leathern pouch the farmer threw on the table
    Three times the old man's fee in solid pieces of silver;
    And the notary rising, and blessing the bride and the bridegroom,
    Lifted aloft the tankard of ale and drank to their welfare.
    Wiping the foam from, his lip, he solemnly bowed and departed,
    While in silence the others sat and mused by the fireside,
    Till Evangeline brought the draught-board out of its corner.
    Soon was the game begun. In friendly contention the old men
    Laughed at each lucky hit, or unsuccessful manoeuvre,
    Laughed when a man was crowned, or a breach was made in the king-row.
    Meanwhile apart, in the twilight gloom of a window's embrasure,
    Sat the lovers and whispered together, beholding the moon rise
    Over the pallid sea and the silvery mist of the meadows.
    Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
    Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.

    Thus was the evening passed. Anon the bell from the belfry
    Rang out the hour of nine, the village curfew, and straightway
    Rose the guests and departed; and silence reigned in the household.
    Many a farewell word and sweet good-night on the door-step
    Lingered long in Evangeline's heart, and filled it with gladness.
    Carefully then were covered the embers that glowed on the hearth-stone,
    And on the o

PAUL REVERE'S RIDE,	Henry W. Longfellow
THE LEAP OF ROUSHAN BEG,	Henry W. Longfellow
THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE AT BALAKLAVA,	Alfred, Lord Tennyson
THE DIVERTING HISTORY OF JOHN GILPIN,	William Cowper
HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX,	Robert Browning
INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP,	Robert Browning
HERVÉ RIEL,	Robert Browning

THE BUGLE SONG,	Alfred, Lord Tennyson
THE BROOK,	Alfred, Lord Tennyson
SONG OF THE CHATTAHOOCHEE,	Sidney Lanier
THE CATARACT OF LODORE,	Robert Southey
THE BELLS,	Edgar Allan Poe
ANNABEL LEE,	Edgar Allan Poe
OPPORTUNITY,	Edward Rowland Sil

THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB,	Lord Byron
THE EVE BEFORE WATERLOO,	Lord Byron
SONG OF THE GREEK BARD,	Lord Byron
MARCO BOZZARIS,	Fitz-Greene Halleck
THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE,	Charles Wolfe
ABSALOM,	Nathaniel Parker Wills
LOCHINVAR,	Sir Walter Scott
PARTING OF MARMION AND DOUGLAS,	Sir Walter Scott
FOR A' THAT AND A' THAT,	Robert Burns

MERCY,	The Merchant of Venice
THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN,	As You Like It
POLONIUS'S ADVICE,	Hamlet
MAN,	Hamlet
HAMLET'S SOLILOQUY,	Hamlet
REPUTATION,	Othello
WOLSEY AND CROMWELL,	King Henry VIII
CASSIO AND IAGO,	Othell

REGULUS BEFORE THE ROMAN SENATE,	Epes Sargent
THE RETURN OF REGULUS,	Elijah Kellogg
SPARTACUS TO THE GLADIATORS,	Elijah Kellogg
MERIT BEFORE BIRTH,	Sallust
RIENZI'S ADDRESS TO THE ROMANS,	Mary Russell Mitford
EMMET'S VINDICATION	Robert Emmet
KING PHILLIP TO THE WHITE SETTLER,	Edward Everett
THE CAPTURE OF QUEBEC,	Francis Parkman
ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES,	Edmund Burke
THE WAY TO WEALTH,	Benjamin Franklin
SPEECH ON A RESOLUTION TO PUT VIRGINIA INTO A STATE OF DEFENCE,	Patrick Henry
THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY,	Edward Everett Hale
LOVE OF COUNTRY,	Sir Walter Scott
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE,	Charles Phillips
THE TRUE GRANDEUR OF NATIONS,	Charles Sumner
THE EVILS OF WAR,	Henry Clay
PEACE, THE POLICY OF A NATION,	John C. Calhoun
THE FIRST SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND,	Daniel Webster
SUPPOSED SPEECH OF JOHN ADAMS,	Daniel Webster
SOUTH CAROLINA AND THE UNION,	Robert Hayne
REPLY TO HAYNE,	Daniel Webster
DEDICATION SPEECH AT GETTYSBURG,	Abraham Lincoln
LINCOLN, THE GREAT COMMONER,	Edwin Markham
O CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN,	Walt Whitman
FAREWELL ADDRESS,	George Washington
THE MEMORY OF OUR FATHERS,	Henry Ward Beecher
THE AMERICAN FLAG,	J. R. Drake
WARREN'S ADDRESS AT THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL,	John Pierpont
COLUMBUS,	Joaquin Miller
RECESSIONAL--A VICTORIAN ODE,	Rudyard Kipling
A DEFINITION OF A GENTLEMAN,	Cardinal Newman

TO A WATERFOWL,	William Cullen Bryant
THE SKYLARK,	James Hogg
TO A SKYLARK,	Percy Bysshe Shelley
THE CLOUD,	Percy Bysshe Shelley
APOSTROPHE TO THE OCEAN,	Lord Byron