Toll ye, my Second! toll !

Fling high the Hambeaux’ light; And sing the hymn for a parted soul,

Beneath the silent night! The wreath upon his head,

The cross upon his breast, Let the prayer be said, and the tear be shed:

So-take him to his rest!

.

Call ye, my Whole, ay, call!

The lord of lute and lay ;
And let him greet the sable pall

With a noble song to-day;
Go, call him by his name;

No fitter hand may crave
To light the flame of a soldier's fame,

On the turf of a soldier's grave.

HOOD.

THE ELM TREE.-A DREAM IN THE WOODS.

“And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees !”—As you Like it.

ᏢᎪᎡᎢ .

'Twas in a shady Avenue,
Where lofty Elms abound

And from a Tree

There came to me
A sad and solemn sound,
That sometimes murmur'd overhead,

And sometimes underground.

Amongst the leaves it seemed to sigh,

Amid the boughs to moan ;
It mutter'd in the stem, and then

The roots took up the tone ;
As if beneath the dewy grass

The dead began to groan.

No breeze there was to stir the leaves;

No bolts that tempests launch,
To rend the trunk or rugged bark ;

No gale to bend the branch ;
No quake of earth to heave the roots,
That stood so stiff and staunch.

And sometimes underground'Twas in a shady Avenue,

Where lofty Elms abound.

From poplar, pine, and drooping birch, And fragrant linden trees;

No living sound

E'er hovers round,
Unless the vagrant breeze,
The music of the merry bird,

Or hum of busy bees.

But busy bees forsake the Elm

That bears no bloom aloftThe finch was in the hawthorn-bush,

The blackbird in the croft ; And among the firs the brooding dove,

That else might murmur soft.

Yet still I heard that solemn sound,

And sad it was to boot,
From ev'ry overhanging bough,

And each minuter shoot;
From rugged trunk and mossy rind,

And from the twisted root.

From these,-a melancholy moan;

From those,-a dreary sigh ;
As if the boughs were wintry bare,

And wild winds sweeping by,–
Whereas the smallest fleecy cloud

Was steadfast in the sky.

No sign or touch of stirring air

Could either sense observe-
The zephyr had not breath enough

The thistle-down to swerve, Or force the filmy gossamers

To take another curve.

In still and silent slumber hush'd

All Nature seemed to be: From heaven above, or earth beneath,

No whisper came to meExcept the solemn sound and sad

From that MYSTERIOUS TREE!

A hollow, hollow, hollow sound,

As is that dreamy roar
When distant billows boil and bound

Along a shingly shore-
But the ocean brim was far aloof,

A hundred miles or more.

No murmur of the gusty sea,

No tumult of the beach, However they may foam and fret,

The bounded sense could reachMethought the trees in mystic tongue

Were talking each to each !

Mayhap, rehearsing ancient tales
Of greenwood love or guilt,

Of whisper'd vows

Beneath their boughs ; Or blood obscurely spilt; Or of that near-hand Mansion House

A royal Tudor built.

With wary eyes, and ears alert,

As one who walks afraid,
I wander'd down the dappled path