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231

Pisa's patron saint hath hallowed to himself the joyful day,

Never on the thronged Rialto showed the Carnival more gay.

Suddenly the bell beneath us broke the vision with its chime;

"Signors," quoth our gray attendant, "it is almost vesper time"; Vulgar life resumed its empire, -down we dropt from the sublime. Here and there a friar passed us, as we paced the silent streets, And a cardinal's rumbling carriage roused the sleepers from the seats.

ON A BUST OF DANTE.

SEE, from this counterfeit of him

Whom Arno shall remember long, How stern of lineament, how grim

The father was of Tuscan song. There but the burning sense of wrong, Perpetual care and scorn abide; Small friendship for the lordly throng; Distrust of all the world beside.

Faithful if this wan image be,
No dream his life was, - but a fight;
Could any BEATRICE see

A lover in that anchorite?
To that cold Ghibeline's gloomy sight
Who could have guessed the visions

came

Of beauty, veiled with heavenly light, In circles of eternal flame?

The lips, as Cuma's cavern close,

The cheeks, with fast and sorrow thin, The rigid front, almost morose,

But for the patient hope within, Declare a life whose course hath been Unsullied still, though still severe, Which, through the wavering days of sin, Keep itself icy-chaste and clear.

Not wholly such his haggard look

When wandering once, forlorn he strayed,

With no companion save his book,

To Corvo's hushed monastic shade: Where, as the Benedictine laid

His palm upon the pilgrim-guest, The single boon for which he prayed The convent's charity was rest.

this rugged face That has its origin above,

Peace dwells not here,
Betrays no spirit of repose;
The sullen warrior sole we trace,

The marble man of many woes.
Such was his mien when first arose
The thought of that strange tale divine,
When hell he peopled with his foes,

The scourge of many a guilty line.

War to the last he waged with all

The tyrant canker-worms of earth;
Baron and duke, in hold and hall,
Cursed the dark hour that gave him
birth;

He used Rome's harlot for his mirth;
Plucked bare hypocrisy and crime;
But valiant souls of knightly worth
Transmitted to the rolls of Time.

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Would come and keep in fashion;
That Scorn and Jealousy and Hate,
And every base emotion,
Were buried fifty fathom deep

Beneath the waves of Ocean!

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Two wandering angels, Sleep and Death,
Once met in sunny weather:
And while the twain were taking breath,
They held discourse together.

Quoth Sleep (whose face, though twice
as fair,

Was strangely like the other's, -
So like, in sooth, that anywhere
They might have passed for brothers):

"A busy life is mine, I trow;

Would I were omnipresent!
So fast and far have I to go;

And yet my work is pleasant.

"I cast my potent poppies forth,

And lo! the cares that cumber

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"True!" answered Sleep, "but all the The moist winds breathe of crispéd

while

Thine office is berated,

'Tis only by the vile and weak

That thou art feared and hated.

"And though thy work on earth has given

To all a shade of sadness; Consider every saint in heaven Remembers thee with gladness!"

SARAH HELEN WHITMAN.

[U. S. A.]

A STILL DAY IN AUTUMN.

I LOVE to wander through the woodlands hoary

In the soft light of an autumnal day, When Summer gathers up her robes of glory,

And like a dream of beauty glides

away.

How through each loved, familiar path she lingers,

Serenely smiling through the golden mist,

leaves and flowers

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His shout and whistle broke the air, As cheerily he plied

His garden-spade, or drove his share Along the hillock's side.

He marked the fire-storm's blazing flood
Roaring and crackling on its path,
And scorching earth, and melting wood,
Beneath its greedy wrath;

He marked the rapid whirlwind shoot,
Trampling the pine-tree with its foot,
And darkening thick the day
With streaming bough and severed root,
Hurled whizzing on its way.

His gaunt hound yelled, his rifle flashed,
The grim bear hushed his savage growl;
In blood and and foam the panther
gnashed

His fangs, with dying howl;
The fleet deer ceased its flying bound,
Its snarling wolf-foe bit the ground,

And, with its moaning ery,
The beaver sank beneath the wound
Its pond-built Venice by.

Humble the lot, yet his the race,

When Liberty sent forth her cry, Who thronged in conflict's deadliest place,

To fight, to bleed, -to die! Who cumbered Bunker's height of red, By hope through weary years were led, And witnessed Yorktown's sun Blaze on a nation's banner spread, A nation's freedom won.

CHRISTOPHER P. CRANCH.

[U. S. A ]

KNOWING.

THOUGHT is deeper than all speech,
Feeling deeper than all thought;
Souls to souls can never teach
What unto themselves was tauglit.

We are spirits clad in veils;
Man by man was never seen;
All our deep communing fails

To remove the shadowy screen.

Heart to heart was never known,

Mind with mind did never meet;

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