Leaving on the startless silence not a token nor a trace-
In a quivering sigh departed: from my couch in fear I started;
Started to my feet in terror. for my dream's phantasmal error
Painted in the fitful fire a frightful, fiendish, flaming face!
On the red hearth's reddest center from a blazing knot of oak,
Seemed to gibe and grin this phantom when in terror I awoke,
And my slumberous eyelids straining, as I staggered to the floor.
Still in that dread vision seeming, turned my gaze toward the gleaming
Hearth, and there! - O God! I saw it; and from its flaming jaw it
Spat a ceaseless, seething, hissing, bubbling, gurgling stream of gore!
Speechless, struck with stony silence, frozen to the floor I stood,
Till methought my brain was hissing with that hissing, bubbling blood;
Till I felt my life-stream oozing from those lambent lips;
Till the demon seemed to name me then a wondrous calm came o'er me;
And my brow grew cold and dewy, with a death damp stiff and gluey;
And I fell back on my pillow, in apparent soul eclipse.
Then as in death's seeming shadow, in the icy fall of fear
I lay, stricken, came a hoarse and hideous murmur to my ear;
Came a murmur like the murmur of assassins in their sleep —
Muttering, "Higher! higher! higher! I am demon of the Fire!
I am Arch-Fiend of the Fire, and each blazing roof's my pyre,
And my sweetest incense is the blood and tears my victims weep!
"How I revel on the prairie! how I roar among the pines!
How I laugh when from the village o'er the snow the red flame shines,
And I hear the shrieks of terror, with a life in every breath!
How I scream with lambent laughter, as I hurl each crackling rafter
Down the fell abyss of fire—until higher! higher! higher!
Leap the high priests of my altar, in their merry dance of death!
"I am Monarch of the Fire' I am Vassal King of Death!
World enriching, with the shadow of its doom upon my breath!
With the symbol of Hereafter flaming from my fatal face!
I command the Eternal Fire! Higher! higher! higher! higher!
Leap my ministering demons, like phantasmagoric lemans
Hugging Universal Nature in their hideous embrace!"
Then a sombre silence shut me in a solemn, shrouding sleep,
And I slumbered like an infant in the "cradle of the deep,"
Till the belfry in the forest quivered with the matin stroke,
And the martins, from the edges of the lichen-lidded lodges,
Shimmered through the russet arches, where the light in torn files marches
Like a routed army struggling through the serried ranks of oak.
Through my ivy-fretted casements, filtered in a tremulous note,
From the tall and stately linden, where the robin swelled his throat-
Querulous, quaker-breasted robin, calling quaintly for his mate!
Then I started up unbidden from my slumber, night-mare ridden,
With the memory of that dire demon in my central fire,
On my eye's interior mirror like the shadow of a fate!
Ah! the fiendish fire had smouldered to a white and formless heap,
And no knot of oak was flaming as it flamed upon my sleep;
But around its very center, where the demon face had shone,
Forked shadows seemed to linger, pointing, as with spectral finger,
To a Bible, massive, golden, on a table carved and olden:
And I bowed and said, "All power is of God—of God alone!"
"Amo, Amare, Amavi, Amatum."
Dear girls, never marry for knowledge,
(Though that, of course, should form a part,)
For often the head, while at college,
Gets wise at the cost of the heart.
Let me tell you a fact that is real-
I once had a beau, in my youth,
My brightest and best "beau ideal"
Of manliness, goodness, and truth.
Oh, he talked of the Greeks and the Romans,
Of Normans, and Saxons, and Celt;
And he quoted from Virgil and Homer,
And Plato, and-somebody else.
And he told his deathless affection,
By means of a thousand strange herbs,
With numberless words in connection,
Derived from the roots of Greek verbs.
One night, as a slight innuendo,
When nature was mantled in snow,
He wrote in the frost on the window,
A sweet word in Latin-amo."
Oh, it needed no words for expression,
For that I had long understood;
"BLESSED IS THE MAN WHOM THOU CHASTENEST.*
O Saviour, whose mercy, severe in its kindness,
Has chastened my wanderings and guided my way,
Adored be the power that illumined my blindness,
And weaned me from phantoms that smiled to betray.
Enchanted with all that was dazzling and fair,
I followed the rainbow, I caught at the toy;
And still in displeasure thy goodness was there,
Disappointing the hope, and defeating the joy.
The blossom blushed bright, but a worm was below;
The moonlight shone fair, there was blight in the bea
Sweet whispered the breeze, but it whispered of woe,
And bitterness flowed in the soft flowing stream.
So, cured of my folly, yet cured but in part,
I turned to the refuge thy pity displayed;
And still did this eager and credulous heart
Weave visions of promise that bloomed but to fade.
I thought that the course of the pilgrim to heaven
Would be bright as the summer, and glad as the morn;
Thou show'dst me the path,-it was dark and uneven,
All rugged with rock and tangled with thorn.
I dreamed of celestial reward and renown,
I grasped at the triumph that blesses the brave,
I asked for the palm-branch, the robe. and the crown,-
I asked, and thou show'dst me a cross and a grave.
Subdued and instructed, at length, to thy will,
My hopes and my longings I fain would resign;
Oh give me the heart that can wait and be still,
Nor know of a wish or a pleasure but thine.
There are mansions exempted from sin and from woe,
But they stand in a region by mortals untrod;
There are rivers of joy, but they flow not below;
There is rest, but it dwells in the presence of God.
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose well sav'd, 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.
I ask the young man who is just forming his habits of life, or just beginning to indulge those habitual trains of thought out of which habits grow, to look around him, and mark the examples whose fortunes he would covet, or whose fate he would abhor. Even as we walk the streets, we meet with examples of each extreme. Here, behold the patriarch, whose stock of vigor threescore years and ten seems scarcely to have impaired. His erect form, his firm step, his elastic limbs, and undimmed senses, are so many certificates of good conduct; or, rather, so many jewels and orders of nobility with which nature has honored him for his fidelity to her laws. His fair complexion shows that his blood has never been corrupted; his pure health that he never yielded his digestive apparatus to abuse; his exact language and keen apprehension, that his brain has never been drugged or stupified by the poisons of distiller or tobacconist. Enjoying his appetites to the highest, he has preserved the power of enjoying them. As he drains the cup of life, there are no lees at the bottom. His organs will reach the goal of existence toPainlessly as the candle burns down in its socket, so will he expire; and a little imagination would convert him into another Enoch, translated from earth to a better world without the sting of death.
But look at an opposite extreme, where an opposite history
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