THE BELEAGUERED CITY.

BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

I HAVE read, in some old marvellous tale,

Some legend strange and vague, That a midnight host of spectres palo

Beleaguered the walls of Prague.

Beside the Moldau's rushing stream,

With the wan moon overhead, There stood, as in an awful dream,

The army of the dead.

White as a sea-fog, landward bound,

The spectral camp was seen, And, with a sorrowful, deep sound,

The river flowed between.

THE BELEAGUERED CITY.

No other voice nor sound was there,

No drum, nor sentry's pace;
The mist-like banners clasped the air,

As clouds with clouds embrace.

But, when the old cathedral bell

Proclaimed the morning prayer, The white pavilions rose and sell

On the alarmed air.

Down the broad valley fast and far

The troubled army fled;
Up rose the glorious morning star,

The ghastly host was dead.

I have read, in the marvellous heart of man,

That strange and mystic scroll,
That an army of phantoins vast and wan

Beleaguer the human soul.

Encamped beside Life's rushing stream,

In Fancy's misty light,
Gigantic shapes a.id shadows gleam

Portentous through the night.

Upon its midnight battle-ground

The spectral camp is seen,

SONNET-OCTOBER,

And, with a sorrowful, deep sound,

Flows the River of Life between.

No other voice, nor sound is there,

In the army of the grave;
No other challenge breaks the air,

But the rushing of Life's wave.

And, when the solemn and deep church-bell

Entreats the soul to pray,
The midnight phantoms feel the spell,

The shadows sweep away.

Down the broad Vale of Tears afar

The spectral camp is fled;
Faith shineth as a morning star,

Our ghastly fears are dead.

SONNET-OCTOBER.

BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

Ay, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath!

When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf,

And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief, And the year smiles as it draws near its death.

FELICIA HEMANS.

Wind of the sunny south! oh, still delay

In the gay woods and in the golden air,

Like to a good old age released from care,
Journeying, in long serenity, away.
In such a bright, late quiet, would that I

Might wear out life like thee, 'mid bowers and brcoks,

And dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks,
And music of kind voices ever nigh;
And when my last sand twinkled in the glass,
Pass silently from men, as thou dost pass.

FELICIA HEMANS.

BY LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY.

NATURE doth mourn for thee.

There is no need
For man to strike his plaintive lyre and fail,
As fail he must, if he attempt thy praise.
The little plant that never sang before,
Save one sad requiem, when its blossoms fell,
Sighs deeply through its drooping leaves for thee,
As for a florist fallen. The ivy, wreathed

FELICIA HEMANS.

Round the gray turrets of a buried race,
And the tall palm that like a prince doth rear
Its diadem ’neath Asia's burning sky,
With their dim legends blend thy hallowed name.
Thy music, like baptismal dew, did make
Whate'er it touched most holy. The pure shell,
Laying its pearly lip on Ocean's floor,
The cloistered chambers, where the sea-gods sleep,
And the unfathomed melancholy main,
Lament for thee, through all the sounding deeps.
Hark! from the snow-breasted Himmaleh to where
Snowdon doth weave his coronet of cloud,
From the scathed pine tree, near the red man's hut,
To where the everlasting banian builds
Its vast columnac temple, comes a moan
For thee, whose ritual made each rocky height
An altar, and each cottage-home, the haunt
Of Poesy.

Yea, thou didst find the link
That joins mute nature to ethereal mind,
And make that link a melody.

The couch
Of thy last sleep, was in the native clime
Of song and eloquence and ardent soul,
Spot fitly chosen for thee. Perchance, that isle
So loved of favouring skies, yet banned by fate,
Might shadow forth thine own unspoken lot.