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Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed;
And men were gathered round their blazing homes,
To look once more into each other's face:
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanoes and their mountain torch.

And fearful hope was all the world contained:
Forests were set on fire; but, hour by hour,
They fell and faded; and the crackling trunks
Extinguished with a crash,-and all was black.
The brows of men, by the despairing light,
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits

The flashes fell upon them. Some lay down,
And hid their eyes, and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again,
With curses, cast them down upon the dust,
And gnashed their teeth and howled.
shrieked,

The wild birds

And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings: the wildest birds
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawled
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless,-they were slain for food.

And War, which for a moment was no more, Did glut himself again :-a meal was bought With blood, and each sat sullenly apart, Gorging himself in gloom; no love was left:

All earth was but one thought,—and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and men

Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meager by the meager were devoured;
Even dogs assailed their masters,―all, save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept

The birds, and beasts, and famished men, at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But, with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick, desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress, he died.

The crowd was famished by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,

And they were enemies; they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place,

Where had been heaped a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up,

And, shivering, scraped, with their cold, skeleton hands,
The feeble ashes; and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame,
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld

Each other's aspects,―saw, and shrieked, and died,—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written fiend. The world was void;
The populous and the powerful was a lump,—
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless,—
A lump of death,-a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean, all stood still;
And nothing stirred within their silent depths:
Ships, sailorless, lay rotting on the sea,

And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropped,
They slept on the abyss without a surge:

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave;
The moon, their mistress, had expired before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air;
And the clouds perished: Darkness had no need
Of aid from them; she was the universe.

Ex. CXXIII-THE DEMON SHIP.

HOOD.

'T WAS off the Wash-the sun went down-the sea looked black and grim,

For stormy clouds, with murky fleece, were mustering at the brim;

Titanic shades! enormous gloom!-as if the solid night
Of Erebus rose suddenly to seize upon the light!

It was a time for mariners to bear a wary eye,

With such a dark conspiracy between the sea and sky! Down went my helm-close reefed-the tack held freely in my hand

With ballast snug I put about, and scudded for the land. Loud hissed the sea beneath her lee; my little boat flew fast, But faster still the rushing storm came, borne upon the blast. Lord! what a roaring hurricane beset the straining sail! What furious sleet, with level drift, and fierce assaults of hail! What darksome caverns yawned before! what jagged steeps behind!

Like battle-steeds, with foamy manes, wild tossing in the wind.

Each after each sank down astern, exhausted in the chase,
But where it sank another rose, and galloped in its place;
As black as night-they turned to white, and cast against
the cloud

A snowy sheet, as if each surge upturned a sailor's shroud :
Still flew my boat;
alas! alas! her course was nearly run!
Behold yon fatal billow rise-ten billows heaped in one!
With fearful speed the dreary mass came rolling, rolling fast,
As if the scooping sea contained one only wave, at last!
Still on it came, with horrid roar, a swift-pursuing grave;
It seemed as though some cloud had turned its hugeness to a
wave!

Its briny sleet began to beat beforehand in my face

I felt the rearward keel begin to climb its swelling base!
I saw its Alpine hoary head impending over mine!

Another pulse, and down it rushed, an avalanche of brine!
Brief pause had I on God to cry, or think of wife and home;
The waters closed-and when I shrieked, I shrieked below
the foam!

Beyond that rush I have no hint of any after-deed

For I was tossing on the waste, as senseless as a weed.
"Where am I? In the breathing world, or in the world of
death ?"

With sharp and sudden pang I drew another birth of breath;
My eyes drank in a doubtful light, my ears a doubtful sound;
And was that ship a real ship whose tackle seemed around?
A moon, as if the earthly moon, was shining up aloft ;
But were those eyes the eyes of man that looked against my
own?

O! never may the moon again disclose me such a sight

As met my gaze, when first I looked on that accursed night! I've seen a thousand horrid shapes, begot of fierce extremes Of fever; and most frightful things have haunted in my dreams

Hyenas, cats, blood-loving bats, and apes with hateful stare, Pernicious snakes, and shaggy bulls, the lion, and she-bear, Strong enemies, with Judas looks, of treachery and spiteDetested features, hardly dimmed and banished by the light! Pale-sheeted ghosts, with gory locks, upstarting from their tombs

All fantasies and images, that flit in midnight glooms—

Hags, goblins, demons, lemures, have made me all aghast,But nothing like that Grimly One who stood beside the mast!

His cheek was black-his brow was black-his eyes and hair as dark:

His hand was black, and where it touched it left a sable

mark;

His throat was black, his vest the same, and when I looked

beneath,

His breast was black-all, all was black, except his grinning

teeth.

His sooty crew were like in hues, as black as Afric slaves!
O, horror! e'en the ship was black, that plowed the inky

waves!

"Alas!" I cried, "for love of truth and blessed mercy's sake,

Where am I? in what dreadful ship? upon what dreadful lake ?

What shape is that, so very grim, and black as any coal?
It is Mahound, the Evil One, and he has gained my soul!
O, mother dear! my tender nurse! dear meadows that be-
guiled

My happy days, when I was yet a little sinless child-
My mother dear-my native fields, I never more shall see:
I'm sailing in the Devil's ship, upon the Devil's sea !”
Loud laughed that sable mariner, and loudly in return
His sooty crew sent forth a laugh that rang from stem to

stern

A dozen pair of grimly cheeks were crumpled on the nonce-
As many sets of grinning teeth came shining out at once:
A dozen gloomy shapes at once enjoyed the merry fit,
With shriek and yell, and oaths as well, like demons of the
pit.

They crowed their fill, and then the chief made answer for the whole,

"Our skins," said he, "are black, ye see, because we carry coal;

You'll find your mother, sure enough, and all your native fields

For this here ship has picked you up-the 'Mary Ann,' of Shields!"

Ex. CXXIV.-THE BARON'S LAST BANQUET.

ALBERT G. GREENE.

O'ER a low couch the setting sun had thrown its latest ray,
Where, in his last strong agony, a dying warrior lay,-
The stern old Baron Rudiger, whose frame had ne'er been
bent

By wasting pain, till time and toil its iron strength had spent.

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They come around me here, and say my days of life are o'er,

That I shall mount my noble steed and lead my band no

more;

They come, and, to my beard, they dare to tell me now that I,

Their own liege lord and master born, that I—ha! ha!— must die.

"And what is death? I've dared him oft, before the Paynim spear;

Think ye he's entered at my gate-has come to seek me here?

I've met him, faced him, scorned him, when the fight was

raging hot;

I'll try his might, I'll brave his power!-defy, and fear him

not!

"Ho! sound the tocsin from my tower, and fire the culverin; Bid each retainer arm with speed; call every vassal in. Up with my banner on the wall,-the banquet-board prepare,

Throw wide the portal of my hall, and bring my armor there!"

An hundred hands were busy then: the banquet forth was spread,

And rung the heavy oaken floor with many a martial tread;

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