What voice of calm and solemn tone
Is heard above thy burial-stone?
What form in priestly meek array
Beside the altar kneels to pray?

What holy hands are lifted

up

To bless the sacramental cup?

Full well I know that reverend form,

And if a voice could reach the dead,

Those tones would reach thee, though the worm,
My brother, makes thy heart his bed;
That sire who thy existence gave,
Now stands beside thy lowly grave.

It is not long since thou wert wont
Within these sacred walls to kneel;
This altar, that baptismal font,

These stones which now thy dust conceal,

The sweet tones of the Sabbath bell,
Were holiest objects to thy soul,
On them thy spirit loved to dwell,
Untainted by the world's control.
My brother, those were happy days,
When thou and I were children yet;
How fondly memory still surveys

Those scenes the heart can ne'er forget!
My soul was then as thine is now,
Unstained by sin-unstung by pain;
Peace smiled on each unclouded brow,
Mine ne'er will be so calm again.

How blithely then we hailed the ray
Which ushered in the Sabbath-day!
How lightly then our footsteps trod
Yon pathway to the house of God!
For souls in which no dark offence
Hath sullied childhood's innocence,
Best meet the pure and hallowed shrine,
Which guiltier bosoms own divine.
I feel not now as then I felt,

The sunshine of my heart is o'er ;
The spirit now is changed which dwelt
Within me, in the days before.

But thou wert snatched, my brother, hence,

In all thy guileless innocence;

One Sabbath saw thee bend the knee

In reverential piety;

For childish faults forgiveness crave,
The next beamed brightly on thy grave!
The crowd, of which thou late wert one,
Now thronged across thy burial stone;
Rude footsteps trampled on the spot
Where thou liest mouldering and forgot;
And some few gentler bosoms wept,
In silence where my brother slept.

I stood not by thy feverish bed,

I looked not on thy glazing eye, Nor gently lulled thy aching head, Nor viewed thy dying agony;

I felt not what my parents felt,

The doubt, the terror, the distress;
Nor vainly for my brother knelt,

My soul was spared that wretchedness.
One sentence told me in a breath
My brother's illness, and his death!

H. Wadsworth Longfellow.

Born 1807.

THE WARDEN OF THE CINQUE PORTS.*

A mist was driving down the British Channel,
The day was just begun,

And through the window-panes, on floor and panel,
Streamed the red autumn sun.

It glanced on flowing flag and rippling pennon,
And the white sails of ships;

And, from the frowning rampart, the black cannon
Hailed it with feverish lips.

Sandwich and Romney, Hastings, Hythe and Dover, Were all alert that day,

To see the French war-steamers speeding over,

When the fog cleared away.

* The Duke of Wellington.

26

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Sullen and silent, and like couchant lions,

Their cannon through the night,

Holding their breath, had watched in grim defiance The sea-coast opposite.

And now they roared at drum-beat from their stations
On every citadel;

Each answering each with morning salutations
That all was well.

And down the coast, all taking up the burden,
Replied the distant forts,

As if to summon from his sleep the Warden
And Lord of the Cinque Ports.

Him shall no sunshine from the fields of azure,
No drum-beat from the wall,

No morning-gun from the black fort's embrasure
Awaken with their call.

No more surveying with an eye impartial
The long line of the coast,

Shall the gaunt figure of the old Field-Marshal
Be seen upon his post.

For in the night, unseen, a single warrior,
In sombre harness mailed,

Dreaded of man, and surnamed the Destroyer,
The rampart-wall has scaled,

He passed into the chamber of the sleeper,
The dark and silent room;
And as he entered, darker grew and deeper
The silence and the gloom.

He did not pause to parley or dissemble,
But smote the Warden hoar;

Ah! what a blow! that made all England tremble,
And groan from shore to shore.

Meanwhile, without the surly cannon waited,
The sun rose bright o'er head;

Nothing in Nature's aspect intimated
That a great man was dead!

Lord Byron.

Born 1788. Died 1824.

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO.

THERE was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium's capital had gathered then
Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men;
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,