And he has awakened the sentry elve

Who sleeps with him in the haunted tree,
To bid him ring the hour of twelve

And call the fays to their revelry;

Twelve small strokes on his tinkling bell
('Twas made of the white snail's pearly shell):
"Midnight comes, and all is well!

Hither, hither wing your way!
"Tis the dawn of the fairy-day."

4. They come from beds of lichen green,

They creep from the mullein's velvet screen;
Some on the backs of beetles fly

From the silver tops of moon-touched trees,
Where they swung in their cobweb hammocks high,
And rocked about in the evening breeze;

Some from the hum-bird's downy nest,-
They had driven him out by elfin power,

And, pillowed on plumes of his rainbow breast,
Had slumbered there till the charméd hour;
Some had lain in the scoop of the rock,

With glittering ising-stars inlaid;

And some had opened the four-o'clock

And stole within its purple shade.

And now they throng the moonlight glade,—

Above, below, on every side,

Their little minim forms arrayed

In the tricksy pomp of fairy pride.

DEFINITIONS.-1. Wěl ́kin, the vuult of heaven. Rifts, openings. 2. Whist, hushed. 3. Fays, fairies. 4. Elf'in, pertaining to fairies. 5. İşing-stärş, small pieces of mica or isinglass. Min ́im, very small. Triek'sy, artful.

NOTE.-1. Crō'něst, a mountain-peak in the State of New York, on the Hudson River.

53. THE CORAL GROVE.

JAMES GATES PERCIVAL was born at Berlin, Connecticut, September 15, 1795. He was graduated from Yale College, and studied medicine, but never practiced the profession. When quite young, he published his first poem, a burlesque of the manners and customs of the people of his day. He afterward wrote numerous articles, both in prose and in poetry. His poems are rich in imagination, abound in beautiful sentiments finely expressed, and have for most readers an indescribable charm. He died May 2, 1856.

1. DEEP in the wave is a coral grove,

Where the purple mullet and gold-fish rove;
Where the sea-flower spreads its leaves of blue,
That never are wet with falling dew,
But in bright and changeful beauty shine
Far down in the green and glassy brine.

2. The floor is of sand, like the mountain-drift,
And the pearl-shells spangle the flinty snow;
From coral rocks the sea-plants lift

Their boughs where the tides and billows flow.

3. The water is calm and still below,

For the winds and waves are absent there,
And the sands are bright as the stars that glow
In the motionless fields of upper air.

4. There, with its waving blade of green,

The sea-flag streams through the silent water,
And the crimson leaf of the dulse is seen

To blush like a banner bathed in slaughter.

5. There, with a light and easy motion,

The fan-coral sweeps through the clear, deep sea, And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean

Are bending like corn on the upland lea.

6. And life, in rare and beautiful forms,

Is sporting amid those bowers of stone,
And is safe when the wrathful spirit of storms
Has made the top of the wave his own;

7. And when the ship from his fury flies,

Where the myriad voices of Ocean roar,
When the Wind-god frowns in the murky skies,
And demons are waiting the wreck on shore,-

8. Then, far below, in the peaceful sea,

The purple mullet and gold-fish rove,
Where the waters murmur tranquilly

Through the bending twigs of the coral grove. DEFINITIONS.—7. Můrk'y, dark; gloomy. Mỹr'i ad, numberless.

54. THANATOPSIS.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT was born in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, November 3, 1794. He studied at Williams College, but left before the completion of the course, in order to take up the study of the law. In 1813, when only nineteen years of age, he wrote Thanatopsis, his first poem. He afterward wrote The Death of the Flowers, A Forest Hymn, The African Chief, The Indian Girl's Lament, The Song of Marion's Men, and some others. He also translated the Iliad and the Odyssey. His poems are full of imagination and sympathy, and in beauty of expression and sublimity of thought are unsurpassed by anything of their kind in the English language. He died in 1878.

1. To him who in the love of Nature holds

Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language: for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides
Into his darker musings with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware.

2.

3.

When thoughts

Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images

Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart,
Go forth under the open sky, and list

To Nature's teachings, while from all around—
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air—
Comes a still voice: yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image.

Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again; And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go To mix forever with the elements,To be a brother to the insensible rock, And to the sluggish clod which the rude swain Turns with his share and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad and pierce thy mould.

4. Yet not to thine eternal resting-place

Shalt thou retire alone; nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world,—with kings,
The powerful of the earth, the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills,

5.

Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun, the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between,
The venerable woods, rivers that move

In majesty, and the complaining brooks

That make the meadows green, and, poured round all, Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste,

Are but the solemn decorations all

Of the great tomb of man.

The golden sun,

The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings
Of morning, and the Barcan desert pierce,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound
Save his own dashings: yet the dead are there;
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep: the dead reign there alone.

6. So shalt thou rest; and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leaye
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glide away, the sons of men—-