Vain sophistry! in these behold the tools, The broken tools, that tyrants cast away By myriads, when they dare to pave their way With human hearts-to what?-a dream alone. Can despots compass aught that hails their sway? Or call with truth one span of earth their own, Save that wherein at last they crumble bone by bone.

Ex. CXXVI.—THE PRISONER FOR DEBT.

JOHN G. WHITTIER.

Look on him-through his dungeon grate,
Feebly and cold, the morning light
Comes stealing round him, dim and late,
As if it loathed the sight.
Reclining on his strawy bed

His hand upholds his drooping head-
His bloodless cheek is seamed and hard,
Unshorn, his gray, neglected beard;
And o'er his bony fingers flow

His long, disheveled locks of snow.

What has the gray-haired prisoner done?
Has murder stained his hands with gore?
Not so: his crime's a fouler one:

God made the old man poor!

For this he shares a felon's cell-
The fittest earthly type of hell!

For this the boon for which he poured
His young blood on the invader's sword,
And counted light the fearful cost-
His blood-gained liberty is lost!

And so, for such a place of rest,

Old prisoner, poured thy blood as rain
On Concord's field and Bunker's crest,
And Saratoga's plain?

Look forth, thou man of many scars,
Through thy dim dungeon's iron bars!
It must be joy, in sooth, to see
Yon monument upreared to thee-
Piled granite and a prison cell-
The land repays thy service well!

Go, ring the bells and fire the guns,
And fling the starry banner out;
Shout "Freedom!" till your lisping ones
Give back their cradle shout:
Let boasted eloquence declaim
Of honor, liberty, and fame;
Still let the poet's strain be heard,
With "glory" for each second word,
And every thing with breath agree
To praise "our glorious liberty!"

And when the patriot cannon jars
The prison's cold and gloomy wall,
And through its grates the stripes and stars
Rise on the wind, and fall—
Think ye that prisoner's aged ear
Rejoices in the general cheer?
Think ye his dim and failing eye
Is kindled at your pageantry?
Sorrowing of soul, and chained of limb,
What is your carnival to him?

Ex. CXXVII-THE BELLS.

HEAR the sledges with the bells,

Silver bells!

EDGAR A, rum.

What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle

In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twingle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time,

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells,

From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

Hear the mellow wedding bells,-
Golden bells!

What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!

Through the balmy air of night,
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten golden notes,
And all in tune,

What a liquid ditty floats

To the turtle dove, that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!

Oh! from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!

How it dwells

On the future !-how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells,

To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

Hear the loud alarum bells,—
Brazen bells!

What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night

How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,

Out of time,

In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,

And a resolute endeavor
Now-now to sit, or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh! the bells!

What a tale their terror tells
Of despair!

How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour

On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging

And the clanging,

How the danger ebbs and flows;
Yet the ear distinctly tells,

In the jangling

And the wrangling,

How the danger sinks and swells,

By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells,In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!

What a world of solemn thought their monody compels! In the silence of the night,

How we shiver with affright

At the melancholy menace of their tone!

For

every sound that floats

From the rust within their throats,

As he knells,

In a happy Runic rhyme,

To the rolling of the bells,—

To the tolling of the bells,

To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

Ex. CXXVIII.-THE MOSQUITO.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

FAIR insect! that, with thread-like legs spread out,
And blood-extracting bill, and filmy wing,
Dost murmur, as thou slowly sail'st about,

In pitiless ears full many a plaintive thing,
And tell how little our large veins should bleed,
Would we but yield them to thy bitter need.

Unwillingly, I own, and, what is worse,

Full angrily men hearken to thy plaint; Thou gettest many a brush and many a curse,

For saying thou art gaunt, and starved, and faint:
Even the old beggar, while he asks for food,
Would kill thee, hapless stranger, if he could.

I call thee stranger, for the town, I ween,
Has not the honor of so proud a birth-

Thou comest from Jersey meadows, fresh and green,
The offspring of the gods, though born on earth;
For Titan was thy sire, and fair was she,

The ocean-nymph that nursed thy infancy.

Beneath the rushes was thy cradle swung,

And when, at length, thy gauzy wings grew strong, Abroad to gentle airs their folds were flung,

Rose in the sky, and bore thee soft along;

The south wind breathed to waft thee on thy way,
And danced and shone beneath the billowy bay.

Calm rose afar the city spires, and thence

Came the deep murmur of its throng of men, And as its grateful odors met thy sense,

They seemed the perfumes of thy native fen. Fair lay its crowded streets, and at the sight Thy tiny song grew shriller with delight.

At length thy pinion fluttered in Broadway-
Ah, there were fairy steps, and white necks kissed

By wanton airs, and eyes whose killing ray

Shone through the snowy vails like stars through mist;

And fresh as morn, on many a cheek and chin,

Bloomed the bright blood through the transparent skin.