"Sleep, sleep to-day, tormenting cares,
Of earth and folly born!"
Solemnly sang the village choir

On that sweet Sabbath morn.

Through the closed blinds the golden sun

Poured in a dusty beam,

Like the celestial ladder seen
By Jacob in his dream.

And ever and anon, the wind,

Sweet-scented with the hay,

Turned o'er the hymn-book's fluttering leaves

That on the window lay.

Long was the good man's sermon,

Yet it seemed not so to me;

For he spake of Ruth the beautiful,

And still I thought of thee.

Long was the prayer he uttere Yet it seemed not so to me

For in my heart I prayed with And still I thought of thee.

But now, alas! the place seems Thou art no longer here : Part of the sunshine of the scen With thee did disappear.

Though thoughts, deep-rooted in Like pine-trees dark and high, Subdue the light of noon, and br A low and ceaseless sigh;

This memory brightens o'er the p As when the sun, concealed Behind some cloud that near us ha

Shines on a distant field.

im,

changed;

THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD.

y heart,

he

THIS is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling,
Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms;
But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing
Startles the villages with strange alarms.

Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary,
When the death-angel touches those swift keys!
What loud lament and dismal Miserere

Will mingle with their awful symphonies!

I hear even now the infinite fierce cho The cries of agony, the endless gro Which, through the ages that have gone In long reverberations reach our own

On helm and harness rings the Saxon h Through Cimbric forest roars the N

song,

And loud, amid the universal clamor,

O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar

I hear the Florentine, who from his pala Wheels out his battle-bell with dreadf And Aztec priests upon their teocallis

Beat the wild war-drums made of serper

The tumult of each sacked and burning v The shout that every prayer for mercy The soldiers' revels in the midst of pillage

The wail of famine in beleaguered town

The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder,

The rattling musketry, the clashing blade ;

And ever and anon, in tones of thunder,
The diapason of the cannonade.

Is it, O man, with such discordant noises,
With such accursed instruments as these,
Thou drownest Nature's sweet and kindly voices,
And jarrest the celestial harmonies ?

Were half the

power, that fills the world with terror,

Were half the wealth, bestowed on camps and

courts,

Given to redeem the human mind from error,

There were no need of arsenals nor forts:

The warrior's name would be a name abhorred ! And every nation, that should lift again

Its hand against a brother, on its forehead

Would wear forevermore the curse of Cain!