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A bright-green tinge succeeds the brown
Upon the southern hill.

Off to the woods! a pleasant scene!
Here sprouts the fresh young wintergreen,
There swells a mossy mound;
Though in the hollows drifts are piled,
The wandering wind is sweet and mild,
And buds are bursting round.

Where its long rings uncurls the fern,
The violet, nestling low,
Casts back the white lid of its urn,
Its purple streaks to show.
Beautiful blossom! first to rise

And smile beneath Spring's wakening skies,
The courier of the band

Of coming flowers,-what feelings sweet
Gush, as the silvery gem we meet
Upon its slender wand!

A sudden roar—a shade is cast-
We look up with a start,
And, sounding like a transient blast,
O'erhead the pigeons dart;

Scarce their blue glancing shapes the eye
Can trace, ere, dotted on the sky,
They wheel in distant flight.

A chirp! and swift the squirrel scours
Along the prostrate trunk, and cowers
Within its clefts from sight.

Amid the creeping pine, which spreads
Its thick and verdant wreath,

The scaurberry's downy spangle sheds
Its rich delicious breath.

The bee-swarm murmurs by, and now
It clusters black on yonder bough:
The robin's mottled breast
Glances that sunny spot across,
As round it seeks the twig and moss
To frame its summer nest.

Warmer is each successive sky,
More soft the breezes pass,
The maple's gems of crimson lie
Upon the thick green grass.

The dogwood sheds its clusters white,
The birch has dropped its tassels slight,
Cowslips are by the rill;

The thresher whistles in the glen,
Flutters around the warbling wren,
And swamps have voices shrill.

A simultaneous burst of leaves
Has clothed the forest now;
A single day's bright sunshine weaves
This vivid, gorgeous show.
Masses of shade are cast beneath,

The flowers are spread in varied wreath,
Night brings her soft sweet moon;
Morn wakes in mist, and twilight grey
Weeps its bright dew; and smiling May
Melts blooming into June.

EDGAR ALLAN POE.

[Born in Baltimore in January 1811; died in the same city on 7th October 1849. The most intense artist among the natives of the American Republic. This most original, fascinating, and admirable inventor in poetry and fiction belonged to a family of very good position. His father married an actress, and became an actor, and both parents died when Edgar, a remarkably beautiful boy, was but two years of age. A wealthy merchant in Richmond, Mr. Allan, adopted him. Poe's life was an intemperate one, in every sense of the word. Getting into scrapes during his University course in Virginia, he started off to fight for the independence of Greece; but, straying away to St. Petersburg instead, he soon returned home destitute in 1829. His conduct to the newly-married second wife of Mr. Allan disgusted that kindly old gentleman. The youth then entered and got expelled from the Military Academy of West Point; and his adopted father, dying soon afterwards, left him wholly unprovided for. Poe next tried literature, in various miscellaneous forms: in 1841, a collection of his romantic fictions, named Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque, laid the foundation of his fame. Some years before this, he had married his cousin, Virginia Clemm, who died in 1847. His ex

treme love for his wife, and-what is more observable-for his mother-in-law, forms the most amiable trait in his personal history. He was afterwards engaged to a literary widow in Rhode Island: but at last he purposely disgusted her, and the match was broken off. He next courted a lady of fortune in Richmond; and was on his way from that city to New York, to settle some literary arrangements prior to marriage, when, stopping at Baltimore, he met some old acquaintances; spent the night in a debauch; wandered out into the streets; and was found next morning half dead from the excitement and exposure. He was removed to a hospital, and there died. While his bodily remains are mouldering unmarked in the cemetery of Baltimore, his fame has spread apace; and thousands of men and women bask in the beauty or thrill to the terrors of his mind, without either knowing, or much needing to care, what number or what sorts of antics had been crowded into that brief tragicomedy while he yet had to "strut and fret his hour upon the stage"].

THE HAUNTED PALACE,

In the greenest of our valleys
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace-
Radiant palace-reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion-
It stood there:

Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair!

Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow,
(This-all this-was in the olden
Time long ago);

And every gentle air that dallied

In that sweet day,

Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,

A winged odour went away.

Wanderers in that happy valley,

Through two luminous windows, saw

1 It has been stated that this lady was the "Annabel Lee of Poe's poem. But the poem itself seems to be quite inconsistent with such an assumption, and to be more likely to relate to the poet's deceased wife-or indeed it may be wholly imaginary.

Spirits moving musically

To a lute's well-tunèd law,
Round about a throne where, sitting
Porphyrogene,

In state his glory well-befitting,

'The ruler of the realm was seen.

And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,

Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling evermore,

A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,

In voices of surpassing beauty,

The wit and wisdom of their king.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate :
Ah let us mourn !-for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate!
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.

And travellers, now, within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms, that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;

While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door

A hideous throng rush out for ever,
And laugh-but smile no more.

ANNABEL LEE.

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea:

But we loved with a love which was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came,
And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me—

Yes! that was the reason (as all men know
In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-

And neither the angels in heaven above,

Nor the demons down under the sea,

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so,

all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling-my darling--my life and my bride, In the sepulchre there by the sea,

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

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