THE LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMP.

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"And her firefly lamp I soon shall see,

And her paddle I soon shall hear;

Long and loving our life shall be,
And I'll hide the maid in a cypress-tree,
When the footstep of Death is near.”

Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds;
His path was rugged and sore—
Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds,
Through many a fen where the serpent feeds,
And man never trod before.

And when on earth he sank to sleep,

If slumber his eyelids knew,

He lay where the deadly vine doth weep
Its venomous tear, and nightly steep
The flesh with blistering dew.

And near him the she-wolf stirred the brake,
And the copper-snake breathed in his ear;
Till, starting, he cried, from his dream awake,
"O, when shall I see the dusky lake,

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And the white canoe of my dear?"

He saw the lake, and a meteor bright

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Quick over its surface played;

'Welcome," he said, "my dear one's light," And the dim shore echoed, for many a night, The name of the death-cold maid;

Till he hollowed a boat of the birchen bark,
Which carried him off from shore;

Far, far he followed the meteor spark;

The wind was high, and the clouds were dark,
And the boat returned no more.

But oft, from the Indian hunter's camp,
This lover and maid so true

Are seen, at the hour of midnight damp,

To cross the lake by a firefly lamp,
And paddle their white canoe.

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REVELATION AND REASON.

GREEK PATRIOTS.-LORD BYRON.

THEY fell devoted, but undying;

The very gale their names seemed sighing;
The waters murmured of their name;
The woods were peopled with their fame;
The silent pillar, lone and gray,

Claimed kindred with their sacred clay :
Their spirits wrapped the dusky mountain;
Their memory sparkled o'er the fountain;
The meanest rill, the mightiest river,
Rolled mingling with their fame forever.
Despite of every yoke she bears,
The land is glory's still and theirs.
"Tis still a watchword to the earth:
When man would do a deed of worth,
He points to Greece, and turns to tread,
So sanctioned, on the tyrant's head;
He looks to her, and rushes on

Where life is lost, or freedom won.

A

REVELATION AND REASON.

T the bed of sickness and in the hour of dissolution, the superior claims of reason are most apparent. Reason is here dumb, or speaks only to aggravate the miseries and render more horrible the horrors of a death-scene. No relief does it give to soften the grim visage of the king of terrors. As nearer he approaches, how the night darkens! How the grave deepens! Trembling upon its verge, the affrighted soul asks what the nature. of death is? and the grave, what is its dominions? The treacherous guide answers that both are unknown. That darkness no eye penetrates; that profound no link measures. It is conjectured to be the entrance to profound and oblivious sleep,—the precipice down which existence tumbles. Beyond that gulf which has swallowed up the dead and is swallowing up the living, neither foresight nor calculation reaches. What follows is unknown; ask

PAUL REVERE'S RIDE.

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not concerning it; thus far philosophy has guided you; without a guide and blindfolded you must take your last decisive leap.

But when revelation is appealed to, how the scene brightens ! As the ark of the testimony is opened a voice is heard to say: I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. It is the voice of the angel of the covenant. His bow of promise is seen in the arching sky, and reaching down even to the sepulchre, whose dark caverns by its radiance is illuminated. Behind those mists of Hades, so impenetrable to the eye of reason, eternal mansions rise in prospect, and already the bitterness of death is passed.

PAUL REVERE'S RIDE.-H. W. LONGFELLOW.

LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend: "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,

Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church tower, as a signal-light-
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm

Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm."

Then he said good-night, and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where, swinging wide at her moorings, lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war:

A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon, like a prison-bar,
And a huge, black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

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PAUL REVERE'S RIDE.

Meanwhile, his friend through alley and street
Wanders, and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack-door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed to the tower of the church,
Up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,

And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade-
Up the light ladder, slender and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the quiet town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the church-yard, lay the dead,
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still,
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"
A moment only he feels the spell

Of the place and the hour, the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay-
A line of black, that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, inpatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride,
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse's side,

PAUL REVERE'S RIDE.

Now gazed on the landscape far and near,
Then impetuous stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely, and spectral, and sombre, and still.

And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height,
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!

A hurry of hoofs in a village-street,

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A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed that flies fearless and fleet:
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;

And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.

It was twelve by the village-clock,

When he crossed the bridge into Medford town ;
He heard the crowing of the cock,

And the barking of the farmer's dog,
And felt the damp of the river-fog,
That rises when the sun goes down.

It was one by the village-clock,
When he rode into Lexington;
He saw the gilded weathercock

Swim in the moonlight as he passed,

And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,

Gaze at him with a spectral glare,

As if they already stood aghast

At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village-clock,

When he came to the bridge in Concord town;