Her step grew firmer on the hills That watch our homesteads over; For health comes sparkling in the streams, She sat beneath the broad-armed elms Beside her, from the summer heat Framed in its damp, dark locks, his face She looked up, glowing with the health "To mend your frock and bake your bread You do not need a lady: Be sure among these brown old homes "Some fair, sweet girl with skilful hand He bent his black brows to a frown, "You think, because my life is rude, "Itself its best excuse, it asks No leave of pride or fashion, "You think me deaf and blind; you bring Your winning graces hither, As free as if from cradle-time, "You tempt me with your laughing eyes,. A music as of thrushes. "The plaything of your summer sport, The spells you weave around me, You cannot at your will undo, Nor leave me as you found me. "You go as lightly as you came, "No mood is mine to seek a wife, "I dare your pity or your scorn, She looked up in his face of pain, "And if I lend you mine," she said, 66 Will you forgive the lender? "Nor frock nor tan can hide the man; "I love you: on that love alone, Alone the hangbird overhead, His hair-swung cradle straining, And so the farmer found a wife, There looks no happier home than hers Flowers spring to blossom where she walks Our hard, stiff lines of life with her Our homes are cheerier for her sake, We send the squire to eneral Court; No prouder man election-day Rides through the sweet June weather. So spake our landlord as we drove Until, at last, beneath its bridge, And, musing on the tale I heard, If more and more we found the troth And culture's charm and labor's strength The simple life, the homely hearth, THE FIRE-FIEND.-C. D. Gardette. A NIGHTMARE. The Author of this was challenged to produce a poem, in the manner of "The Raven," which should be accepted by the general critic as a genuine composition of Mr. Poe's, and "The Fire-Fiend" was the result. It was printed as "from an unpublished MS. of the late Edgar A. Poe," and the hoax proved sufficiently successful to deceive a number of critics in this country, and also in England. IN the deepest dearth of Midnight, while the sad and solemn swell Still was floating, faintly echoed from the Forest Chapel Bell Faintly, falteringly floating o'er the sable waves of air That were through the Midnight rolling, chafed and billowy with the tolling In my chamber I lay dreaming by the fire-light's fitful gleaming, And my dreams were dreams foreshadowed on a heart foredoomed to Care! As the last long lingering echo of the Midnight's mystic chime Lifting through the sable billows to the Thither Shore of Time Leaving on the starless silence not a token nor a traceIn a quivering sigh departed; from my couch in fear I started: Started to my feet in terror, for my Dream's phantasmal Error Painted in the fitful fire, a frightful, fiendish, flaming face! On the red hearth's reddest centre, from a blazing knot of oak, Seemed to gibe and grin this Phantom when in terror I awoke, And my slumberous eyelids straining as I staggered to the floor, Still in that dread Vision seeming, turned my gaze toward the gleaming Hearth, and there !-oh, God! I saw It! and from out Its flaming jaw It Spat a ceaseless, seething, hissing, bubbling, gurgling stream of gore! Speechless; struck with stony silence; frozen to the floor I stood, Till methought my brain was hissing with that hissing, bubbling blood: Till I felt my life-stream oozing, oozing from those lambent lips :- Till the Demon seemed to name me:-then a wondrous calm o'ercame me, And my brow grew cold and dewy, with a death-damp stiff and gluey, And I fell back on my pillow in apparent soul-eclipse! Then, as in Death's seeming shadow, in the icy Pall of Fear I lay stricken, came a hoarse and hideous murmur to my ear: Came a murmur like the murmur of assassins in their sleep : 66 Higher! higher! higher! I am Demon of Muttering, I am Arch-Fiend of the Fire! and each blazing roof's my pyre, And my sweetest incense is the blood and tears my victims weep! "How I revel on the Prairie! How I roar among the Pines ! How I laugh when from the village o'er the snow the red flame shines, And I hear the shrieks of terror, with a Life in every breath! How I scream with lambent laughter as I hurl each crackling rafter Down the fell abyss of Fire, until higher! higher! higher! Leap the High-Priests of my Altar in their merry Dance of Death! "I am Monarch of the Fire! I am Vassal-King of Death! World-encircling, with the shadow of its Doom upon my breath! With the symbol of Hereafter flaming from my fatal face! I command the Eternal Fire! Higher! higher! higher! higher! Leap my ministering Demons, like Phantasmagoric lemans Hugging Universal Nature in their hideous embrace !" Then a sombre silence shut me in a solemn, shrouded sleep, And I slumbered, like an infant in the "Cradle of the Deep," |