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A SOLDIER of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, There was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's tears;

But a comrade stood beside him, while his lifeblood ebbed away,

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name

To listen to him kindly, without regret or shame, And bent, with pitying glances, to hear what he And to hang the old sword in its place (my famight say.

ther's sword and mine)

The dying soldier faltered, and he took that com- For the honor of old Bingen,

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"There's another, - not a sister; in the happy days gone by

You'd have known her by the merriment that sparkled in her eye;

Too innocent for coquetry, too fond for idle scorning,

O friend! I fear the lightest heart makes some times heaviest mourning!

Tell her the last night of my life (for, ere the moon | And upon platforms where the oak-trees grew,

be risen,

My body will be out of pain, my soul be out of

prison),

I dreamed I stood with her, and saw the yellow sunlight shine

Trumpets he set, huge beyond dreams of wonder,

Craftily purposed, when his arms withdrew,

To make him thought still housed there, like the thunder:

On the vine-clad hills of Bingen, -fair Bingen on And it so fell; for when the winds blew right,
the Rhine.
They woke their trumpets to their calls of might.
Unseen, but heard, their calls the trumpets blew,
Ringing the granite rocks, their only bearers,
Till the long fear into religion grew,

"I saw the blue Rhine sweep along, I heard, or seemed to hear,

The German songs we used to sing, in chorus sweet and clear;

And down the pleasant river, and up the slanting hill,

The echoing chorus sounded, through the evening calm and still;

And her glad blue eyes were on me, as we passed, with friendly talk,

Down many a path beloved of yore, and well

remembered walk!

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[In Eastern history are two Iskanders, or Alexanders, who are sometimes confounded, and both of whom are called Doolkar

And nevermore those heights had human darers.
Dreadful Doolkarnein was an earthly god;
His walls but shadowed forth his mightier
frowning;

Armies of giants at his bidding trod

From realm to realm, king after king dis

crowning.

When thunder spoke, or when the earthquake stirred,

Then, muttering in accord, his host was heard.

But when the winters marred the mountain shelves,

And softer changes came with vernal mornings, Something had touched the trumpets' lofty selves, And less and less rang forth their sovereign warnings;

Fewer and feebler; as when silence spreads

In plague-struck tents, where haughty chiefs, left dying,

Fail by degrees upon their angry beds,

Till, one by one, ceases the last stern sighing. One by one, thus, their breath the trumpets

drew,

Till now no more the imperious music blew.

Is he then dead? Can great Doolkarnein die?

Or can his endless hosts elsewhere be needed?
Were the great breaths that blew his minstrelsy
Phantoms, that faded as himself receded?
Or is he angered? Surely he still comes;
This silence ushers the dread visitation ;
Sudden will burst the torrent of his drums,
And then will follow bloody desolation.

nein, or the Two-Horned, in allusion to their subjugation of East So did fear dream; though now, with not a sound and West, horns being an Oriental symbol of power.

One of these heroes is Alexander of Macedon; the other a conqueror of more ancient times, who built the marvellous series of

ramparts on Mount Caucasus, known in fable as the wall of Gog and Magog, that is to say, of the people of the North. It reache from the Euxine Sea to the Caspian, where its flanks originated the subsequent appellation of the Caspian Gates.]

WITH awful walls, far glooming, that possessed The passes 'twixt the snow-fed Caspian fountains,

Doolkarnein, the dread lord of East and West, Shut up the northern nations in their mountains;

To scare good hope, summer had twice crept round.

Then gathered in a band, with lifted eyes,
The neighbors, and those silent heights as-
cended.

Giant, nor aught blasting their bold emprise,
They met, though twice they halted, breath
suspended :

Once, at a coming like a god's in rage
With thunderous leaps, but 't was the piled
snow, falling;

And once, when in the woods an oak, for age,
Fell dead, the silence with its groan appalling.
At last they came where still, in dread array,
As though they still might speak, the trumpets lay.

Unhurt they lay, like caverns above ground,

The rifted rocks, for hands, about them clinging, Their tubes as straight, their mighty mouths as round

And firm as when the rocks were first set ringing.

Fresh from their unimaginable mould

They might have seemed, save that the storms had stained them

With a rich rust, that now, with gloomy gold In the bright sunshine, beauteously engrained them.

Breathless the gazers looked, nigh faint for awe, Then leaped, then laughed. What was it now they saw?

Myriads of birds. Myriads of birds, that filled The trumpets all with nests and nestling voices! The great, huge, stormy music had been stilled By the soft needs that nursed those small, sweet noises !

O thou Doolkarnein, where is now thy wall? Where now thy voice divine and all thy forces? Great was thy cunning, but its wit was small Compared with nature's least and gentlest

courses.

Fears and false creeds may fright the realms awhile;

But heaven and earth abide their time, and smile.

LEIGH HUNT.

THE KNIGHT'S TOMB.

WHERE is the grave of Sir Arthur O'Kellyn?
Where may the grave of that good man be?-
By the side of a spring, on the breast of Helvellyn,
Under the twigs of a young birch-tree!
The oak that in summer was sweet to hear,
And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year,
And whistled and roared in the winter alone,
Is gone,
- and the birch in its stead is grown,
The knight's bones are dust,
And his good sword rust ;-

His soul is with the saints, I trust.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLeridge.

DIRGE FOR A SOLDIER. CLOSE his eyes; his work is done ! What to him is friend or foeman, Rise of moon or set of sun,

Hand of man or kiss of woman?

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That with the cries they make

The very earth did shake; Trumpet to trumpet spake, Thunder to thunder.

Well it thine age became,
O noble Erpingham!
Which did the signal aim

To our hid forces;

When, from a meadow by,
Like a storm suddenly,
The English archery

Struck the French horses,

With Spanish yew so strong, Arrows a cloth-yard long, That like to serpents stung,

Piercing the weather; None from his fellow starts, But playing manly parts, And like true English hearts,

Stuck close together.

When down their bows they threw,
And forth their bilboes drew,
And on the French they flew,

Not one was tardy;

Arms were from shoulders sent; Scalps to the teeth were rent; Down the French peasants went; Our men were hardy.

This while our noble king,
His broadsword brandishing,
Down the French host did ding,

As to o'erwhelm it;

And many a deep wound lent,
His arms with blood besprent,
And many a cruel dent

Bruiséd his helmet.

Glo'ster, that duke so good,
Next of the royal blood,
For famous England stood,

With his brave brother, Clarence, in steel so bright, Though but a maiden knight, Yet in that furious fight

Scarce such another.

Warwick in blood did wade;
Oxford the foe invade,
And cruel slaughter made,
Still as they ran up.
Suffolk his axe did ply;
Beaumont and Willoughby
Bare them right doughtily,
Ferrers and Fanhope.

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And 'twixt his finger and his thumb he held
A pouncet-box, which ever and anon
He gave his nose, and took 't away again;
Who, therewith angry, when it next came there,
Took it in snuff:-and still he smiled and talked ;
And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,
He called them untaught knaves, unmannerly,
To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse
Betwixt the wind and his nobility.
With many holiday and lady terms

He questioned me; among the rest, demanded
My prisoners in your majesty's behalf.

I then, all smarting, with my wounds being cold,
To be so pestered with a popinjay,
Out of my grief and my impatience,
Answered neglectingly, I know not what,
He should, or he should not; for he made me mad
To see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet,
And talk so like a waiting gentlewoman,

Of guns, and drums, and wounds, -God save the mark!

And telling me, the sovereign'st thing on earth
Was parmaceti for an inward bruise;
And that it was great pity, so it was,
That villanous saltpetre should be digged
Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,
Which many a good tall fellow had destroyed
So cowardly; and, but for these vile guns,
He would himself have been a soldier.

SHAKESPEARE.

MARMION AND DOUGLAS. NOT far advanced was morning day, When Marmion did his troop array To Surrey's camp to ride; He had safe-conduct for his band,

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