6. At first happy news came, in gay letters moiled

With my kisses, of camp life and glory, and how
They both loved me, and soon, coming home to be spoiled,
In return would fan off every fly from my brow
With their green laurel bough.

7. Then was triumph at Turin, Ancona was free,
And some one came out of the cheers in the street,
With a face pale as stone, to say something to me.
My Guido was dead! I fell down at his feet
While they cheered in the street.

8. I bore it! friends soothed me; my grief looked sublime
As the ransom of Italy. One boy yet remained
To be leant on, and walked with, recalling the time
When the first grew immortal, while both of us strained
To the height he had gained.

9. And letters still came, shorter, sadder, more strong,
Writ now but in one hand. I was not to faint.
One loved me for two; would be with me ere long;
And "Viva Italia" he died for, our saint,

"Who forbids our complaint."

10. My Nanni would add he " was safe, and aware

Of a presence that turned off the balls, was imprest
It was Guido himself who knew what I could bear,
And how 'twas impossible, quite dispossessed,
To live on for the rest,"

11. On which without pause up the telegraph line Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta:

Shot. Tell his mother. Ah! ah! "his," "their" mother,

not "mine.'

66

No voice says
'my mother" again to me. What!
You think Guido forgot?

12. Are souls straight so happy that, dizzy with Heaven,
They drop earth's affections, conceive not of woe?
I think not. Themselves were too lately forgiven
Through that love and that sorrow that reconciles so
The Above and Below.

13. O Christ of the seven wounds, who look'dst thro' the dark To the face of Thy mother! consider, I pray,

How we common mothers stand desolate-mark,
Whose sons not being Christs, die with eyes turned
away,

And no last word to say!

14. Both boys dead! but that's out of nature. We all
Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one.
'Twere imbecile hewing out roads to a wall.

And, when Italy's made, for what end is it done
If we have not a son?

15. Ah! ah! ah! when Gaeta's taken, what then?

When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport Of the fire-balls of death, crashing souls out of men, When the guns of Cavalli, with final retort,

Have cut the game short,

16. When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee, When your flag takes all heaven for its green, white and red,

When

you have a country from mountain to sea, When King Victor has Italy's crown on his head,

And I have my dead

17. What then? Do not mock me.

And burn your lights faintly.

Ah! ring your bells low,

My country is there,

Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow;

My Italy's there, with my brave civic pair,
To disfranchise despair.

18. Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the west,

And one of them shot in the east by the sea. Both! both my boys! If, in keeping the feast, You want a great song for your Italy free, Let none look at me.

Beneath her prow, with bodeful moan,

The conquering wave bends sullenly.
And, chill and drear, a shadow creeps
Along the wild and misty deeps

That roll to windward and a-lee.

2. With maniac laughter, deep and low,
The hungry caverns mock her way;
A pallid sea-bird, wheeling slow,
Shrieks to his mother-sea, below

The hopeless flight of human prey;
And o'er the waste of water broods
The dreariest of Nature's moods,
Bereft of all save bleak dismay.

3. A sudden blenching strikes the sea
To windward, and the fearful twang
Of Neptune's trident hums a glee
Of might, and wrath, and agony,

Far where the breakers boom and clang:
Like flying shrouds from rifled graves,
The pallid foam drifts on the waves,

Whence ocean's slumbering furies sprang.

4. Into the jeweled arms of night

The mad storm leaps, his vap'ry hair
Drifts o'er her queenly breast bedight,
And quenches all its gemmy light;
And down the corridors of air,
'Mong tapestries of cloud, the moon
Flits by with white, scared face, and soon
Night and the storm hold empire there!

5. The stricken billows leap away

With trampling thunders in the gale,
And, staggering blindly to the fray,
The strong ship starts each bolt and stay;

Her cordage shrieks, and with a wail
She plunges downward in the gloom
Of roaring gorges, hoarse with doom,
And none alive may tell the tale.

6. What thoughts there came of home and friends,
What prayers were said, what kisses thrown,
Were lost upon the wind, that lends

Its borrowed wealth no more, yet blends
A sigh of trouble with the moan
That sadly haunts the restless waves—
Forever rolling o'er the caves

Where richer things than pearls are strewn.
7. They sailed one day, and came—no more !
All else is wrapt in mystery;

The surges kneel upon the shore,
And tell their sorrows o'er and o'er;
And still above the northern sea,

A pensive spirit, pale and slow,
The gray gull, wheeling to and fro,
Keeps watch and ward eternally.

LESSON LXV.

EULOGY ON DANIEL WEBSTER.

BY RUFUS CHOATE.

Rufus Choate was born in Essex, Massachusetts, in 1799. He received his education at Dartmouth College, graduating with the highest honors of his class in 1819. He studied law in the office of William Wirt, at Washington, and was admit ted to the bar in 1824. He soon distinguished himself in his profession, and was elected a member of Congress in 1832. At the expiration of his term he declined a re-election, and moved to Boston for a wider fleld. In 1841 he was chosen to succeed Daniel Webster in the United States Senate, and afterward returned to the practice of law. He went abroad for his health in 1859, and died at Halifax in July of that year. Rufus Choate was a man of brilliant intellect, strong in reason, and splendid in imagination. For ready, fervid, magnificent, and overpowering eloquence, he has had no superior, and scarcely a peer, in American history.

I even in

N looking over the public remains of Webster's oratory, it