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 forever,
And laugh but smile no more.

- Edgar Allan Poe

TO MY MOTHER

Because I feel that, in the Heavens above,
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of "Mother,"
Therefore by that dear name I long have called you
You who are more than mother unto me,

And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you,
In setting my Virginia's spirit free.

My mother my own mother, who died early,
Was but the mother of myself; but you

Are mother to the one I loved so dearly,

And thus are dearer than the mother I knew

By that infinity with which my wife

Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.

BEDOUIN SONG

- Edgar Allan Poe

From the Desert I come to thee
On a stallion shod with fire;

And the winds are left behind

In the speed of my desire.
Under thy window I stand,

And the midnight hears my cry:
I love thee, I love but thee,
With a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cola,

And the stars are old,

And the leaves of the Judgment
Book unfold!

Look from thy window and see

My passion and my pain;

I lie on the sands below,

And I faint in thy disdain.
Let the night-winds touch thy brow
With the heat of my burning sigh,

And melt thee to hear the vow

Of a love that shall not die

Till the sun grows cold,

And the stars are old,

And the leaves of the Judgment
Book unfold!

My steps are nightly driven,

By the fever in my breast,

To hear from thy lattice breathed
The word that shall give me rest.

Open the door of thy heart,
And open thy chamber door,
And my kisses shall teach thy lips

The love that shall fade no more

Till the sun grows cold,

And the stars are old,

And the leaves of the Judgment

Book unfold!

Bayard Taylor

THE SOLDIER'S DREAM

Our bugles sang truce, for the night-cloud had lower'd,
And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky;
And thousands had sunk on the ground overpower'd,
The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die.

When reposing that night on my pallet of straw
By the wolf-scaring faggot that guarded the slain,
At the dead of the night a sweet Vision I saw;
And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again.
Methought from the battle-field's dreadful array
Far, far, I had roam'd on a desolate track:

'T was Autumn, and sunshine arose on the way
To the home of my fathers, that welcomed me back.

I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft

In life's morning march, when my bosom was young;

I heard my own mountain-goats bleating aloft,

And knew the sweet strain that the corn-reapers sung.

Then pledged we the wine-cup, and fondly I swore
From my home and my weeping friends never to part;
My little one kiss'd me a thousand times o'er,

And my
"Stay stay with us!- rest! thou art
worn!" -

wife sobb'd aloud in her fulness of heart.

art weary and

And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay; But sorrow return'd with the dawning of morn, And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away. Thomas Campbell

THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE AFTER CORUNNA

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corpse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light
And the lantern dimly burning.

No useless coffin enclosed his breast,

Not in sheet nor in shroud we wound him; But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him.

Few and short were the prayers we said,

And we spoke not a word of sorrow;

But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

We thought, as we hollow'd his narrow bed

And smoothed down his lonely pillow,

That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head, And we far away on the billow!

Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone

And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him, — But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

But half of our heavy task was done

When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing.

Slowly and sadly we laid him down,

From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,
But we left him alone with his glory.

Charles Wolfe

THE DEATH BED

We watch'd her breathing thro' the night,

Her breathing soft and low,

As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.

So silently we seem'd to speak,

So slowly moved about,

As we had lent her half our powers
To eke her living out.

Our very hopes belied our fears,
Our fears our hopes belied

We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.