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His form was ponderous, and his step was slow; Searching for worm or weevil after rain, There never was so wise a man before;

Or a few cherries that are not so sweet

He seemed the incarnate “Well, I told you so!" As are the songs these uninvited guests And to perpetuate his great renown, There was a street named after him in town.

These came together in the new town-hall,
With sundry farmers from the region round:
The Squire presided, dignified and tall,

His air impressive and his reasoning sound. Ill fared it with the birds, both great and small, Hardly a friend in all that crowd they found, But enemies enough, who every one

Charged them with all the crimes beneath the sun.

When they had ended, from his place apart
Rose the Preceptor, to redress the wrong,
And, trembling like a steed before the start,
Looked round bewildered on the expectant
throng:

Then thought of fair Almira, and took heart

To speak out what was in him, clear and strong.

Sing at their feast with comfortable breasts.

"Do you ne'er think what wondrous beings these?

Do you ne'er think who made them, and who taught

The dialect they speak, where melodies

Alone are the interpreters of thought? Whose household words are songs in many keys, Sweeter than instrument of man e'er caught! Whose habitations in the tree-tops even Are half-way houses on the road to heaven!

"Think, every morning when the sun peeps through The dim, leaf-latticed windows of the grove, How jubilant the happy birds renew

Their old melodious madrigals of love! And when you think of this, remember, too, 'Tis always morning somewhere, and above

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That year in Killingworth the Autumn came
Without the light of his majestic look,
The wonder of the falling tongues of flame,

The illumined pages of his Dooms-Day Book.
A few lost leaves blushed crimson with their shame,
And drowned themselves despairing in the brook,
While the wild wind went moaning everywhere,
Lamenting the dead children of the air.

But the next Spring, a stranger sight was seen,
A sight that never yet by bard was sung,
As great a wonder as it would have been

If some dumb animal had found a tongue:
A wagon overarched with evergreen,

Upon whose boughs were wicker cages hung, All full of singing-birds came down the street, Filling the air with music wild and sweet.

From all the country round these birds were brought

By order of the town, with anxious quest, And, loosened from their wicker prison, sought In woods and fields the places they loved best, Singing loud canticles, which many thought

Were satires to the authorities addressed; While others, listening in green lanes, averred Such lovely music never had been heard.

But blither still and louder carolled they
Upon the morrow, for they seemed to know
It was the fair Almira's wedding-day;

And everywhere, around, above, below,
When the Preceptor bore his bride away,

Their songs burst forth in joyous overflow, And a new heaven bent over a new earth Amid the sunny farms of Killingworth.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

Arethusa.

ARETHUSA arose

From her couch of snows

In the Acroceraunian mountains,From cloud and from crag With many a jag,

Shepherding her bright fountains.

She leapt down the rocks
With her rainbow locks

Streaming among the streams;

Her steps paved with green The downward ravine Which slopes to the western gleams, And, gliding and springing, She went, ever singing

In murmurs as soft as sleep;

The Earth seemed to love her, And Heaven smiled above her, As she lingered towards the deep.

Then Alpheus bold,

On his glacier cold,

With his trident the mountains strook And opened a chasm

In the rocks; with the spasmn

All Erymanthus shook.

And the black south wind,
It concealed behind

The urns of the silent snow,

And earthquake and thunder
Did rend in sunder
The bars of the springs below;
The beard and the hair
Of the river-god were
Seen through the torrent's sweep,
As he followed the light
Of the fleet nymph's flight
To the brink of the Dorian deep.

"Oh, save me! Oh, guide me!
And bid the deep hide me,
For he grasps me now by the hair!”
The loud Ocean heard,

To its blue depth stirred,
And divided at her prayer;
And under the water
The Earth's white daughter
Fled like a sunny beam;

Behind her descended

Her billows, unblended
With the brackish Dorian stream.
Like a gloomy stain
On the emerald main,
Alpheus rushed behind,-
As an eagle pursuing
A dove to its ruin

Down the streams of the cloudy wind

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