V. THE IRON BELLS.

Hear the tolling of the bells--
Iron bells!

What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,

How we shiver with affright

At the melancholy menace of their tone!

For every sound that floats

From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.

And the people-ah, the people-
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone!

And who tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling

On the human heart a stone--
They are neither man nor woman—
They are neither brute nor human-
They are Ghouls:

And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls

A pæan from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells

With the pæan of the bells!
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the pæan of the bells-
Of the bells:

Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells-

To the sobbing of the bells

Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells,

To the tolling of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells.
Bells, bells, bells-

To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

VI. LOCHIEL'S WARNING.

Lochiel, Lochiel, beware of the day!

For, dark and despairing, my sight I may seal,
Yet man cannot cover what God would reveal:
"Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
And coming events cast their shadows before.
I tell thee, Culloden's dread echoes shall ring
With the blood-hounds that bark for thy fugitive king
Lo! anointed by heaven with the vials of wrath,
Behold where he flies on his desolate path!

Now, in darkness and billows, he sweeps from my sight:
Rise, rise! ye wild tempests, and cover his flight!
'Tis finished. Their thunders are hushed on the moors;
Culloden is lost, and my country deplores.

But where is the iron-bound prisoner? Where?
For the red eye of battle is shut in despair.
Say, mounts he the ocean-wave, banished, forlorn,

Like a limb from his country, cast bleeding and torn?
Ah no! for a darker departure is near;

The war-drum is muffled, and black is the bier;
His death-bell is tolling: oh! mercy, dispel

Yon sight that it freezes my spirit to tell!
Life flutters convulsed in his quivering limbs,
And his blood-streaming nostril in agony swims.
Accursed be the fagots that blaze at his feet,
Where his heart shall be thrown, ere it ceases to beat.

III. HIGH PITCH.

I. SPRING.

I come! I come!-ye have called me long:
I come o'er the mountains with light and song!
Ye may trace my step o'er the wakening earth,
By the winds which tell of the violet's birth,
By the primrose stars in the shadowy grass,
By the green leaves opening as I pass.

II. THE SILVER BELLS.

Hear the sledges with the bells—

Silver bells!

HEMANS.

What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,

In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;

Keeping time, time, time,

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells

From the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells

From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

III. THE BOBOLINK.

Merrily swinging on brier and weed,

Near to the nest of his little dame,

Over the mountain-side or mead,

Robert of Lincoln is telling his name,

Bob-o-link, bob-o-link,

Spink, spank, spink!

Snug and safe is that nest of ours,
Hidden among the summer flowers;
Chee, chee, chee!

POE.

BRYANT.

25. THE COYOTE.

1. The coyote of the farther deserts is a long, slim, sick, and sorry-looking skeleton, with a gray wolf-skin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth.

2. He has a general slinking expression all over. The coyote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck, and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. He is so spiritless and cowardly that, even while his exposed teeth are pretending a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it. And he is so homely!-so scrawny, and ribby, and coarse-haired, and pitiful!

3. When he sees you he lifts his lip and lets a flash of his teeth out, and then turns a little out of the course he was pursuing, depresses his head a bit, and strikes a long, soft-footed trot through the sage-brush, glancing over his shoulder at you, from time to time, till he is about out of easy pistol range, and then he stops and takes a deliberate survey of you; he will trot fifty yards and stop again—another fifty, and stop again; and, finally, the gray of his gliding body blends with the gray of the sage-brush, and he disappears.

4. But if you start a swift-footed dog after him, you will enjoy it ever so much—especially if it is a dog that has a good opinion of himself, and has been brought up to think that he knows something about speed. The coyote will go swinging gently off on that deceitful trot of his, and every little while he will smile a fraudful smile over his shoulder that will fill that dog entirely full of encouragement and worldly ambition, and make

him lay his head still lower to the ground, and stretch his neck farther to the front, and pant more fiercely, and move his furious legs with a yet wilder frenzy, and leave a broader and broader, and higher and denser cloud of desert sand smoking behind, and marking his long wake across the level country.

5. All this time the dog is only a short twenty feet behind the coyote, and, to save the life of him, he cannot understand why it is that he cannot get perceptibly closer; and he begins to get aggravated, and it makes him madder and madder to see how gently the coyote glides along, and never pants or sweats, or ceases to smile; and he grows still more and more incensed to see how shamefully he has been taken in by an entire stranger, and what an ignoble swindle that long, calm, soft-footed trot is.

6. And next the dog notices that he is getting fagged, and that the coyote actually has to slacken speed a little, to keep from running away from him. And then that town dog is mad in earnest, and he begins to strain, and weep, and swear, and paw the sand higher than ever, and reach for the coyote with concentrated and desperate energy.

7. This "spurt" finds him six feet behind the gliding enemy, and two miles from his friends. And then, in the instant that a wild new hope is lighting up his face, the coyote turns and smiles blandly upon him once more, and with a something about it which seems

to say:

8. "Well, I shall have to tear myself away from you, but-business is business, and it will not do for me to be fooling along this way all day." And forthwith there is a rushing sound, and the sudden splitting of a long crack through the atmosphere, and behold, that dog is solitary and alone in the midst of a vast solitude.

S. L. CLEMENS (Mark Twain).