Silence, silence everywhere,
On the earth and in the air,
Save that footsteps here and there
Of some burgher home returning,
By the street lamps faintly burning,
For a moment woke the echoes
Of the ancient town of Bruges.

But amid my broken slumbers
Still I heard those magic numbers,
As they loud proclaimed the flight
And stolen marches of the night;
Till their chimes in sweet collision
Mingled with each wandering vision,
Mingled with the fortune-telling
Gypsy-bands of dreams and fancies,
Which amid the waste expanses
Of the silent land of trances
Have their solitary dwelling.
All else seemed asleep in Bruges,
In the quaint old Flemish city.

And I thought how like these chimes
Are the poet's airy rhymes,
All his rhymes and roundelays,
His conceits, and songs, and ditties,
From the belfry of his brain,
Scattered downward, though in vain,
On the roofs and stones of cities !
For by night the drowsy ear
Under its curtains cannot hear,
And by day men go their ways,
Hearing the music as they pass,
But deeming it no more, alas!
Than the hollow sound of brass.

Yet perchance a sleepless wight,
Lodging at some humble inn
In the narrow lanes of life,
When the dusk and hush of night
Shut out the incessant din

Of daylight and its toil and strife,
May listen with a calm delight

To the poet's melodies,

Till he hears, or dreams he hears,
Intermingled with the song,
Thoughts that he has cherished long ;
Hears amid the chime and singing
The bells of his own village ringing,
And wakes, and finds his slumberous eyes
Wet with most delicious tears.

Thus dreamed I, as by night I lay
In Bruges, at the Fleur-de-Blé,
Listening with a wild delight

To the chimes that, through the night,
Rang their changes from the Belfry
Of that quaint old Flemish city.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

THE PASSING-BELL.

FROM "AIRS OF PALESTINE."

And the hands, as they swept o'er the dial of gold, Seemed to point to the girl below.

And lo she had changed in a few short hours

:

chime ;

-

For music measures even the march of time:
O'er bending trees, that fringe the distant shore,
Gray turrets rise; the eye can catch no more.
The boatman, listening to the tolling bell,
Suspends his oar; - a low and solemn swell,
From the deep shade that round the cloister lies,
Rolls through the air, and on the water dies.
What melting song wakes the cold ear of night?
A funeral dirge that pale nuns, robed in white,
Chant round a sister's dark and narrow bed,
To charm the parting spirit of the dead.
Triumphant is the spell! with raptured ear
The uncaged spirit, hovering, lingers near;
Why should she mount? why pant for brighter

bliss,

A lovelier scene, a sweeter song, than this? JOHN PIERPONT.

PASSING AWAY.

A DREAM.

WAS it the chime of a tiny bell

That came so sweet to my dreaming ear, Like the silvery tones of a fairy's shell

That he winds, on the beach, so mellow and
clear,

When the winds and the waves lie together asleep,
And the Moon and the Fairy are watching the deep,
She dispensing her silvery light,
And he his notes as silvery quite,
While the boatman listens and ships his oar,
To catch the music that comes from the shore?
Hark! the notes on my ear that play
Are set to words; as they float, they say,
"Passing away! passing away!"

But no; it was not a fairy's shell,
Blown on the beach, so mellow and clear;
Nor was it the tongue of a silver bell,
Striking the hour, that filled my ear,
As I lay in my dream; yet was it a chime
That told of the flow of the stream of time.
For a beautiful clock from the ceiling hung,
And a plump little girl, for a pendulum, swung
(As you've sometimes seen, in a little ring
That hangs in his cage, a canary-bird swing);
And she held to her bosom a budding bouquet,
And, as she enjoyed it, she seemed to say,
"Passing away! passing away!"

O, how bright were the wheels, that told Of the lapse of time, as they moved round slow!

That she held in her outstretched hands, and

flung

This way and that, as she, dancing, swung
In the fullness of grace and of womanly pride,
That told me she soon was to be a bride;
Yet then, when expecting her happiest day,
In the same sweet voice I heard her say,

"Passing away! passing away!"

While I gazed at that fair one's cheek, a shade
Of thought or care stole softly over,
Like that by a cloud in a summer's day made,

Looking down on a field of blossoming clover. The rose yet lay on her cheek, but its flush

Had something lost of its brilliant blush ; And the light in her eye, and the light on the wheels

That marched so calmly round above her, Was a little dimmed, -as when Evening steals Upon Noon's hot face. Yet one could n't

but love her,

For she looked like a mother whose first babe lay Rocked on her breast, as she swung all day; And she seemed, in the same silver tone, to say, "Passing away! passing away!"

While yet I looked, what a change there came ! Hereye was quenched, and her cheek was wan ; Stooping and staffed was her withered frame, Yet just as busily swung she on ; The garland beneath her had fallen to dust; The wheels above her were eaten with rust; The hands, that over the dial swept, Grew crooked and tarnished, but on they kept, And still there came that silver tone From the shriveled lips of the toothless crone (Let me never forget till my dying day The tone or the burden of her lay), "Passing away! passing away! JOHN PIERPONT.

THE CUCKOO CLOCK.

FROM "THE BIRTHDAY."

"

BUT chief-surpassing all — a cuckoo clock !
That crowning wonder! miracle of art!
How have I stood entranced uncounted minutes,
With held-in breath, and eyes intently fixed
On that small magic door, that when complete
The expiring hour-the irreversible-
Flew open with a startling suddenness
That, though expected, sent the rushing blood
In mantling flushes o'er my upturned face ;

OZYMANDIAS OF EGYPT.

I MET a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that
fed;

And on the pedestal these words appear :
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

In Memnon's statue, which at sunrise played? Perhaps thou wert a priest, if so, my struggles Are vain, for priestcraft never owns its juggles.

Perhaps that very hand, now pinioned flat,
Has hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh, glass to glass;
Or dropped a halfpenny in Homer's hat;
Or doffed thine own to let Queen Dido pass;
Or held, by Solomon's own invitation,
A torch at the great temple's dedication.

I need not ask thee if that hand, when armed,
Has any Roman soldier mauled and knuckled ;
For thou wert dead and buried and embalmed

Ere Romulus and Remus had been suckled : Antiquity appears to have begun Long after thy primeval race was run.

Thou couldst develop - if that withered tongue Might tell us what those sightless orbs have

seen

How the world looked when it was fresh and young, And the great deluge still had left it green; Or was it then so old that history's pages Contained no record of its early ages?

Still silent! incommunicative elf!

Art sworn to secrecy? then keep thy vows; But prithee tell us something of thyself, Reveal the secrets of thy prison-house; Since in the world of spirits thou hast slumbered, What hast thou seen, what strange adventures numbered?

Since first thy form was in this box extended We have, above ground, seen some strange mutations;

The Roman empire has begun and ended,

New worlds have risen, we have lost old na

tions;

And countless kings have into dust been humbled, While not a fragment of thy flesh has crumbled.

Didst thou not hear the pother o'er thy head,

When the great Persian conqueror, Cambyses, Marched armies o'er thy tomb with thundering tread,

O'erthrew Osiris, Orus, Apis, Isis;

And shook the pyramids with fear and wonder, When the gigantic Memnon fell asunder?

If the tomb's secrets may not be confessed,
The nature of thy private life unfold:

A heart has throbbed beneath that leathern breast,
And tears adown that dusty cheek have rolled;
Have children climbed those knees, and kissed

that face?

What was thy name and station, age and race?