BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST.

85

In that same hour and hall,
The fingers of a hand
Came forth against the wall,
And wrote as if on sand:

The fingers of a man ;—
A solitary hand

Along the letters ran,

And traced them like a wand.

The monarch saw and shook,
And bade no more rejoice;
And bloodless waxed his look,
And tremulous his voice.
"Let the men of lore appear,
The wisest of the earth,
And expound the words of fear,
Which mar our royal mirth."

Chaldea's seers are good,

But here they have no skill;
And the unknown letters stood
Untold and awful still.

of his life was spent in foreign travel in the south of Europe, his poems being sent home at intervals for publication. A sad mystery hangs over the career of Byron. His separation from his wife, the charitable and amiable lady who so lately passed away from among us, excited great, and not undeserved, hostility against him; and he quitted England with a determination to return no more. Poems, sometimes soaring to the heights of poetic genius, at others trailing through the very slough of impurity and coarseness, gave evidence, from time to time, of the workings of the mighty but ill-regulated spirit, till, in 1824, England was startled by the intelligence of the premature death of a poet, whose powers, though frequently abused, were still marvellously great.]

To a Bee.

THOU wert out betimes, thou

busy, busy bee! [way, As abroad I took my early Before the cow from her restingplace

Had risen up, and left her trace

On the meadow, with dew so

grey,

Saw I thee, thou busy, busy bee.

Thou wert working late, thou busy,

busy bee!

After the fall of the cistus flower,

When the primrose of evening was ready to burst,

I heard thee last, as I saw thee first;

In the silence of the evening hour,

Heard I thee, thou busy, busy bee.

Thou art a miser, thou busy, busy bee!
Late and early at employ;

Still on thy golden stores intent,

Thy summer in keeping and hoarding is spent,
What thy winter will never enjoy;

Wise lesson this for me, thou busy, busy bee!

Little dost thou think, thou busy, busy bee!

What is the end of thy toil.

When the latest flowers of the ivy are gone,
And all thy work for the year is done,

Thy master comes for the spoil;

Woe, then, for thee, thou busy, busy bee!

SOUTHEY.

The Soldier's Dream.

UR 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 fagot, 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 :
'Twas 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 pledg'd we the wine-cup; and fondly I swore, From my home and my weeping friends never to part!

My little ones kiss'd me a thousand times o'er;

And my wife sobb'd aloud, in her fullness of heart: "Stay-stay with us; rest: thou art weary, and worn.' 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!

CAMPBELL.