"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked,

upstarting.

"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian

shore :

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken.

Leave my loneliness unbroken, quit the bust above my door: Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door."

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore!"

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting, On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming1 of a demon's that is dreaming,

And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor:

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the

floor

Shall be lifted

NEVERMORE!

POE.

112.- Apostrophe to the Ocean.

This splendid "Apostrophe to the Ocean" is from the fourth canto of Byron's most celebrated poem, the "Childe Harold."

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

1 seeming, semblance, appearance.

There is society where none intrudes-
By the deep sea, and music in its roar.
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal1
From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet can not all conceal.

2

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, - roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain.
Man marks the earth with ruin: his control
Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals;
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war,-
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,

1 steal, retire. 2 Roll on. Note that the apostrophic form of address is necessarily expressed in imperative sentences.

8 armaments . . . oak leviathans. "Armaments;" i.e., fleets: by "oak leviathans" is meant the huge old English men-of-war; "leviathan" meaning a huge fish.

They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's pride,' or spoils of Trafalgar."

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee. Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters wash'd them power while they were free, And many a tyrant since: their shores obey The stranger, slave or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts. Not so thou: Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play, Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow: Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Calm or convulsed, in breeze or gale or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark heaving, boundless, endless, and sublime, -
The image of eternity, the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made: each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

brated naval engagement, in which the English commander Lord Nelson destroyed the combined French and Spanish fleets.

1 Armada's pride; i.e., the great | which was fought in 1805 a celefleet called the "Grand Armada (armament), fitted out by Philip II. of Spain to invade England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and which was destroyed by the Eng- 8 glasses, reflects. Note that lish ships of war under command the word "glasses" is the carryingof Drake and Raleigh. out of the metaphor beginning 2 Trafalgar, a cape in Spain, off "Thou glorious mirror."

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers; they to me.
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror, 'twas a pleasing fear;
For I was, as it were, a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane

as I do here.

BYRON.

113.-Tell Me, Ye Wingéd Winds.

Tell me, ye wingéd winds,

That round my pathway roar,
Do you not know some spot
Where mortals weep no more?
Some lone and pleasant dell,
Some valley in the west,

Where, free from toil and pain,
The weary soul may rest?

The loud wind softened to a whisper low,
And sighed for pity as it whispered "No!"

Tell me, thou mighty deep,
Whose billows round me play,
Know'st thou some favored spot,
Some island far away,

1 wantoned, played joyously.

Where weary man may find
The bliss for which he sighs,
Where sorrow never lives,

And friendship never dies?

The loud waves, rolling in perpetual flow,
Stopped for a while, and sighed to answer "No!"

And thou, serenest moon,
That with such holy face
Dost look upon the earth,
Asleep in night's embrace,
Tell me, in all thy round,
Hast thou not seen some spot,
Where miserable man

Might find a happier lot?

Behind a cloud the moon withdrew in woe,
And a voice sweet, but sad, responded "No!"

Faith, Hope, and Love,― best boons to mortals given,—

Waved their bright wings, and whispered, "Yes: in

Heaven!"

1 secret soul, inner thought.

MACKAY.