It stands in the Comitium,
Plain for all folk to see,
Horatius in his harness,

Halting upon one knee;
And underneath is written,
In letters all of gold,

How valiantly he kept the bridge

In the brave days of old.

Abridged from THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.

TO A WATER FOWL

WHITHER, midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,

Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean side?

There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,
The desert and illimitable air,

Lone wandering but not lost.

All day thy wings have fann'd,
At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end;

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend
Soon o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven

Hath swallowed up thy form: yet on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS

THIS is the ship of pearl which, poets feign,

Sails the unshadowed main,

The venturous bark that flings

On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings

In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,

And coral reefs lie bare,

Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;

Wrecked is the ship of pearl !

And every chambered cell,

Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,

As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,

Before thee lies revealed,

Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil

That spread his lustrous coil;

Still, as the spiral grew,

He left the past year's dwelling for the new,

Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,

Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no

more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,

Child of the wandering sea,

Cast from her lap, forlorn!

From thy dead lips a clearer note is born

Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!

While on mine ear it rings,

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that

sings:

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,

As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,

Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

THE FORCED RECRUIT

IN the ranks of the Austrian you found him,

He died with his face to you all;

Yet bury him here where around him
You honor your bravest that fall.

Venetian, fair-featured and slender,

He lies shot to death in his youth, With a smile on his lips over-tender For any mere soldier's dead mouth.

No stranger, and yet not a traitor,
Though alien the cloth on his breast,
Underneath it how seldom a greater
Young heart has a shot sent to rest!

By your enemy tortured and goaded

To march with them, stand in their file, His musket (see) never was loaded, He facing your guns with that smile!

As orphans yearn on to their mothers, He yearned to your patriot bands; "Let me die for our Italy, brothers,

If not in your ranks, by your hands!

"Aim straightly, fire steadily! spare me
A ball in the body which may

Deliver my heart here, and tear me
This badge of the Austrian away!”