THE CHILDREN'S HOUR. BETWEEN the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupations, That is known as the Children's Hour. I hear in the chamber above me The patter of little feet, The sound of a door that is opened, And voices soft and sweet. From my study I see in the lamplight, Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, A whisper, and then a silence: Yet I know by their merry eyes They are plotting and planning together To take me by surprise. A sudden rush from the stairway, By three doors left unguarded They climb up into my turret O'er the arms and back of my chair; If I try to escape, they surround me; They seem to be everywhere. They almost devour me with kisses, In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine! Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti, Because you have scaled the wall, Such an old moustache as I am Is not a match for you all! I have you fast in my fortress, But put you down into the dungeon And there will I keep you forever, Yes, forever and a day, Till the walls shall crumble to ruin, And moulder in dust away! ENCELADUS. UNDER Mount Etna he lies, It is slumber, it is not death; For he struggles at times to arise, And above him the lurid skies Are hot with his fiery breath. The crags are piled on his breast, The earth is heaped on his head; But the groans of his wild unrest, Though smothered and half suppressed, Are heard, and he is not dead. And the nations far away Are watching with eager eyes; They talk together and say, And the old gods, the austere At the ominous sounds they hear, And tremble, and mutter, "At length!" Ah me! for the land that is sown With the harvest of despair! Where the burning cinders, blown Where ashes are heaped in drifts His head through the blackened rifts |