There for my lady's bower
Built I the lofty tower,
Which, to this very hour,
Stands looking seaward.

"There lived we many years; Time dried the maiden's tears: She had forgot her fears,

She was a mother :

Death closed her mild blue eyes,
Under that tower she lies;

Ne'er shall the sun arise

On such another!

"Still grew my

bosom then,

E

Still as a stagnant fen!
Hateful to me were men,

The sunlight hateful!
In the vast forest here,
Clad in my warlike gear,
Fell I upon my spear,

O, death was grateful!

"Thus, seamed with many scars, Bursting these prison bars,

Up to its native stars

My soul ascended!

There from the flowing bowl

Deep drinks the warrior's soul,

Skoal! to the Northland! skoal!” Thus the tale ended.

S

THE HAUNTED HOUSE.

BY THOMAS HOOD.

I.

OME dreams we have are nothing else but dreams
Unnatural and full of contradictions;

Yet others of our most romantic schemes

Are something more than fictions.

It might be only on enchanted ground;
It might be merely by a thought's expansion;
But in the spirit, or the flesh, I found
An old deserted mansion.

A dwelling-place, and yet no habitation; A house, but under some prodigious ban Of excommunication.

Unhinged, the iron gates half open hung,

Jarred by the gusty gales of many winters,

That from its crumbled pedestal had flung
One marble globe in splinters.

No dog was at the threshold, great or small;

No pigeon on the roof, no household creature, No cat demurely dozing on the wall, —

Not one domestic feature.

No human figure stirred, to go or come;

No face looked forth from shut or open casement;

From parapet to basement.

With shattered panes the grassy court was starred; The time-worn coping-stone had tumbled after; And through the ragged roof the sky shone, barred With naked beam and rafter.

O'er all there hung a shadow and a fear;
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is haunted!

The flower grew wild and rankly as the weed,
Roses with thistles struggled for espial,
And vagrant plants of parasitic breed

Had overgrown the dial.

But gay or gloomy, steadfast or infirm,

No heart was there to heed the hour's duration;

All times and tides were lost in one long term

Of stagnant desolation.

The wren had built within the porch, she found
Its quiet loneliness so sure and thorough;
And on the lawn, within its turfy mound,
The rabbit made his burrow,

The rabbit wild and gray, that flitted through

The shrubby clumps, and frisked, and sat, and vanished, But leisurely and bold, as if he knew

His enemy was banished.

The wary crow, the pheasant from the woods,
Lulled by the still and everlasting sameness,
Close to the mansion, like domestic broods,
Fed with a "shocking tameness."

The coot was swimming in the reedy pond,
Beside the water-hen, so soon affrighted;
And in the weedy moat the heron, fond
Of solitude, alighted, —

The moping heron, motionless and stiff,
That on a stone, as silently and stilly,
Stood, an apparent sentinel, as if
To guard the water-lily.

No sound was heard, except, from far away,
The ringing of the whitewall's shrilly laughter,

Or, now and then, the chatter of the jay,

That Echo murmured after.

But Echo never mocked the human tongue;

Some weighty crime, that Heaven could not pardon,

A secret curse on that old building hung,
And its deserted garden.

The beds were all untouched by hand or tool;
No footstep marked the damp and mossy gravel,
Each walk as green as is the mantled pool,

For want of human travel.

The vine unpruned, and the neglected peach,
Dropped from the wall with which they used to grapple;
And on the cankered tree, in easy reach,

Rotted the golden apple.

But awfully the truant shunned the ground,
The vagrant kept aloof, and daring poacher,
In spite of gaps that through the fences round
Invited the encroacher.

For over all there hung a cloud of fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is haunted!

The pear and quince lay squandered on the grass;
The mould was purple with unheeded showers
Of bloomy plums, a wilderness it was

Of fruits and weeds and flowers.

The marigold amidst the nettles blew,

The gourd embraced the rose-bush in its ramble,

K