The Windy Night

Alow and aloof,
Over the roof,

How the midnight tempests howl!

With a dreary voice, like the dismal tune
Of wolves that bay at the desert moon;—
Or whistle and shriek

Through limbs that creak,
"Tu-who! tu-whit!"

They cry and flit,

"Tu-whit! tu-who!" like the solemn owl!

Alow and aloof,
Over the roof,

Sweep the moaning winds amain,

And wildly dash

The elm and ash,

Clattering on the window-sash,

With a clatter and patter,
Like hail and rain

That well nigh shatter
The dusky pane!

Alow and aloof,
Over the roof,

How the tempests swell and roar!
Though no foot is astir,
Though the cat and the cur

* By courtesy of J. B. Lippincott & Co.

The

World Beautiful

The Lie dozing along the kitchen floor,

World
Beautiful

There are feet of air
On every stair!
Through every hall-
Through each gusty door,

There's a jostle and bustle,
With a silken rustle,

Like the meeting of guests at a festival!

Alow and aloof,

Over the roof,

How the stormy tempests swell!

And make the vane

On the spire complain—

They heave at the steeple with might and main
And burst and sweep

Into the belfry, on the bell!

They smite it so hard, and they smite it so well,
That the sexton tosses his arms in sleep,

And dreams he is ringing a funeral knell!
THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.

The Brook

I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally,

And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges;
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret,
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river;
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel,

With many a silvery waterbreak

Above the golden gravel.

The World Beautiful

The

World

Beautiful

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;

I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeams dance
Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;

I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses.

And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.

The Brook in Winter

Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak,

From the snow five thousand summers old;

On open wold and hill-top bleak

It had gathered all the cold,

And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek;

It carried a shiver everywhere

From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare;
The little brook heard it and built a roof
'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof;
All night by the white stars' frosty gleams
He groined his arches and matched his beams;
Slender and clear were his crystal spars
As the lashes of light that trim the stars;
He sculptured every summer delight
In his halls and chambers out of sight; -
Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt

Down through a frost-leaved forest crypt,
Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees
Bending to counterfeit a breeze;

Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew;
But silvery mosses that downward grew;
Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief
With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf;
Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear
For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and
here

He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops
And hung them thickly with diamond drops,
That crystalled the beams of moon and sun,
And made a star of every one:

No mortal builder's most rare device
Could match this winter-palace of ice;
'T was as if every image that mirrored lay

The World Beautiful