The clock struck twelve; the Dead hath heard;

He opened both his eyes,

And sullenly he shook his tail

To lash the feeding flies.

One quiver of the hempen cord,

One struggle and one bound,

With stiffened limb and leaden eye,
The Pig was on the ground!

And straight towards the sleeper's house
His fearful way he wended;

And hooting owl, and hovering bat,
On midnight wing attended.

Back flew the bolt, up rose the latch,
And open swung the door,

And little mincing feet were heard

Pat, pat along the floor.

Two hoofs upon the sanded floor,
And two upon the bed;

And they are breathing side by side,

The living and the dead!

"Now wake, now wake, thou butcher man!
What makes thy cheek so pale?

Take hold! take hold thou dost not fear
To clasp a spectre's tail?"

Untwisted every winding coil:

The shuddering wretch took hold,

All like an icicle it seemed,

So tapering and so cold.

"Thou com'st with me, thou butcher man
He strives to loose his grasp,
But, faster than the clinging vine,
Those twining spirals clasp.

And open, open swung the door,
And, fleeter than the wind,
The shadowy spectre swept before,
The butcher trailed behind.

Fast fled the darkness of the night,
And morn rose faint and dim;

They called full loud, they knocked full long,
They did not waken him.

Straight, straight towards that oaken beam,
A trampled pathway ran;

A ghastly shape was swinging there,

It was the butcher man.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

A RHYMED LESSON.

SOME words on LANGUAGE may be well applied,
And take them kindly, though they touch your pride
Words lead to things; a scale is more precise,
Coarse speech, bad grammar, swearing, drinking, vice
Our cold Northeaster's icy fetter clips

The native freedom of the Saxon lips;
See the brown peasant of the plastic South,
How all his passions play about his mouth!
With us, the feature that transmits the soul,
A frozen, passive, palsied breathing-hole.

The
crampy
shackles of the ploughboy's walk
Tie the small muscles when he strives to talk;

Not all the pumice of the polished town

Can smooth this roughness of the barnyard down;
Rich, honored, titled, he betrays his race

By this one mark, he's awkward in the face; ·
Nature's rude impress, long before he knew
The sunny street that holds the sifted few.

It can't be helped, though, if we 're taken young,
We gain some freedom of the lips and tongue;
But school and college often try in vain
To break the padlock of our boyhood's chain:
One stubborn word will prove this axiom true,
No quondam rustic can enunciate view.
A few brief stanzas may be well employed
To speak of errors we can all avoid.

--

Learning condemns beyond the reach of hope
The careless lips that speak of soap for sōap;
Her edict exiles from her fair abode
The clownish voice that utters road for rōad;
Less stern to him, who calls his cōat a coat,
And steers his bōat, believing it a boat,
She pardoned one, our classic city's boast,
Who said, at Cambridge, most instead of most,
But knit her brows and stamped her angry foot
To hear a Teacher call a rōot a root.

Once more; speak clearly, if you speak at all;
Carve every word before you let it fall;
Don't, like a lecturer or dramatic star,

Try over hard to roll the British R;
Do put your accents in the proper spot;
Don't, let me beg you,

F

don't say

"How?" for

"What?"

And, when you stick on conversation's burrs,

Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful urs. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

THE ROSE UPON MY BALCONY.

THE rose upon my balcony, the morning air perfuming, Was leafless all the winter time and pining for the

spring;

You ask me why her breath is sweet, and why he' cheek is blooming:

It is because the sun is out and birds begin to sing.

The nightingale, whose melody is through the greenwood ringing,

Was silent when the boughs were bare and winds were blowing keen.

And if, Mamma, you ask of me the reason of his sing

ing,

It is because the sun is out and all the leaves are

green.

Thus each performs his part, Mamma: the birds have found their voices,

The blowing rose a flush, Mamma, her bonny cheek to

dye;

And there's sunshine in my heart, Mamma, which wakens and rejoices,

And so I sing and blush, Mamma, and that's the rea son why.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.1
Vanity Fair.

1 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, born at Calcutta, in 1811, was educated at the Charter House, and at Cambridge

GREEN FIELDS OF ENGLAND.

GREEN fields of England! wheresoe'er
Across this watery waste we fare,
Your image at our hearts we bear,
Green fields of England, everywhere.

Sweet eyes in England, I must flee
Past where the waves' last confines be,
Ere your loved smile I cease to see,
Sweet eyes in England, dear to me.

Dear home in England, safe and fast
If but in thee my lot be cast,
The past shall seem a nothing past
To thee, dear home, if,won at last;
Dear home in England, won at last.
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.1

University. He inherited a handsome property, but lost it, studied law, and finally took to literature. He wrote many charming poems, but his fame rests upon his novels, which have placed him at the head of English novelists. He died in 1863.

1 ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH was born at Liverpool in 1820. He was educated at Rugby and Oxford, and was then a tutor for some time in Oriel College. In 1852 he visited the United States, and passed some time in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He died at Florence, Italy, in 1861. Besides a volume of very remarkable poems, he published a translation of Plutarch, in 1859