In majesty thy walls above the storm,
Mocking the generations as they pass,
And pilgrims of the far-off centuries
Will sometimes linger in their wanderings,
To ponder, with a deep and sacred awe,
The legend of the fight above the clouds.

George Dennison Prentice.

Louisville, Ky.

CAVE HILL CEMETERY.

ERE, whilst the twilight dews

HERE

Are softly gathering on the leaves and flowers,
I come, O patriot dead, to muse

A few brief hours.

Hard by you, rank on rank,

Rise the sad evergreens, whose solemn forms

Are dark as if they only drank

The thunder-storms.

Through the thick leaves around

The low, wild winds their dirge-like music pour, Like the far ocean's solemn sound,

On its lone shore.

From all the air a sigh,

Dirge-like and soul-like, melancholy, wild,
Comes like a mother's wailing cry

O'er her dead child.

Yonder, a little way,

Where mounds rise thick like surges on the sea,
Those whom ye met in fierce array
Sleep dreamlessly.

The same soft breezes sing,

The same birds chant their spirit-requiem,
The same sad flowers their fragrance fling
O'er you and them.

And pilgrims oft will grieve

Alike o'er Northern and o'er Southern dust,
And both to God's great mercy leave
In equal trust.

Oh, ye and they, as foes,

Will meet no more, but calmly take your rest, The meek hands folded in repose

On each still breast.

No marble columns rear

Their shafts to blazon each dead hero's name,
Yet well, oh, well, ye slumber here,

Great sons of fame!

The dead as free will start

From the unburdened as the burdened sod,
And stand as pure in soul and heart

*

Before their God.

*

*

George Dennison Prentice.

Madison, Wis.

THE FOUR LAKES OF MADISON.

FOUR

R limpid lakes, four Naiades
Or sylvan deities are these,

In flowing robes of azure dressed;
Four lovely handmaids that uphold
Their shining mirrors, rimmed with gold,
To the fair city in the West.

By day the coursers of the Sun
Drink of these waters as they run
Their swift, diurnal round on high;
By night the constellations glow
Far down the hollow deeps below,
And glimmer in another sky.

Fair lakes, serene and full of light,
Fair town, arrayed in robes of white,
How visionary ye appear!

All like a floating landscape seems
In cloud-land or the land of dreams,
Bathed in a golden atmosphere!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Mammoth Cave, Ky.

MAMMOTH CAVE.

LL day, as day is reckoned on the earth, I've wandered in these dim and awful aisles, Shut from the blue and breezy dome of heaven, While thoughts, wild, drear, and shadowy, have swept Across my awe-struck soul, like spectres o'er The wizard's magic glass, or thunder-clouds O'er the blue waters of the deep. And now I'll sit me down upon yon broken rock To muse upon the strange and solemn things Of this mysterious realm.

All day my steps
Have been amid the beautiful, the wild,

The gloomy, the terrific. Crystal founts,
Almost invisible in their serene

And pure transparency; high, pillared domes,

With stars and flowers all fretted like the halls

Of Oriental monarchs; rivers dark

And drear and voiceless as Oblivion's stream,

That flows through Death's dim vale of silence; gulfs
All fathomless, down which the loosened rock
Plunges until its far-off echoes come
Fainter and fainter like the dying roll
Of thunders in the distance; Stygian pools
Whose agitated waves give back a sound
Hollow and dismal, like the sullen roar

In the volcano's depths; - these, these have left
Their spell upon me, and their memories
Have passed into my spirit, and are now
Blent with my being till they seem a part
Of my own immortality.

God's hand,

At the creation, hollowed out this vast

Domain of darkness, where no herb nor flower
Ere sprang amid the sands, nor dews, nor rains,
Nor blessed sunbeams fell with freshening power,
Nor gentle breeze its Eden message told

Amid the dreadful gloom. Six thousand years
Swept o'er the earth ere human footprints marked
This subterranean desert. Centuries
Like shadows came and past, and not a sound
Was in this realm, save when at intervals,
In the long lapse of ages, some huge mass
Of overhanging rock fell thundering down,
Its echoes sounding through these corridors
A moment, and then dying in a hush

Of silence, such as brooded o'er the earth
When earth was chaos. The great mastodon,
The dreaded monster of the elder world,
Passed o'er this mighty cavern, and his tread
Bent the old forest oaks like fragile reeds
And made earth tremble; armies in their pride
Perchance have met above it in the shock
Of war, with shout and groan, and clarion blast,
And the hoarse echoes of the thunder gun;
The storm, the whirlwind, and the hurricane
Have roared above it, and the bursting cloud