There came a slow and silent band

In sad procession by;
Reversed the musket in each hand,

And downcast every eye.
They bore the soldier to his grave;

The sympathizing crowd
Divided like a parted wave

By some dark vessel ploughed.
A moment, and all sounds were mute,

For awe was over all ;
You heard the soldier's measured foot,

The bugle's wailing call.

The gloves were laid upon the bier,

The helmet and the sword;
The drooping war-horse followed near,

As he, too, mourned his lord.

they led

Slowly I followed too

To where a church arose,
And flung a shadow o'er the dead,

Deep as their own repose.
Green trees were there, - beneath the shade

Of one was made a grave;
And there to his last rest was laid

The weary and the brave.
They fired a volley o’er the bed

Of an unconscious ear;
The birds sprang fluttering overhead,

Struck with a sudden fear.

All left the ground, the bugles died

Away upon the wind;
Only the tree's green branches sighed

O’er him they left behind.

Again, all filled with light and breath,

I passed the crowded street :
O great extremes of life and death,
How strangely do ye meet!

Anonymous.

PICCADILLY.

MHE sun is on the crowded street ;

Where England's noblest memories ineet,

Of old historic hours.

Vast, shadowy, dark, and indistinct,

Tradition's giant fane,
Whereto a thousand years are linked

In one electric chain.

So stands it when the morning light

First steals upon the skies,
And, shadowed by the fallen night,

The sleeping city lies.

It stands with darkness round it cast,

Touched by the first cold shine ; Vast, vagnie, and mighty as the past,

Of which it is the shrine.

'T is lovely when the moonlight falls

Around the sculptured stone, Giving a softness to the walls,

Like love that mourns the gone.

Then comes the gentlest influence

The human heart can know, The mourning over those gone

hence To the still dust below.

The smoke, the noise, the dust of day,

Have vanished from the scene;
The pale lamps gleam with spirit ray

O’er the park's sweeping green.

Sad shining on her lonely path,

The moon's calm smile above, Seems as it lulled life's toil and wrath

With universal love.

Past that still hour, and its pale moon,

The city is alive;
It is the busy hour of noon,

When man must seek and strive.

The pressure of our actual life

Is on the waking brow;
Labor and care, endurance, strife,

These are around him now.

How wonderful the common street,

Its tumult and its throng,

The hurrying of the thousand feet

That bear life's cares along.

How strongly is the present felt,

With such a scene beside;
All sounds in one vast murmur melt

The thunder of the tide.

All hurry on,

none pause to look Upon another's face: The present is an open book

None read, yet all must trace.

The poor man hurries on his race,

His daily bread to find;
The rich man has yet wearier chase,

For pleasure 's hard to bind.
All hurry, though it is to pass

For which they live so fast,
What doth the present but amass

The wealth that makes the past ?
The past is round us, - those old spires

That glimmer o'er our head;
Not from the present is their fires,

Their light is from the dead.
But for the past the present's powers

Were waste of toil and mind
But for those long and glorious hours
Which leave themselves behind.

Anonymous. PALL MALL.

little friend, so small and neat,
Whom years ago I used to meet

In Pall Mall daily;
How cheerily you tript away
To work, — it might have been to play,

You tript so gayly.
And Time trips too. This moral means
You then were midway in the teens

That I was crowning;
We never spoke, but when I smiled
At morn or eve, I know, dear child,

You were not frowning.
Each morning when we met, I think
Some sentiment did us two link,

Nor joy nor sorrow;
And then at eve, experience-taught,
Our hearts returned upon the thought, -

We meet to-morrow!

And you were poor; and how?

and why? How kind to come, it was for my

Especial grace meant !
Had you a chamber near the stars,
A bird, some treasured plants in jars,

About your casement ?

I often wander up and down,
When morning bathes the silent town

In golden glory;