"This massy trunk that lies along,
And many more must fall-
For the very knave

Who digs the grave,

The man who spreads the pall,
And he who tolls the funeral bell,
The elm shall have them all!

"The tall abounding elm that grows
In hedge-rows up and down:
In field and forest, copse and park,
And in the peopled town,
With colonies of noisy rooks

That nestle on its crown.

"And well the abounding elm may grow

In field and hedge so rife,
In forest, copse, and wooded park,
And 'mid the city's strife,
For, every hour that passes by
Shall end a human life!"

The phantom ends the shade is gone;
The sky is clear and bright;
On turf, and moss, and fallen tree,
There glows a ruddy light;

And bounding through the golden fern
The rabbit comes to bite.

The thrush's mate beside her sits

And pipes a merry lay;

The dove is in the evergreens;
And on the larch's spray

The fly-bird flutters up and down,
To catch its tiny prey.

The gentle hind and dappled fawn
Are coming up the glade;

Each harmless furred and feathered thing

Is glad, and not afraid -
But on my saddened spirit still
The shadow leaves a shade.

A secret, vague, prophetic gloom,
As though by certain mark
I knew the fore-appointed tree,
Within whose rugged bark

This warm and living frame shall find
Its narrow house and dark.

That mystic tree which breathed to me
A sad and solemn sound,

That sometimes murmured overhead,

And sometimes underground; Within that shady avenue

Where lofty elms abound.

THE HAUNTED HOUSE.

A ROMANCE.

"A jolly place," said he, "in times of old,

But something ails it now: the place is curst."
HART-LEAP WELL, BY WORDSWORTH.

PART I.

SOME 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 residence for woman, child, and man,
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: No chimney smoked — there was no sign of home 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 whitwall'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.