Ding-dong ding-dong! Merry, merry go the bells, Swelling in the nightly gale, The sentry ghost,

It keeps its post,

And soon, and soon our sports must fail: But let us trip the nightly ground,

While the merry, merry bells ring round.

Hark! hark! the death-watch ticks:
See, see, the winding-sheet!

Our dance is done,

Our race is run,

And we must lie at the alder's feet!

Ding-dong! ding-dong!

Merry, merry go the bells,

Swinging o'er the weltering wave!
And we must seek

Our deathbeds bleak,

Where the green sod grows upon the grave.

The Goddess of Consumption.

Come, Melancholy, sister mine!

Cold the dews, and chill the night;

Come from thy dreary shrine!

The wan moon climbs the heavenly hight,
And underneath the sickly ray,

Troops of squalid specters play,

And the dying mortal's groan

Startles the Night on her dusky throne.

Come, come, sister mine!

Gliding on the pale moonshine:

We'll ride at ease,

On the tainted breeze,

And, oh! our sport will be divine.

The Goddess of Melancholy.

Sister, from my dark abode,

Where nests the raven, sits the toad,

Hither I come, at thy command:

Sister, sister, join thy hand!

I will smooth the way for thee,
Thou shalt furnish food for me.

Come, let us speed our way

Where the troops of specters play;
To charnel-houses, churchyards drear,
Where Death sits with a horrible leer,
A lasting grin on a throne of bones,
And skim along the blue tombstones.
Come, let us speed away,

Lay our snares, and spread our tether!
I will smooth the way for thee,
Thou shalt furnish food for me:
And the grass shall wave

O'er many a grave

Where youth and beauty sleep together.

Consumption.

Come, let us speed our way!

Join our hands, and spread our tether!
I will furnish food for thee,

Thou shalt smooth the way for me;
And the grass shall wave

O'er many a grave

Where youth and beauty sleep together.

Melancholy.

Hist! sister, hist! who comes here?
Oh! I know her by that tear,

By that blue eye's languid glare,

By her skin and by her hair;

She is mine,

And she is thine;

Now the deadliest draught prepare.

Consumption.

In the dismal night-air dressed,

I will creep into her breast!

Flush her cheek, and bleach her skin,

And feed on the vital fire within.
Lover, do not trust her eyes:

When they sparkle most, she dies!
Mother, do not trust her breath:

Comfort she will breathe in death!

Father, do not strive to save her :
She is mine, and I must have her!

The coffin must be her bridal bed,
The winding-sheet must wrap her head,

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers,

That lately sprung and stood

In brighter light and softer airs,

A beauteous sisterhood?
Alas! they all are in their graves;

The gentle race of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds,

With the fair and good of ours.
The rain is falling where they lie,
But the cold November rain
Calls not from out the gloomy earth
The lovely ones again.

The wall-flower and the violet,

They perished long ago,

And the brier-rose and the orchis died

Amid the summer's glow;

But on the hill, the golden rod,

And the aster in the wood,

And the yellow sun-flower by the brook
In autumn beauty stood,

Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven,
As falls the plague on men,

And the brightness of their smile was gone
From upland, glade, and glen.

And now, when comes the calm, mild day.
As still such days will come,

To call the squirrel and the bee
From out their winter home;

When the sound of dropping nuts is heard,
Though all the trees are still,
And twinkle in the smoky light

The waters of the rill,

The south wind searches for the flowers

Whose fragrance late he bore, And sighs to find them in the wood And by the stream no more.

And then I think of one, who in
Her youthful beauty died,

The fair, meek blossom that grew up
And faded by my side;

In the cold, moist earth we laid her,
When the forest cast the leaf,
And we wept that one so lovely
Should have a life so brief:
Yet not unmeet it was that one,
Like that young friend of ours,
So gentle and so beautiful,

Should perish with the flowers.

W. C. BRYANT.

LESSON CCXIII.

AUTUMN FLOWERS.

THOSE few, pale, autumn flowers,
How beautiful they are!

Than all that went before,
Than all the summer store,
How lovelier far!

And why? They are the last!

The last! the last! the last!
Oh! by that little word,

How many thoughts are stirred !
That sister of the past!

Pale flowers! pale, perishing flowers!
Ye're types of precious things:
Types of those bitter moments,
That flit like life's enjoyments,
On rapid, rapid wings;

Last hours with parting dear ones,
(That time the fastest spends,)
Last tears in silence shed,

Last words half uttered,

Last looks of dying friends.

Who would but fain compress
A life into a day?

The last day spent with one
Who, ere the morrow's sun,

Must leave us, and for aye!

Oh, precious, precious moments!
Pale flowers! ye're types of those;
The saddest! sweetest! dearest!
Because, like those, the nearest
To an eternal close.

Pale flowers! pale, perishing flowers!
I woo your gentle breath;

I leave the summer rose

For younger, blither brows:

Tell me of change and death.

MISS C. BowWLES.

LESSON CCXIV.

SPIRIT OF THE ROSE-BUSH.

The Moss-Rose.

THE angel that nurses the flowers, and sprinkles the dew upon them in the stilly night, was slumbering, one spring day,