Merrily rose the lark, and shook
The dew-drop from its wing;

But I never mark'd its morning flight,
I never heard it sing:
For I was stooping once again
Under the horrid thing.

"With breathless speed, like a soul in chase,
I took him up and ran;-
There was no time to dig a grave
Before the day began:

In a lonesome wood, with heaps of leaves,
I hid the murder'd man!

"And all that day I read in school,

But my thought was other where; As soon as the mid-day task was done, In secret I was there :

And a mighty wind had swept the leaves, And still the corse was bare!

“Then down I cast me on my face,
And first began to weep,

For I knew my secret then was one
That earth refused to keep :
Or land or sea, though he should be
Ten thousand fathoms deep.

"So wills the fierce avenging Sprite,
Till blood for blood atones!
Ay, though he's buried in a cave,
And trodden down with stones,
years have rotted off his flesh,-
The world shall see his bones!

And

Oh, God! that horrid, horrid dream
Besets me now awake!

Again-again, with dizzy brain,
The human life I take;

And my red right hand grows raging hot,
Like Cranmer's at the stake.

"And still no peace for the restless clay,
Will wave or mould allow ;
The horrid thing pursues my soul,-
It stands before me now!"
The fearful Boy look'd up, and saw
Huge drops upon his brow.

That very night, while gentle sleep
The urchin eyelids kiss'd,

Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn,
Through the cold and heavy mist;

And Eugene Aram walk'd between,
With gyves upon his wrist.

THE ELM TREE:

A DREAM IN THE WOODS.

"And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees."

'Twas in a shady Avenue,

AS YOU LIKE IT.

Where lofty Elms abound-
And from a Tree

There came to me

A sad and solemn sound,
That sometimes murmur'd overhead,
And sometimes underground.

Amongst the leaves it seem'd to sigh,
Amid the boughs to moan;
It mutter'd in the stem, and then

The roots took up the tone;

As if beneath the dewy grass
The dead began to groan.

No breeze there was to stir the leaves;
No bolts that tempests launch,
To rend the trunk or rugged bark;
No gale to bend the branch;

No quake of earth to heave the roots,
That stood so stiff and staunch.

No bird was preening up aloft,
To rustle with its wing;
No squirrel, in its sport or fear,
From bough to bough to spring;
The solid bole

Had ne'er a hole

To hide a living thing!

No scooping hollow cell to lodge
A furtive beast or fowl,

The martin, bat,

Or forest cat

That nightly loves to prowl, Nor ivy nook so apt to shroud The moping, snoring owl.

But still the sound was in my ear,
A sad and solemn sound,
That sometimes murmur'd overhead,

And sometimes underground'Twas in a shady Avenue

Where lofty Elms abound.

O hath the Dryad still a tongue
In this ungenial clime?
Have Sylvan Spirits still a voice

As in the classic prime-
To make the forest voluble,
As in the olden time ?

The olden time is dead and gone;
Its years have fill'd their sum-

And e'en in Greece-her native Greece-
The Sylvan Nymph is dumb-

From ash, and beech, and aged oak,
No classic whispers come.

From Poplar, Pine, and drooping Birch,
And fragrant Linden Trees;
No living sound

E'er hovers round,

Unless the vagrant breeze, The music of the merry bird, Or hum of busy bees.

But busy bees forsake the Elm
That bears no bloom aloft-
The Finch was in the hawthorn-bush,
The Blackbird in the croft;
And among the firs the brooding Dove,
That else might murmur soft.

Yet still I heard that solemn sound,
And sad it was to boot,
From ev'ry overhanging bough,

And each minuter shoot;
From rugged trunk and mossy rind,
And from the twisted root.

From these, a melancholy moan;
From those, a dreary sigh;
As if the boughs were wintry bare,
And wild winds sweeping by-
Whereas the smallest fleecy cloud
Was stedfast in the sky.

No sign or touch of stirring air

Could either sense observe