A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling The angels, not half so happy in heaven, Went envying her and me; Yes! that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night, But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we, Of many far wiser than we; And neither the angels in heaven above, For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side In her tomb by the sounding sea. 4.- THE HAUNTED PALACE. IN the greenest of our valleys Once a fair and stately palace- Never seraph spread a pinion Banners yellow, glorious, golden, And every gentle air that dallied, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, Wanderers in that happy valley, Through two luminous windows, saw Spirits moving musically, To a lute's well-tuned law, (Porphyrogene!) In state his glory well befitting, And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace door, Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty In voices of surpassing beauty, The wit and wisdom of their king. But evil things, in robes of sorrow, And travelers now, within that valley, While, like a ghastly rapid river, A hideous throng rush out for ever, XVII. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. LIFE AND WORKS. "Know Old Cambridge? Hope you do. YES, it was in the old gambrel-roofed house looking out on the College Green that the Reverend Doctor Abiel Holmes-pastor of the First Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but of wider fame as author of the American Annals had born to him the son, Oliver Wendell, who was to shed new luster on the name, and take rank as the brightest of American poets and essayists. His birth-date is August 29, 1809. There still remains the copy of the old-time almanac in which Abiel Holmes made, opposite the date August 29 (1809), the significant marginal entry, son b. This was the time when our grandsires used to dry their ink-tracings by a shake of the sand-box; and, curiously enough, the shining grains that Parson Holmes shook over his four-letter record of the birth of a son remain still, uneffaced and sparkling, after nearly fourscore years. The self-same lasting quality shows itself in the work of our poet, whose early art is to-day as fresh in favor as though he were "at matins instead of evensong." After the required "fitting," young Holmes entered and passed through Harvard College (graduation year 1829), with good profit of scholarship. He must have taken very kindly to his alma mater, for he has been Harvard's best laureate for half a century. While still in college, Holmes began writing verses; and some of his best-known early pieces, as The Specter Pig, Evening: by a Tailor, The Dorchester Giant, etc., were contributed to a students' paper named "The Collegian." The titles of these pieces indicate that the comic and satiric vein lay uppermost in the young poet's mind; and the mirth-loving spirit which they reveal did not bode over-well for success in the ministry, for which calling Holmes's reverend father had designed him. Neither did it promise very strict allegiance to the law, the study of which he took up after graduation. He soon, however, abandoned Coke and Blackstone, thus robbing the bar of a rare "convulser of juries," and began preparing himself for the medical profession, towards which he felt strong attraction. After some years of study both at home and in medical schools abroad, he became Doctor Holmes in 1836. was chosen professor of anatomy and physiology in Dartmouth College in 1838, and nine years later was called to the same chair at Harvard. From this last position he resigned in 1882, having instructed and delighted successive classes for five and thirty years. He With the duties of his chair and his private practice it may be inferred that Holmes has been all his life a busy man; and it is proof of the strength of his literary bent that he has been able so long and so successfully to carry on authorship while engrossed in the cares of his profession,- that Dr. Holmes the physician has never lost sight of Dr. Holmes the scholar, the wit, the |