Heat like the mouth of a hell, or a deluge of

cataract skies,

Stench of old offal decaying, and infinite torment of flies,

Thoughts of the breezes of May blowing over an English field,

Cholera, scurvy, and fever, the wound that would not be heal'd.

Valor of delicate women who tended the hospital bed,

Horror of women in travail among the dying and dead,

Grief for our perishing children, and never a moment for grief,

Toil and ineffable weariness, faltering hopes of relief,

Havelock baffled, or beaten, or butcher'd for

all that we knew

Then day and night, day and night, coming down on the still-shatter'd walls

Millions of musket-bullets, and thousands of

cannon-balls

But ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England blew.

vi.

Hark cannonade, fusillade! is it true what was told by the scout?

Outram and Havelock breaking their way thro' the fell mutineers!

Surely the pibroch of Europe is ringing again in our ears!

Dance to the pibroch! - saved! we are saved!is it you? is it you?

Saved by the valor of Havelock, saved by the blessing of Heaven!

"Hold it for fifteen days!" we have held it for eighty-seven!

And ever aloft on the palace-roof the old

banner of England blew.

ANNIHILATION.

GEORGE EDGAR MONTGOMERY.

If I could know, as none can know,
That, when my life is ended, I
Shall perish, like the aureate glow
Of rounded stars that die;

That in the dark beyond our earth
There is no radiant heaven, nor hell,-

I should not curse my human birth,
I should not fear to tell

The sadly wise and bitter thought

That none were born immortal, none Predestined to a God-life wrought Beyond our sky and sun.

Nor should I fear to fill my part,
To live my life out, to aspire

With the whole passion of my heart,

To love and to desire.

For it is true that virtue, power,
And all the sweetness of the mind,
Are real as beauty in the flower
And music in the wind;

That any mortal man may be

Sublimely stirred, without a sense That in his doing he must see Some future recompense.

Yet, though I strove with fervent will To act with noble zeal and grace, And with a faith that each may still Live deathless in the race

I think, in lonely hours when sleep Obscures the grief that many bear, That I would turn to heaven and weep With heart-break and despair:

For I should then remember one

Whose gentle love is more to me Than all the years that time can run, Than earth, and air, and sea;

And oh, to part with her were worse Than death and its inhuman fate

To lose her in a universe

Whose gods annihilate.