THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD.

LONGFELLOW.

THIS is the arsenal. From floor to ceiling,
Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms;
But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing
Startles the villages with strange alarms.

Oh! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary,
When the death-angel touches those swift keys!
What loud lament and dismal Miserere

Will mingle with their awful symphonies!

I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus,
The cries of agony, the endless groan,
Which, through the ages that have gone before us,
In long reverberations reach our own.

On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer, Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman's song, And loud, amid the universal clamour,

O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong.

I hear the Florentine, who from his palace
Wheels out his battle-bell with dreadful din,
And Aztec priests upon their teocallis,

Beat the wild war-drums made of serpent's skin

The tumult of each sacked and burning village;
The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns;
The soldiers' revels in the midst of pillage;
The wail of famine in beleagured towns.

The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder,
The rattling musketry, the clashing blade;
And ever and anon, in tones of thunder,
The diapason of the cannonade.

Is it, O man, with such discordant noises,
With such accursed instruments as these,
Thou drownest Nature's sweet and kindly voices,
And jarrest the celestial harmonies?

;

Were half the power that fills the world with terror,
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts,
Given to redeem the human mind from error,
There were no need of arsenals nor forts.

The warrior's name would be a name abhorred!
And every nation, that should lift again
Its hand against a brother, on its forehead
Would wear for evermore the curse of Cain!

Down the dark future, through long generations, These echoing sounds grow fainter, and then cease! And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations,

I hear once more the voice of Christ say, "Peace!"

Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals

The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies!. But beautiful as songs of the Immortals,

The holy melodies of love arise.

ADDRESS TO THE MUMMY IN BELZONI'S

EXHIBITION.

HORACE SMITH.

AND thou hast walked about (how strange a story!)
In Thebes's streets three thousand years ago,
When the Memnonium was in all its glory,
And time had not begun to overthrow
Those temples, palaces, and piles stupendous,
Of which the very ruins are tremendous.

Speak! for thou long enough hast acted dummy,
Thou hast a tongue-come, let us hear its tune:
Thou'rt standing on thy legs above ground, Mummy!
Revisiting the glimpses of the moon ;

Not like thin ghosts or disembodied creatures,

But with thy bones and flesh, and limbs and features.

-for doubtless thou canst recollect

Tell us

To whom should we assign the Sphinx's fame

Was Cheops or Cephrenes architect

Of either Pyramid that bears his name! Is Pompey's Pillar really a misnomer?

Had Thebes a hundred gates, as sung by Homer?

Perchance that very hand, now pinioned flat,
Has hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh glass to glass;
Or dropped a halfpenny in Homer's hat,

Or doffed thine own to let Queen Dido pass,
Or held, by Solomon's own invitation,
A torch at the great Temple's dedication.

I need not ask thee if that hand, when armed,
Has any Roman soldier mauled and knuckled,
For thou wert dead, and buried, and embalmed,
Ere Romulus and Remus had been suckled :-
Antiquity appears to have begun

Long after thy primeval race was run.

Since first thy form was in this box extended,

We have, above ground, seen some strange mutations;

The Roman empire has begun and ended;

New worlds have risen-we have lost old nations And countless kings have into dust been humbled, While not a fragrant of thy flesh has crumbled.

Didst thou not hear the pother o'er thy head,
When the great Persian conqueror, Cambyses,
Marched armies o'er thy tomb with thundering tread,
O'erthrew Osiris, Orus, Apis, Isis,

And shook the Pyramids with fear and wonder
When the gigantic Memnon fell asunder!

If the tomb's secrets may not be confessed,

The nature of thy private life unfold :—

A heart has throbbed beneath that leathern breast,
And tears adown that dusky cheek have rolled :-
Have children climbed those knees and kissed that face,
What was thy name and station, age and race?