Though he be a sable brother, treat him kindly as another! Ah, perhaps the world has scorned him for that luckless hue he wore, No such narrow prejudices can _he_ know whom Love possesses-- Whom one spark of Freedom blesses. Do not spurn him from thy door Lest Love enter nevermore! Not a bird of evil presage, happily he brings some message From that much-mourned matchless maiden--from that loved and lost Lenore. In a pilgrim's garb disguised, angels are but seldom prized: Of this fact at length advised, were it strange if he forswore The false world for evermore? Oh, thou ill-starred midnight ranger! dark, forlorn, mysterious stranger! Wildered wanderer from the eternal lightning on Time's stormy shore! Tell us of that world of wonder--of that famed unfading "Yonder!" Rend--oh rend the veil asunder! Let our doubts and fears be o'er! Doth he answer--"Nevermore?" SONG OF THE ELVES. BY ANNA BLACKWELL. When the moon is high o'er the ruined tower, When the night-bird sings in her lonely bower, When beetle and cricket and bat are awake, And the will-o'-the-wisp is at play in the brake, Oh then do we gather, all frolic and glee, We gay little elfins, beneath the old tree! And brightly we hover on silvery wing, And dip our small cups in the whispering spring, While the night-wind lifts lightly our shining hair, And music and fragrance are on the air! Oh who is so merry, so happy as we, We gay little elfins, beneath the old tree? THE FIRE OF DRIFT-WOOD. BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. We sat within the farm-house old, Whose windows looking o'er the bay, Gave to the sea-breeze, damp and cold, An easy entrance, night and day. Not far away we saw the port,-- The strange, old-fashioned, silent town,-- The light-house,--the dismantled fort,-- The wooden houses, quaint and brown. We sat and talked until the night Descending filled the little room; Our faces faded from the sight, Our voices only broke the gloom. We spake of many a vanished scene, Of what we once had thought and said, Of what had been, and might have been, And who was changed, and who was dead. And all that fills the hearts of friends, When first they feel, with secret pain, Their lives thenceforth have separate ends, And never can be one again. The first slight swerving of the heart, That words are powerless to express, And leave it still unsaid in part, Or say it in too great excess. The very tones in which we spake Had something strange, I could but mark; The leaves of memory seemed to make A mournful rustling in the dark. Oft died the words upon our lips, As suddenly, from out the fire Built of the wreck of stranded ships, The flames would leap, and then expire.