One was a laborer tough and tanned, With the toil of tilling his meager land; The next, a veteran who did wield The sword on many a bloody field; The third, a friar grave or gay, As chase or chancel led the way, With shaven crown and cassock gray; The fourth, a publican, sorry elf! Who cared for no one but himself; And the last, a chield, as we often ken, Unknowing their ways in the walks of men. And these departed homeward all, Far holier than they came; For the sights which their visions did appall— The signs and sights in the haunted hall— Like to the writing on the wall, Spoke with a tongue of flame. PART III. Torches are gleaming to and fro, In the abbey’s ancient vault; While a mute procession slowly go Into its mouldering depths below, And, in solemn order, halt! A monk hath chanted the midnight mass For a soul that tempted its final pass; And the little, gloomy sacristan Striveth to soothe an aged man, As they lift from the blazoned bier The stately drooping pall; And the old man sees him lying there His son—his heir—his all! Thou canst not soothe him, sacristan, Go to thy cord and corse— It is a fiend which gnaws that man; The worst of fiends—Remorse! It is a fiend which whispereth still, Or noon or night, or well or ill, From the dark caverns of the past, Through all their chambers dim and vast, “For they who would thrive with unthrifty clod, Who would reap where fortune’s wheel hath trod, Are the foes of man and the cursed of God!” The lights have vanished—and the gate Of the abbey closed up desolate, And all is silent as before The key was turned in that rusty door, To add a slumbering mortal more To its never, never failing store; All is silent save the owl That moans like a monk from beneath his cowl, As the moon is looking on the lake, Beside the ruined abbey; And its fingers white on the waters shake, Like the quivering curls of a silver snake, For the pale old moon it must keep its wake In the dark clouds thick and shaggy! The night-wind hath a moaning tone, And it cometh moaning by; The Hart’s-tongue on the ancient stone, That years have crumbled, one by one, Answereth—sometimes like a groan, And sometimes like a sigh. * * * * * THE BEATING OF THE HEART.