What comes with sound of stately trumpets pealing, With flash of torches, flaring out the stars? What majesty, what splendor slow revealing, What mystery through the night's unfolding bars, In gloom, cloud-multiform, delaying long, Bursts into flower of flame and shower of song? What march of multitudes in rhythmic motion, What thunder of innumerable feet, What mighty diapasons like the ocean, Reverberating turbulently sweet Through far dissolving silences, are blown Worldward upon the winds' low monotone? The mountains hear the warning and awaken, In hushed processional issuing from the night, Like Druid priests with mystic white robes shaken, Communing in some immemorial rite: Round their old brows burns what pale augury, What benison, what ancient prophecy? The sea has heard; through all its caverns under Whither its giant broods have fled dismayed, There goes a voice of wailing and of wonder: "He comes, with gleaming spears and ranks arrayed, And clang of chariot-wheels, and fire of spray: We hear, we fear, we tremble and obey." The earth has heard it, and, arising breathless, Sets wide her doors and leans with beckoning palms Over the quickening east: "Resistless, deathless Father of worlds and lord of storms and calms, Thou at whose will the seasons bloom and fail, Dispenser and destroyer, hail, all hail!" What are these prophecies and preludes golden, Legends of light, and clarions that blow? What is this secret of the skies, long holden In star-girt solitudes, disclosing now? 'Tis manifest--'tis here; the doubt is done: The day-heart leaps and throbs--behold the sun! CHARLES L. HILDRETH. A BACKWOODS ROMANCE. The light of the just-risen moon shone upon the black letters of the guide-post which said that it was one mile to Clear Lake Settlement, and illuminated as lonely a region as could be found in the whole world. On one side of the snowy road a deep pine wood rose tall and dark against the evening sky. On the other were stretches of field and marsh-land, which, even when warm and green with summer, had a desolate aspect, with their background of low, monotonous hills, and both before and behind were more lonesome hills, more dreary fields, and black masses of woodland. Not one homely roof was visible in the hard, white moonlight, nor the glimmer of a lamp, nor a waft of chimney-smoke; not even the tinkle of a sleigh-bell or a foot-step was to be heard. The silence seemed whispering to the hills. One star glimmered in the orange after-glow of sunset. It had been an unusually warm day for late December, and the faint, delicate scent of melting snow was still in the air, though it was growing crisp and cold and icicles were forming on the branches of the trees.