1.  Oh, a wonderful stream is the river of Time,
     As it runs through the realm of tears,
   With a faultless rhythm and a musical rhyme,
   And a boundless sweep and a surge sublime,
     As it blends with the ocean of Years.

2.  How the winters are drifting, like flakes of snow,
     And the summers, like buds between;
   And the year in the sheaf—­so they come and they go,
   On the river’s breast, with its ebb and flow,
     As it glides in the shadow and sheen.

3.  There’s a magical isle up the river of Time,
     Where the softest of airs are playing;
   There’s a cloudless sky and a tropical clime,
   And a song as sweet as a vesper chime,
     And the Junes with the roses are staying.

4.  And the name of that isle is the Long Ago,
     And we bury our treasures there;
   There are brows of beauty and bosoms of snow—­
   There are heaps of dust—­but we love them so!—­
     There are trinkets and tresses of hair;

5.  There are fragments of song that nobody sings,
     And a part of an infant’s prayer,
   There’s a lute unswept, and a harp without strings;
   There are broken vows and pieces of rings,
     And the garments that she used to wear.

6.  There are hands that are waved, when the fairy shore
     By the mirage is lifted in air;
   And we sometimes hear, through the turbulent roar,
   Sweet voices we heard in the days gone before,
     When the wind down the river is fair.

7.  Oh, remembered for aye be the blessed Isle,
     All the day of our life till night—­
   When the evening comes with its beautiful smile,
   And our eyes are closing to slumber awhile,
     May that “Greenwood.” of Soul be in sight

Definitions.—­1.  Realm, region, country.  Rhythm, the harmonious flow of vocal sounds.  Rhyme, a word answering in sound to another word.  Surge, a great, rolling swell of water. 3.  Ves’per, pertaining to the evening service in the Roman Catholic Church. 6.  Mi-rage’ (pro. me-razh’), an optical illusion causing objects at a distance to seem as though suspended in the air. 7.  Aye (pro. a), always, ever.

Notes.—­5.  A lute unswept, that is, unplayed.

7.  Greenwood is a notes and very beautiful cemetery at the southern extremity of Brooklyn, N.Y.  The expression means, then, the resting place of the soul.

LXXV.  THE BOSTON MASSACRE.

George Bancroft (b. 1800, d. 1891) was born at Worcester, Mass.  He was an ambitious student, and graduated at Harvard College before he was eighteen years of age.  He then traveled in Europe, spending some time at the German universities.  On his return, in 1822, he was appointed tutor in Greek at Harvard.  His writings at this time were a small volume of original poems, some translations from Schiller and Goethe,