Pass, wretched band!  Well for the wakeful one if, riotously miserable, a fiercer tribe do not surround him, the devils of a guilty heart, that holds its hell within itself.  What if Remorse should assume the features of an injured friend?  What if the fiend should come in woman’s garments, with a pale beauty amid sin and desolation, and lie down by your side?  What if he should stand at your bed’s foot, in the likeness of a corpse, with a bloody stain upon the shroud?  Sufficient without such guilt is this nightmare of the soul; this heavy, heavy sinking of the spirits; this wintry gloom about the heart; this indistinct horror of the mind, blending itself with the darkness of the chamber. . . .  Now comes the peal of the distant clock, with fainter and fainter strokes as you plunge farther into the wilderness of sleep.  It is the knell of a temporary death.  Your spirit has departed, and strays like a free citizen, among the people of a shadowy world, beholding strange sights, yet without wonder or dismay.  So calm, perhaps, will be the final change, so undisturbed, as if among familiar things.  The entrance of the soul to its eternal home!

  HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

  THE BELEAGUERED CITY.

  I have read, in some old marvelous tale,
    Some legend strange and vague,
  That a midnight host of specters pale
    Beleaguered the walls of Prague.

  Beside the Moldau’s rushing stream,
    With the wan moon overhead,
  There stood, as in an awful dream,
    The army of the dead.

  White as a sea-fog, landward-bound,
    The spectral camp was seen,
  And, with a sorrowful deep sound,
    The river flowed between.

  No other voice nor sound was there,
    No drum, nor sentry’s pace;
  The mist-like banners clasped the air,
    As clouds with clouds embrace.

  But when the old cathedral bell
    Proclaimed the morning prayer,
  The white pavilions rose and fell
    On the alarmed air.

  Down the broad valley fast and far
    The troubled army fled;
  Up rose the glorious morning star,
    The ghastly host was dead.

  I have read in the marvelous heart of man,
    That strange and mystic scroll,
  That an army of phantoms vast and wan
    Beleaguer the human soul.

  Encamped beside Life’s rushing stream,
    In Fancy’s misty light,
  Gigantic shapes and shadows gleam
    Portentous through the night.

  Upon its midnight battle-ground
    The spectral camp is seen,
  And, with a sorrowful deep sound,
    Flows the River of Life between.

  No other voice nor sound is there,
    In the army of the grave;
  No other challenge breaks the air,
    But the rushing of life’s wave.

  And when the solemn and deep church-bell
    Entreats the soul to pray,
  The midnight phantoms feel the spell,
    The shadows sweep away.