, and repeated with
gentleness, "_For the poor_."

The eighth stroke had scarcely sounded when this noble and intelligent
criminal was launched into eternity.

THE ANGEL OF THE SOUL.

BY J. BAYARD TAYLOR.

Una stella, una notte, ed una croce. _Antonio Bisazza._

Silence hath conquered thee, imperial Night!
Thou sit'st alone within her void, cold halls,
Thy solemn brow uplifted, and thy soul
Paining the space with dumb and mighty thought.
The dreary wind ebbs, voiceless, round thy form,
Following the stealthy hours, that wake no stir
In the hushed velvet of thy mantle's fold.
Thy thoughts take being: down the dusky aisles
Go shapes of good, and beckoning ghosts of crime,
And dreams of maddening beauty--hopes, that shine
To darken, and in cloudy height sublime,
The spectral march of some approaching Doom!
Nor these alone, oh! Mother of the world,
People thy chambers, echoless and vast;
Their dewy freshness like ambrosial cools
Life's fever-thirst, and to the fainting soul
Their porphyry walls are touched with light, and gleams
Of shining wonder dazzle through the void,
Like those bright marvels which the travele'rs torch
Wakes from the darkness of three thousand years,
In rock-hewn sepulchres of Theban kings.
Prophets, whose brows of pale, unearthly glow
Reflect the twilight of celestial dawns,
And bards, transfigured in immortal song,
Like eager children, kneeling at thy feet,
Unclasp the awful volume of thy lore.

My soul goes down thy far, untrodden paths,
To the dim verge of being. There its step
Touches the threshold of sublimer life,
And through the boundless empyrean leaps
Its prayer, borne like a faint, expiring cry,
To angel-warders, listening as they pace
The crystal walls of Heaven. Down the blue fields
Of the untraveled Infinite, they come:
Beneath their wings one sweet, dilating wave
Thrills the pure deep, and bears my soul aloft,
To walk amid their shining groups, and call
Its guardian spirit, as an orphan calls
His vanished brother, taken in childhood home:

"White through my cradled dreams thy pinions waved,
Lost Angel of the Soul! thy presence led
The babe's faint gropings through the glimmering dark
And into Being's conscious dawn. Thy hand
Held mine in childhood, and thy beaming cheek
Lay clo