of some patriots, death-fallen on that day, like the
Spartans at Thermopylae, martyrs of devotion to their fatherland.

Almost in every country there is some proud cemetery, or some modest
tomb-stone, adorned on such a day by a garland of evergreen, the pious
offering of patriotic tenderness.

I past the last night in a sleepless dream. And my soul wandered on the
magnetic wings of the past, home to my beloved bleeding land, and I saw
in the dead of the night, dark veiled shapes, with the paleness of
eternal grief upon their brow, but terrible in the tearless silence of
that grief, gliding over the churchyards of Hungary, and kneeling down
to the head of the graves, and depositing the pious tribute of green and
cypress upon them; and after a short prayer rising with clenched fists,
and gnashing teeth, and then stealing away tearless and silent as they
came--stealing away, because the blood-hounds of my country's murderer
lurks from every corner on that night, and on this day, and leads to
prison those who dare to show a pious remembrance to the beloved.
To-day, a smile on the lips of a Magyar is taken for a crime of defiance
to tyranny, and a tear in his eye is equivalent to a revolt. And yet I
have seen, with the eye of my home-wandering soul, thousands performing
the work of patriotic piety.

And I saw more. When the pious offerers stole away, I saw the honoured
dead half risen from their tombs, looking to the offerings, and
whispering gloomily, "still a cypress, and still no flower of joy! Is
there still the chill of winter and the gloom of night over thee,
fatherland? are we not yet revenged? and the sky of the east reddened
suddenly, and quivered with bloody flames, and from the far, far west, a
lightning flashed like a star-spangled stripe, and within its light a
young eagle mounted and soared towards the quivering flames of the east,
and as he drew near, upon his approaching, the flames changed into a
radiant morning sun, and a voice from above was heard in answer to the
question of the dead:

"Sleep yet a short while; mine is the revenge. I will make the stars of
the west, the sun of the east; and when ye next awake, ye will find the
flower of joy upon your cold bed."

And the dead took the twig of cypress, the sign of resurrection, into
their bony hands and lay down.

Such was the dream of my waking soul, and I prayed, and such was my
prayer: "Father, if thou deemest me worthy, take the cup from my people