, lie all stiff and stark!
Black Midnight's feet wait on the shore,
To bear me--where? Where all is dark.

And still I hear the faint recall!
My senses,--have they dropped asleep?
I see a soldier's funeral pall,
And there _my_ wife and children weep!

Sobs break the air, below the cloud;
And one pure soul, of love and truth,
Is folding in a mortal shroud
Her quivering wings of Hope and Youth.

Ye of the sacred red right hand,
Who count, around our camp-fire light,
Dear names within the shadowy land,
Why do ye whisper _mine_ to-night?

Where am I? _Am_ I? Trumpet notes
Still mingle with a dreamy doubt
Of Where? and Whither? Music floats,
As when camp-lights are going out.

Like saintly eyes resigned to Death,
Like spirit whispers from afar,
The sighing bugle yields its breath,
As if it wooed a dying star.

Draped in dark shadows, widowed Night
Weeps, on new graves, with chilly tears;
Beyond strange mountain-tops, the light
Is breaking from the immortal years.

A rhythm, from the unfathomed deep
Of God's eternal stillness, sings
My wondering, trembling soul to sleep,
While angels lift it on their wings.

THE PROGRESS OF PRUSSIA.

The changes that have taken place in Europe in the last twenty years are
of a most comprehensive character, and as strange as comprehensive; and
their consequences are likely to be as remarkable as the changes
themselves. In 1846 Russia was the first power of Europe, and at a great
distance ahead of all other members of the Pentarchy. She retained the
hegemony which she had acquired by the events of 1812-1814, and by the
great display of military force she had made in 1815, when 160,000 of
her troops were reviewed near Paris by the sovereigns and other leaders
of the Grand Alliance there assembled after the second and final fall of
the first Napoleon. Had Alexander I. reigned long, it is probable that
his eccentricities--to call them by no harder name--would have operated
to deprive Russia of her supremacy; but Nicholas, though he might never
have raised his country so high as it was carried by his brother, was
exactly the man to keep the power he had inherited,--and to keep it in
the only way in which it was to be kept, namely, by increasing it. This
he had done, and great success had waited on most of his undertakings,
while in none had he encounter