THE SOLDIER'S DREAM.

OUR bugles sang truce; for the night-cloud had lowered,

And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky;

And thousands had sunk on the ground overpowered,

The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die.

When reposing that night on my pallet of straw,

By the wolf-scaring fagot that guarded the slain,

At the dead of the night a sweet vision I saw,

And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again.

Methought from the battle-field's dreadful array

Far, far I had roamed on a desolate track:

HOUSE OF BUSYRANE.

KINGS, queens, lords, ladies, knights, and damsels great

Were heaped together with the vulgar sort,

And mingled with the rascal rabble

ment

Without respect of person or of port, To show Dan Cupid's power and great effort:

And round about a border was entrailed

Of broken bows and arrows shivered short,

And a long bloody river through them rayled

So lively and so like that living scene it failed.

And at the upper end of that fair

room

There was an altar built of precious

stone

Of passing value and of great renown, On which there stood an image all alone,

Of massy gold, which with his own light shone;

And wings it had with sundry colors dight,

More sundry colors than the proud pavone

Bears in his boasted fan, or Iris bright

When her discolored bow she spreads through heaven bright.

Blindfold he was; and in his cruel fist A mortal bow of arrows keen did hold,

With which he shot at random when

him list; Some headed with sad lead, some with pure gold;