11. Somewhere, I knew not where—somehow, I knew not how-by some beings, I knew not whom—a battle, a strife, an agony, was conducting,-was evolving like a great drama or piece of music, with which my sympathy was the more insupportable from my confusion as to its place, its cause, its nature, and its possible issue. I, as is usual in dreams (where of necessity, we make ourselves central to every movement), had the power, and yet had not the power, to decide it.

12. I had the power if I could raise myself, to will it; and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. "Deeper than ever plummet sounded," I lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the passion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake; some mightier cause than ever yet the sword had pleaded or trumpet had proclaimed.

13. Then came sudden alarms; hurryings to and fro; trepidations of innumerable fugitives, I knew not whether from the good cause or the bad; darkness and lights; tempest and human faces; and at last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were worth all the world to me, and but a moment allowed-and clasped hands, and heart-breaking partings, and then-everlasting farewells! and with a sigh, such as the caves of hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of death, the sound was reverberated—everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again reverberated-everlasting farewells! And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud—“I will sleep no more!”

Bräh'må, the first person in the trinity of

the Hindoos; the creator.
Vish'nu, a Hindoo divinity, one of the
higher gods of the later religion; the
preserver.
Si'va, the Hindoo divinity who has the
character of avenger or destroyer.

Ni lot'ic, pertaining to the river Nile, in
Egypt.

An te di lu'vi an, a dweller upon the earth before the deluge.

Pa go'då, a heathen temple.

I'sis, the principal goddess worshiped by

the Egyptians. They adored her as the great benefactress of their country, who instructed their ancestors in the art of cultivating wheat and barley.' O sï'ris, an Egyptian divinity, brother of

Isis, who was worshiped as having first reclaimed them from barbarism, and taught them agriculture and the arts and sciences.

Castes, hereditary classes into which society is divided in India.

LESSON LXI.

ACROSS THE PLAINS.

BY JOAQUIN MILLER.

Cincinnatus H. Miller, the "Poet of the Sierras," was born in Indiana in 1841. When he was thirteen years of age, his parents removed to Oregon, and settled in the Willamette valley. In 1860 he began the study of law, which he relinquished the next year, and went to Idaho. He subsequently returned to Oregon and edited a newspaper. In 1866 he was elected County Judge in Eastern Oregon, which office he held for four years. In 1870 he published a small volume of poems, under the name of Joaquin (Wau-keen) Miller. He afterward went to England and published another volume, The Songs of the Sierras, which made him famous as a poet. His latest work, Songs of the Sun-Lands, published in 1873, has met with much favor, both in America and England. From this volume, the following selection has been taken.

Α'

TALE half told and hardly understood;

The talk of bearded men that chanced to meet,

That lean'd on long quaint rifles in the wood,
That look'd in fellow-faces, spoke discreet
And low, as half in doubt and in defeat
Of hope; a tale it was of lands of gold

That lay toward the sun. Wild wing'd and fleet
It spread among the swift Missouri's bold

Unbridled men, and reach'd to where Ohio roll'd.

2. The long chain'd lines of yoked and patient steers;
The long white trains that pointed to the west,
Beyond the savage west; the hopes and fears
Of blunt untutored men, who hardly guess'd
Their course; the brave and silent women, dress'd
In homely spun attire, the boys in bands,

The cheery babes that laugh'd at all, and bless'd
The doubting hearts with laughing lifted hands,
Proclaim'd an exodus for far untraversed lands.

3. The Plains! The shouting drivers at the wheel;
The crash of leather whips; the crush and roll
Of wheels; the groan of yokes and grinding steel

And iron chain; and lo! at last the whole
Vast line, that reach'd as if to touch the goal,
Began to stretch and stream away and wind
Toward the west, as if with one control;

Then hope loom'd fair and home lay far behind;
Before, the boundless plain, and fiercest of their kind.

4. The way lay wide and green and fresh as seas,
And far away as any reach of wave;

The sunny streams went by in belt of trees ;
And here and there the tassell'd, tawny brave

Swept by on horse, look'd back, stretch'd forth and gave
A yell of hell, and then did wheel and rein

Awhile, and point away, dark-brow'd and grave,

Into the far and dim and distant plain

With signs and prophecies, and then plunged on again.

5. Some hills at last began to lift and break ;
Some streams began to fail of wood and tide,
The somber plain began betime to take
A hue of weary brown, and wild and wide
It stretch'd its naked breast on every side.____
A babe was heard at last to cry for bread
Amid the deserts; cattle low'd and died,
And dying men went by with broken tread,
And left a long black serpent-line of wreck and dead.

6. Strange hunger'd birds, black-wing'd and still as death,
And crown'd of red, with hooked' beaks, flew low
And close about, till we could touch their breath-
Strange unnamed birds, that seem'd to come and go
In circles now, and now direct and slow,
Continual, yet never touched the earth;
Slim foxes shied and shuttled to and fro
At times across the dusty, weary dearth

Of life, look'd back, then sank like crickets in a hearth.

7. The dust arose, a long dim line, like smoke
From out a riven earth. The wheels went by,
The thousand feet in harness and in yoke,
They tore the ways of ashen alkali,

And desert winds blew sudden, swift and dry.
The dust! it sat upon and fill'd the train!
It seem'd to fret and fill the very sky.

Lo! dust upon the beasts, the tent, the plain,
And dust, alas! on breasts that rose not up again.

8. They sat in desolation and in dust

By dried-up desert streams; the mother's hands
Hid all her bended face; the cattle thrust

Their tongues and faintly call'd across the lands.
The babes, that knew not what the way through sands
Could mean, would ask if it would end to-day....
The panting wolves slid by, red-eyed, in bands,
To streams beyond. The men look'd far away,
And silent saw that all a boundless desert lay.

9. They rose by night; they struggled on and on
As thin and still as ghosts; then here and there
Beside the dusty way, before the dawn,
Men silent laid them down in their despair,
And died. But woman! Woman, frail as fair!
May man have strength to give to you your due;
You falter'd not, nor murmured anywhere,

You held your babes, held to your course, and you Bore on through burning hell your double burthens through.

10. They stood at last, the decimated few,

Above a land of running streams, and they----?

They push'd aside the boughs, and peering through,
Beheld afar the cool, refreshing bay;

Then some did curse, and some bend hands to pray;
But some look'd back upon the desert, wide

And desolate with death, then all the day

They wept. But one, with nothing left beside His dog to love, crept down among the ferns and died.

11. I stand upon the green Sierra's wall;

Toward the east, beyond the yellow grass,
I see the broken hill-tops lift and fall,
Then sands that shimmer like a sea of glass,
In all the shining summer days that pass.
There lies the nation's great highroad of dead.
Forgotten, aye, unnumber'd, and, alas!
Unchronicl'd in deed or death; instead,
The stiff aristocrat lifts high a lordly head.

12. My brave and unremember'd heroes, rest;
You fell in silence, silent lie and sleep.
Sleep on unsung, for this, I say, were best;
The world to-day has hardly time to weep;
The world to-day will hardly care to keep
In heart her plain and unpretending brave.
The desert winds, they whistle by and sweep
About you; brown'd and russet grasses wave
Along a thousand leagues that lie one common grave.

13. The proud and careless pass in palace car

Along the line you blazon'd white with bones; Pass swift to people and possess and mar Your lands with monuments and letter'd stones Unto themselves. Thank God! this waste disowns Their touch. His everlasting hand has drawn A shining line around you. Wealth bemoans The waste your splendid grave employs. Sleep on; No hand shall touch your dust this side of God and dawn.