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Storm-sent, from Arctic moors and fells,
Like a great arrow through the sky,
Two dusky lines converged in one,
Chasing the southward-flying sun;

While the brave snow-bird and the hardy jay
Call to them from the pines, as if to bid them stay.

4. I passed this way a year ago:

The wind blew south; the noon of day
Was warm as June's; and save that snow
Flecked the low mountains far away,
And that the vernal-seeming breeze
Mocked faded grass and leafless trees,

I might have dreamed of summer as I lay,
Watching the fallen leaves with the soft wind at play.

5. Since then, the winter blasts have piled
The white pagodas of the snow

On these rough slopes, and, strong and wild,
Yon river, in its overflow

Of spring-time rain and sun, set free,
Crashed with its ices to the sea;

And over these gray fields, then green and gold,

The summer corn has waved, the thunder's

organ rolled.

6. Rich gift of God! A year of time!
What pomp of rise and shut of day,
What hues wherewith our Northern clime
Makes autumn's dropping woodlands gay,
What airs outblown from ferny dells,

And clover-bloom and sweetbrier smells,

What songs of brooks and birds, what fruits and flowers, Green woods and moonlit snows, have in its round been ours.

7. I know not how, in other lands,

The changing seasons come and go;
What splendors fall on Syrian sands,

What purple lights on Alpine snow!
Nor how the pomp of sunrise waits

On Venice at her watery gates;

A dream alone to me is Arno's vale,

And the Alhambra's halls are but a traveler's tale.

8. Yet, on life's current, he who drifts

Is one with him who rows or sails;
And he who wanders widest lifts

No more of beauty's jealous veils
Than he who from his doorway sees
The miracle of flowers and trees,

Feels the warm Orient in the noonday air,

And from cloud minarets hears the sunset call to prayer.

9. The eye may well be glad, that looks

Where Pharpar's fountains rise and fall;

But he who sees his native brooks

Laugh in the sun, has seen them all.

The marble palaces of Ind

Rise round him in the snow and wind;

From his lone sweetbrier Persian Hafiz smiles,
And Rome's cathedral awe is in his woodland aisles.

10. And thus it is my fancy blends

The near at hand and far and rare;

And while the same horizon bends
Above the silver-sprinkled hair
Which flashed the light of morning skies
On childhood's wonder-lifted eyes,

Within its round of sea, and sky, and field,

Earth wheels with all her zones, the Kosmos stands revealed.

11. What greetings smile, what farewells wave,

What loved ones enter and depart!

The good, the beautiful, the brave,

The Heaven-lent treasures of the heart!

How conscious seems the frozen sod

And beechen slope whereon they trod!

The oak leaves rustle, and the dry grass bends
Beneath the shadowy feet of lost or absent friends.

12. Then ask not why to these bleak hills
I cling, as clings the tufted moss,
To bear the winter's lingering chills,
The mocking spring's perpetual loss.
I dream of lands where summer smiles,
And soft winds blow from spicy isles,

But scarce would Ceylon's breath of flowers be sweet,
Could I not feel thy soil, New England, at my feet!

13. Home of my heart! to me more fair

Than gay Versailles or Windsor's halls,
The painted, shingly town-house where
The freeman's vote for Freedom falls!
The simple roof where prayer is made,
Than Gothic groin and colonnade

The living temple of the heart of man,

Than Rome's sky-mocking vault, or many-spired Milan!

14. And sweet homes nestle in these dales,
And perch along these wooded swells;
And blessed beyond Arcadian vales,
They hear the sound of Sabbath bells!
Here dwells no perfect man sublime,
Nor woman winged before her time,
But with the faults and follies of the race,

Old home-bred virtues hold their not unhonored place.

15. Then let the icy north-wind blow

The trumpets of the coming storm,
To arrowy sleet and blinding snow
Yon slanting lines of rain transform.

Young hearts shall hail the drifted cold,

As gayly as I did of old;

And I, who watch them through the frosty pane,
Unenvious, live in them my boyhood o'er again.

LESSON XXXVII.

RIP VAN WINKLE'S RETURN.

BY WASHINGTON IRVING.

Rip Van Winkle, the name of one of the Dutch colonists of New York, whose adventures are related in Irving's Sketch Book. He is represented as having met a strange man with a keg of liquor in a ravine of the Kaatskill Mountains, and as having obligingly assisted him to carry the load to a wild retreat among the rocks, where he found a company of odd-looking persons playing at nine-pins, with the gravest of faces, and in the most mysterious silence. His superstitious awe having by degrees subsided, he ventured, when no eye was fixed on him, to steal a drink from the keg of liquor. He repeated the draught so often that his senses were overcome, and he fell into a deep sleep which lasted for twenty years. Meanwhile his wife had died, his daughter was married, his old cronies were dead or scattered, and the Revolutionary War had taken place..

E now hurried forth from the cave where he had slept

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lage inn-but it too was gone. A large rickety wooden building stood in its place, with great gaping windows, some of them broken and mended with old hats and petticoats, and over the door was painted, "The Union Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle." Instead of the great tree that used to shelter the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, there now was reared a tall, naked pole, with something on the top that looked like a red night-cap, and from it was fluttering a flag, on which was a singular assemblage of stars and stripes—all this was strange and incomprehensible.

2. He recognized on the sign, however, the ruby face of King George, under which he had smoked so many a peaceful pipe; but even this was singularly metamorphosed. The red coat was changed for one of blue and buff, a sword was held in the hand instead of a scepter, the head was decorated with a cocked hat, and underneath was painted in large characters,

GENERAL WASHINGTON. There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but none that Rip recollected. The very character of the people seemed changed. There was a busy, bustling, disputatious tone about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquillity.

3. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his broad face, double chin, and fair long pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco smoke instead of idle speeches; or Von Bummel, the schoolmaster, doling forth the contents of an ancient newspaper. In place of these, a lean, bilious-looking fellow, with his pockets full of handbills, was haranguing vehemently about rights of citizens-elections - members of Congressliberty-Bunker's Hill-heroes of seventy-six-and other words, which were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle.

4. The appearance of Rip, with his long grizzled beard, his rusty fowling-piece, his uncouth dress, and an army of women and children at his heels, soon attracted the attention of the tavern politicians. They crowded around him, eying him from head to foot with great curiosity. The orator bustled up to him, and, drawing him partly aside, inquired "on which side he voted?" Rip stared in vacant stupidity. Another short but busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, and, rising on tiptoe, inquired in his ear, "whether he was Federal or Democrat?"

5. Rip was equally at a loss to comprehend the question; when a knowing, self-important old gentleman, in a sharp cocked hat, made his way through the crowd, putting them to the right and left with his elbows as he passed, and planting himself before Van Winkle, with one arm akimbo, the other resting on his cane, his keen eyes and sharp hat penetrating, as it were, into his very soul, demanded, in an austere tone, "what brought him to the election with a gun on his shoulder, and a mob at his heels, and whether he meant to breed a riot in the village?" "Alas! gentlemen," cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, "I am a poor quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the king, God bless him!"

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