A dark and dreary¹ night; people nestling in their beds or circling late about the fire; Want, colder than Charity, shivering at the street corners; church-towers humming with the faint vibration² of their own tongues, but newly resting from the ghostly preachment ‘One!’ The earth covered with a sable³ pall⁴ as for the burial of yesterday; the clumps⁵ of dark trees, its giant plumes⁶ of funeral feathers, waving sadly to and fro: all hushed, all noiseless, and in deep repose⁷, save the swift clouds that skim across the moon, and the cautious wind, as, creeping after them upon the ground, it stops to listen, and goes rustling⁸ on, and stops again, and follows, like a savage⁹ on the trail.

Whither go the clouds and wind so eagerly? If, like guilty spirits, they repair to some dread¹⁰ conference with powers like themselves, in what wild regions do the elements hold council, or where unbend in terrible disport¹¹?

Here! Free from that cramped¹² prison called the earth, and out upon the waste of waters. Here, roaring, raging, shrieking¹³, howling, all night long. Hither come the sounding voices from the

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