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O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear
What man has borne before!

Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care,
And they complain no more.

Peace! Peace! Orestes-like1 I breathe this prayer!
Descend with broad-winged flight

The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair,
The best-beloved Night.

TO NIGHT.

SHELLEY.

Swiftly walk o'er the western wave,
Spirit of Night!

Out of the misty eastern cave,
Where all the long and lone daylight,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear

Swift be thy flight!

Wrap thy form in a mantle gray,

Star-inwrought!

Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day,

Kiss her until she be wearied out,

Then wander o'er city and sea and land,

Touching all with thine opiate wand

Come, long sought!

When I arose and saw the dawn,

I sighed for thee;

When light rode high, and the dew was gone,

1 For the story of Orestes read Goethe's “Iphigenia in Tauris,” a selec

tion from which will be found in Group III.

And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
And the weary Day turned to her rest,
Lingering like an unloved guest,
I sighed for thee.

Thy brother, Death, came, and cried,
"Wouldst thou me?"

Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
Murmured like a noontide bee,
"Shall I nestle near thy side?
Wouldst thou me?". - And I replied,

"No, not thee ! "

Death will come when thou art dead,
Soon, too soon

Sleep will come when thou art fled;
Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, beloved Night-
Swift be thine approaching flight,
Come soon, soon!

AURORA, Lat.; EOS, Gr.

AURORA, the goddess of the dawn, was the daughter of Hyperion and Thea, and a sister of Apollo, the Sungod, and of Diana, the Moon-goddess. She was married to Astræ'us, and became the mother of the winds, - Bō'reas, the North; Zeph'yrus, the West; Eu'rus, the East; and No'tus, the South.

She was also the mother of Lucifer, the light-bringer, and of the Stars of Heaven.

She afterwards married Tithō'nus, son of Laŏm'edon, king of Troy. She stole him away, and prevailed on

Jupiter to grant him immortality; but forgetting to have perpetual youth joined in the gift, after some time she began to discern, to her great mortification, that he was growing old. When his hair was quite white she left his society; but he still had the range of her palace, lived on ambrosial food, and was clad in celestial raiment.

At length he lost the power of using his limbs, and then she shut him up in his chamber, whence his feeble voice might be heard at times. Finally she turned him into a grasshopper.

Memnon, king of Ethiopia, celebrated in the story of the Trojan War, was the son of Aurora and Tithonus. He came with his warriors to assist the kindred of his father in the war. King Priam received him with great honors, and the very next day after his arrival, Memnon, impatient of repose, led his troops to the field. A long and doubtful contest ensued between him and Achilles; at length victory declared for Achilles, Memnon fell, and the Trojans fled in dismay. Aurora, who, from her station in the sky, had seen the danger of her son and finally his fall, directed his brothers, the Winds, to convey his body to the banks of the river Esepus in Paphlagonia. In the evening she came, accompanied by the Hours and the Pleiads, and wept and lamented for her son. Night, in sympathy with her grief, spread the heavens with clouds; all nature mourned for the offspring of the Dawn. Aurora remains inconsolable for the loss of her son. Her tears still flow, and may be seen at early morning in the form of dew-drops on the grass.