Page:Hallowe'en festivities (1903).djvu/160

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156
WERNER'S READINGS No. 31.

We were married when the holly
Bloomed the Christmas greens among;
Still love's tokens are as precious
As they were when we were young.
Once again we walk together
Down the path to memory dear,
And I kiss her by the lakeside
'Mid the Halloweven cheer.


The Ghosts.


By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.


[From " Hiawatha."]

Never stoops the soaring vulture
On his quarry in the desert,
On the sick or wounded bison,
But another vulture, watching
From his high aerial look-out,
Sees the downward plunge and follows;
And a third pursues the second,
Coming from the invisible ether,
First a speck, and then a vulture,
Till the air is dark with pinions.

So disasters come not singly;
But as if they watched and waited,
Scanning one another's motions;
"When the first descends, the others
Follow, follow, gat hering flock-wise
Round their victim, sick and wounded,
First a shadow, then a sorrow,
Till the air is dark with anguish.