That shall go with my soldier to battle, and stand with my picket on guard.
Spirits of loving and lost ones—watch softly with Harry to-night,
For to-morrow he goes forth to battle—to arm him for Freedom and Right!
AN ERUPTION OF MOUNT VESUVIUS.
BULWER.
The following magnificent description of perhaps the most awful phenomenon in nature, gives full scope for almost every tone and gesture. Care should, however, be taken that the natural grandeur of the subject be not marred by a stilted, pompous, or affected delivery. Let the speaker try to realize the thought and feelings of a spectator of the dark scene of desolation, and he cannot go amiss:
T HE eyes of the crowd beheld, with ineffable dismay, a vast vapour shooting from the summit of Vesuvius, in the form of a gigantic pine-tree; the trunk, blackness; the branches, fire, that shifted and wavered in its hues with every moment: now fiercely luminous, now of a dull and dying red, that again blazed terrifically forth with intolerable glare.
Then there arose on high the universal shrieks of women; the men stared at each other, but were dumb. At that moment they felt the earth shake beneath their feet; the walls of the theatre trembled; and beyond, in the distance, they heard the crash of falling roofs. An instant more, and the mountain-cloud seemed to roll toward them, dark and rapid like a torrent; at the same time it cast forth from its bosom a shower of ashes, mixed with fragments of burning stone! Over the crushing vines, over the desolate streets, over the amphitheatre itself,—far and wide,—with many a mighty splash in the agitated sea, fell that awful shower!