LEAVES OF GOLD.

                                                      "SANDALPHON"
 Have you read in the Talmud of old,
  in the legends the Rabbis have told.
      Of the limitless realms of the air,
  Have you read it--the marvelous story
  Of Sandalphon, The Angel of Glory,
    Sandalphon, the Angel of Prayer?


 How erect, at the outer most gates
 Of the City Celestial he waits,
  With his feet on the ladder of light.
 That, crowded with angels unnumbered
  By Jacob was seen as he slumbered.
      Alone in the desert at night?
 
 But Serene in the rapturous throng.
 Unmoved by the rush of the song,
    With eyes unimpassioned and slow
  Among the dead angels, the deathless
  Sandalphon stands listening breathless
      to sounds that ascend from below:-

 And he gathers the prayers as he stands,
And they change into flowers in his
       Hands,
 Into garlands of purple and red;
 And beneath the great arch of the portal,
 Through the streets of the City Immortal
     Is wafted the fragrance they shed.

 When I look from my window at night,
  And the welkin above is all white,
     All throbbing and panting with stars,
  Among them Majestic is standing
  Sandalphon the angel, expanding
        his pinions in nebulous bars.

   And the legend, I feel, is a part
   Of the hunger and thirst of the heart,
        The frenzy and fire of the brain.
     That grasps at the fruitage forbidden,
    The golden pomegranates of Eden,
        To quiet its fever and pain.
                                Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.


                        "Possessions"
 Vain Glory- A little while ago, I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon- a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a dead deity- and gazed upon the sarcophagus of rare and nameless marble.
 where rest at last the  ashes of a restless man. I Leaned over the balustrade and thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world.
  I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon-I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris- I saw him at the head of the army of Italy-I saw him crossing the bridge  of Lodi with the tricolor in his hand- I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the pyramids- I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagle of France with the eagles of the crags.
 I saw him at Marengo-at Ulm and Austerlitz.
I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster- driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris- clutched like a wild beast.- banished to Elba. I  saw him escape and retake an Empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where chance and fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea. 
I thought of the orphans and widows he had made- and the tears that had been shed for his glory, and of the only women who ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition. And I said I would have rather been French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would of have gone down to
 the tongue- less silence of the dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder, known as Napoleon the Great.   Robert G. Ingersoll.