POEMS 
 
 CHARLES G. EASTMAN. 
 
 MONTPELIER, VT. : 
 T. C. PHINNEY, PUBLISHER. 
 
 1880.
 
 ,7 
 
 COPYRIGHTED BY 
 
 MRS. CHARLES G. EASTMAN, 
 MONTPELIEK, VT. 
 
 WRIGHT & POTTER PRINTING COMPANY 
 18 POST OFFICE SQUARE, BOSTON, MASS.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Editor s Preface, vii 
 
 Biographical Sketch of the Author, xi 
 
 A Picture ("The Easy Chair"), .... 3 
 
 Purer than Snow, 4 
 
 Corae Sing Me the Song, . .... 5 
 
 The Late Season, ... .... 7 
 
 Of Love and Wine, 10 
 
 The Kidd-Man, 11 
 
 As Summer Fades away, 18 
 
 The Deformed, 19 
 
 A New Eugene Aram, 21 
 
 The Promise, 24 
 
 Dirge, 25 
 
 The Apple Blossom, 26 
 
 Love and the Poet, 27 
 
 The Haughty Maiden, 28 
 
 To Live upon Her Smile, 31 
 
 If You Think to Win Her, 32 
 
 Come over the Mountain to Me, Love, ... 33 
 Half My Life I Spent in Dreaming, ... .34 
 
 Sweetly She Sleeps, 35 
 
 Little Bel, 36 
 
 Mill May, 38 
 
 The Blind Beggar, 40 
 
 The Spring-Time, 42 
 
 A Wife-Song, 45 
 
 Twenty-Nine, 46 
 
 Shadows, 49 
 
 Lily, 51
 
 EDITOR S PREFACE. 
 
 IN presenting to the public this edition of the 
 POEMS of CHARLES G. EASTMAN, its Editor deems 
 it proper to make some explanation in regard to 
 the many differences which will be noticed be 
 tween the poems as here presented and in the 
 edition of 1848. After publishing, Mr. Eastman, 
 in an interleaved copy, was accustomed to often 
 correct and change the readings of his poems, as 
 his judgment or fancy at the time dictated ; fre 
 quently not only altering the words, but the 
 sense, of entire passages. He had also, before 
 his sickness, entirety remodelled many of those 
 poems which are generally regarded as his best. 
 From this interleaved copy the present edition 
 has been prepared. Wherever the alteration was 
 certainly intended by the Author, it has been 
 followed ; but wherever the intention was doubt 
 ful, or the manuscript change was apparently 
 made for the mere purpose of future adoption if 
 finally approved, the original text has been re 
 stored. In these respects, the Editor has e,xer-
 
 Vlll 
 
 cised, to some extent, his own discretion, he 
 trusts, ndt unwisely. 
 
 From among the unpublished manuscripts of 
 Mr. Eastman, the Editor has selected, and pre 
 sents in this edition, twenty-three new poems, 
 and some fragmentary pieces which he deems too 
 beautiful to be cast aside. Of these poems, two 
 " The Old and New" and the one we have 
 entitled " Life s Mission" (the Author not having 
 entitled it) are of over five hundred lines each. 
 These the reader ma}*, properly perhaps, regard 
 as unfinished and incomplete ; but from the fact 
 that they were regarded by the Author as his 
 most important work, and for the preservation 
 of the many fine and finished passages they con 
 tain, we have chosen to include them in this 
 volume. The manuscript of these poems when 
 placed in our hands was in a most disorderly 
 state. Written on loose sheets, without paging, 
 it was embarrassed with numberless erasures, 
 additions, and interlineations, and with duplicate 
 and triplicate versions of the same passage, from 
 which it was difficult to select the one approved 
 by the Author, to such an extent that the 
 Editor has felt at times disposed, in distrust of 
 his own power of proper arrangement, to discard
 
 IX 
 
 them altogether. Having decided otherwise, in 
 fluenced as much by the judgment of others as 
 his own, it is hoped his errors may be pardoned. 
 In these as in all other poems, the text of the 
 Author has been scrupulously preserved. 
 
 The present edition has long been in contem 
 plation, and has been anxiously expected by the 
 Author s many admirers, but has been delayed 
 b} unavoidable circumstances. We take pleasure, 
 at last, in presenting this volume of the Works 
 of VERMONT S true POET. 
 
 G. R. T. 
 
 MONTPRLIER, VT., Sept. 15, 1870. 
 
 THE Preface, as appears from the date, was 
 prepared in 1870 by Mr. George R. Thompson, 
 son of the late Hon. Daniel P. Thompson, of 
 Montpelier. 
 
 Mr. Thompson was assisted in the preparation 
 of this copy for the press by the Hon. Charles 
 Reed, of Montpelier, a personal friend of Mr. 
 Eastman ; also, in the clerical labor, by Mr. 
 Charles Loomis, of Montpelier.
 
 Before the work was finally placed in the hands 
 of the printer, all three of the above-named 
 gentlemen passed from earth : hence a further 
 delay has been the result. 
 
 The publication of the work is now undertaken, 
 at the earnest request of a large circle of the 
 admirers of Mr. Eastman, by loving friends. 
 
 M. D. G. 
 
 MONTPELIER, 1880.
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 CHARLES GAMAGE EASTMAN was born at Frye- 
 burg, Maine, June 1, 1816. His father, Benja 
 min C. Eastman, was by trade a watchmaker ; 
 and his mother was Rebecca Gamage, a woman 
 beautiful in person, mind, and affections. At 
 the early age of eleven years, tender in mind and 
 fragile in body, young Eastman, with the inde 
 pendence which always characterized him, left 
 his parental roof, and went out into the world ; 
 not choosing any longer to be a cause of expense 
 to his parents, the} being in humble pecuniary 
 
 " The writer of this has uot intended or attempted 
 to prepare more than a sketch of the life of Mr. East 
 man, for the purposes of this edition of his Poems. It 
 is to be hoped that his memoir will sometime be more 
 adequately written. The writer, in the preparation of 
 this paper, has availed himself greatly of the valuable 
 biographical paper written on the occasion of Mr. East 
 man s death, by his kinsman, Col. F. A. Eastman, of 
 Chicago, 111., and published in THE VERMONT PATRIOT, 
 of Sept. 22, 1860.
 
 i Xll 
 
 circumstances. From that time forward he was 
 the architect of his own fortunes. At the age of 
 thirteen we find him attending school in the town 
 of Windsor, Vermont ; working his way as best he 
 could, without uncompensated aid from any one. 
 He made such progress in his studies that, the 
 next year, he was successfully engaged in teach 
 ing school. Afterwards he continued his educa 
 tion at Meriden, N. H., where there was an 
 excellent academical institution, and, having 
 completed there his preparatory studies, at 
 scarcety the age of eighteen he became a stu 
 dent at THE UNIVERSITY OF VERMOKT, at Burling 
 ton. Here, to maintain himself, he made the 
 usual shifts to which many young men resort. 
 He taught, and he wrote for the newpapers ; and 
 here his attention was first turned to the pro 
 fession that of an editor which, on leaving 
 college, he adopted, and the exercise of which 
 became the business of his life. His first news 
 paper enterprise was the starting of a small jour 
 nal, in the interest of the Democratic part} , at 
 Johnson, Lamoille County, Vermont. This was 
 not pecuniarily successful, though it attained some 
 position and influence, and was abandoned. In 
 1840, not discouraged by this ill-fortune, Mr. East-
 
 Xlll 
 
 man fixed his residence at Woodstock, Vermont, 
 where he inaugurated THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE ; 
 which newspaper at once assumed a high posi 
 tion among the organs of the Democratic party, 
 and under his direction earned a reputation for 
 energy, reliability, and strength. Mr. Eastman 
 had, from his earliest manhood, been a zealous 
 and consistent Democrat, embracing the princi 
 ples of that party because sincerely convinced of 
 their truth ; and he gave to their promulgation 
 and advocacy all his energy and ability. His 
 mind soon became a leading one in the councils 
 of his party in his adopted State, and he after 
 wards became a prominent director of its policy 
 in national affairs. Seeking a wider scope for 
 the exercise of his faculties, in 1846 he disposed 
 of THE SPIRIT OP THE AGE, and purchased THE 
 VERMONT PATRIOT, published at Montpelier, Ver 
 mont, then and now the leading Democratic or 
 gan of the State, in the editorship of which he 
 continued until his death. It is as the conductor 
 of this journal that he is the most widely remem 
 bered among politicians ; and he managed it with 
 an ability and faithfulness that secured it a repu 
 tation and influence seldom possessed by a coun 
 try newspaper. His writings in this paper were
 
 XIV 
 
 in accordance with the character of the man, 
 direct, incisive, and earnest. He never hesitated 
 to say whatever was true, if it were proper to be 
 said ; and in his exposures of the errors or frauds 
 of his opponents he employed intellectual weap 
 ons of the sharpest and most cutting kind. His 
 arguments were convincing, his logic clear, and 
 his convictions were stamped with truth. His 
 paper was not in any way pre-eminent as a literary 
 one. It might be supposed, judging from his al 
 most idolatrous love of literary pursuits, that his 
 journal would have been more prominent in that 
 respect ; but he never seemed ambitious to make 
 it so. These inclinations were gratified in an 
 other wa}-. Though a member of a political party 
 never in the ascendancy in Vermont, he occupied 
 many influential official positions. He was a 
 leading member of the Democratic National Con 
 ventions of 1848, 1852, 1856, and 1860, and at 
 the time of his death was a prominent member of 
 the National Democratic Committee. In 1852 
 and 1853, he was a member of the Senate of the 
 State of Vermont, and a laborious and influen 
 tial one ; in which position he served with credit 
 to himself, and with advantage to the entire State, 
 as the prosperity of man}* of its most permanent
 
 XV 
 
 interests will attest. He was twice the popular 
 candidate of his party for a seat in Congress 
 and he was Postmaster at Montpelier nearh six 
 years. 
 
 At the time he fixed his residence at Mont 
 pelier, he married Mrs. Susan S. Havens, daugh 
 ter of Dr. John D. Powers, of Woodstock, Ver 
 mont, who now survives him. [The fruit of this 
 union was two sons (both now deceased) and a 
 daughter ; the latter, Mary Aver} Eastman, is a 
 native of Montpelier, where she was born in 1849 ; 
 in 1872 she married Eldin J. Hartshorn, a son of 
 Hon. John W. Hartshorn, of Lunenburg, Ver 
 mont. Mr. and Mrs. Hartshorn, immediately 
 after their marriage, settled at the present city of 
 Emmetsburg, Palo Alto County, Iowa, where they 
 still reside. 
 
 Mr. Hartshorn is a lawyer by profession, hav 
 ing read law at Rutland, Vermont, in the office of 
 Messrs. Veazey and Dunton. 
 
 Mr. Hartshorn was a member of the House of 
 Representatives of Iowa two years, and has just 
 entered upon his second term as a State senator 
 from his district ; he is also mayor of his adopted 
 city. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Hartshorn have three children 
 living, having lost one.
 
 XVI 
 
 Mrs. Eastman continues to reside in Montpelier, 
 although she passes a portion of each year with 
 her daughter.] 
 
 Mr. Eastman died at his residence in Mont 
 pelier, Sept. 16, 1860. From the preceding May, 
 a disease of the most obstinate and painful char 
 acter had burdened his spirit and wasted his frame. 
 Faithful to the complicated interests with which 
 he was identified, and the responsibilities that had 
 accumulated upon him, he unwisely, but most un 
 selfishly (as was like him), made secondary his 
 own interests of health and life. His pride and 
 sympathies were enlisted in the business of his 
 party, and he did what he thought to be his duty. 
 But he was at home in the bosom of his family 
 when his e} T es closed to the scenes he loved so 
 well ; and his last moments, painless and calm, 
 were brightened b} the love of family and friends, 
 and cheered with the substantial hope of eternal 
 happiness and joy. 
 
 In person Mr. Eastman was large and strong, 
 well-formed, and with a face of remarkable beauty. 
 He possessed one of those faces which involunta 
 rily attract, one which at once excited admiration 
 and respect. Though frequently he seemed rapt 
 and abstracted, and withdrawn within himself, at
 
 other times ever}" feature became mobile with life 
 and gayety. He would seem, at times, in his 
 thoughts to wander far away from the scenes 
 around him, and his mind would seek its enjoy 
 ment elsewhere ; but as often he would enter into 
 the spirit of the hour, with a glee boyish and al 
 most boisterous. Long by those who knew him 
 will his genial face and contagious laugh be re 
 membered. Especially was he the friend of the 
 young. No } oung man, doubtful and hesitating 
 in his first venture in life, ever sought encourage 
 ment from him in vain, or left him without a 
 brighter hope. Little children loved him ; and 
 he had ever a pleasant word for them. For them, 
 as for all, his smile was most kindly and winning. 
 They, the best judges of us all, well knew he was 
 generous, sympathetic, and humane. In his own 
 family his life was lovely. It is wtll described in 
 the words of Rev. Dr. William H. Lord spoken 
 at his funeral to his mourning family, now proved 
 prophetic : 
 
 u You will remember him first and longest fur 
 what he was to you personally, for what he 
 was in his domestic and social relations. You 
 will not forget the kindness of his heart, the 
 amenitv and cheerfulness of his manners, the
 
 XVlll 
 
 liveliness of fancy and wit with which he cheered 
 the household You will not lose the rec 
 ollection of his kind words, of his considerate 
 attentions, of his fatherly acts and affections. 
 You will remember the melod} of his flute, as it 
 led the voices of his children in their songs and 
 hymns ; the written praj ers, which I am told he 
 composed for them, to be used, morning and 
 evening in their devotions. And so long as love 
 has a place in your hearts, this household will 
 not cease to have a shrine where his memory 
 shall be kept green and sacred." 
 
 Many incidents, illustrative of the character 
 of Mr. Eastman ; of his kindness and generosity ; 
 of his hatred and contempt of wrong, and his 
 true sense of justice ; of his pure wit and lively 
 fancy ; of his impatience of bigotry and cant, and 
 his reverence for all things truly good and truly 
 sacred ; of his broad and liberal views of life, 
 and his charity for thoughtless or repented err 
 ing ; of his true poetic appreciation of beauty in 
 things animate and inanimate, crowd upon our 
 memory ; but the purposes of this sketch forbid 
 us to indulge in their relation here. May his 
 heart and soul find a fitting portraiture by an 
 abler and more accurate hand !
 
 XIX 
 
 Mr. Eastman, from his college days to the da} r 
 of his death, devoted more or less of his time to 
 the indulgence and expression of his poetic feel 
 ings ; and he is best known and will be longest 
 remembered by his poetic works. He was rapid 
 and fluent in composition, but most laborious 
 and fastidious in revision, perhaps too much so. 
 He would vary the expression of his idea ad 
 infinitum almost, and never seemed to think any 
 thing he wrote could not be improved. When 
 his poems were given to the public, he was ex 
 ceedingly sensitive and doubtful as to their re 
 ception ; and, when the book appeared, was almost 
 sorry he had published it. Its success was at 
 once assured, and his position as a poet of great 
 merit at once allowed. In this country and in 
 Europe his writings have received the highest 
 commendation. As a lyrical poet, there is no 
 American writer who can be called his superior ; 
 hardly any one his equal. Aside from the finish 
 and delicacy of expression, the natural and easy 
 mingling of sentiment and description, the chief 
 charm of his poetry is its perfect truth. Every 
 New-England reader will recognize in his descrip 
 tive pieces many a perfect reproduction of the 
 incidents and scenes of his bo\hood. His words
 
 XX 
 
 and expressions are those in common use, simple 
 and expressive ; and his subjects are at once un 
 derstood, and his allusions appreciated. "Why," 
 once said Mr. Eastman to the writer, " do the} 
 talk about the yew and the myrtle? Why don t 
 they write about the spruce and the hemlock, the 
 maple and the butternut? We don t have any 
 yew-trees in this country." Mr. Eastman s pieces 
 descriptive of local sceneiy and manners are 
 among his best. There is hardly a Vermont man 
 who does not know well " The Old Pine-Tree," 
 or who is not very well acquainted with " Uncle 
 Jeny." Many of us have looked upon the " Scene 
 in a Vermont Winter," though perhaps without 
 its melancholy incident. Mr. Eastman handled 
 these subjects with such perfect truth of descrip 
 tion that they are almost unsurpassed. 
 
 His lyrics are exceedingly musical. One reads 
 many of them with the involuntary impression 
 that, instead, he ought to sing them. But in his 
 compositions the poetry equals and sometimes 
 surpasses the music. His songs are of very un 
 equal merit, and this inequality sometimes ex 
 tends to different parts of the same piece. Those 
 that are humorous, or are characteristic of man 
 ners, copy nature no less than those that are
 
 XXI 
 
 descriptive. Those that are serious and general 
 are tender and sweetl}* interesting. In these 
 latter Mr. Eastman exhibited the great sensibility 
 of his heart, no less than his understanding, and 
 these will be found to infuse the living principle 
 into all the works of genius which are destined to 
 immortality. His sensibility had an uncommon 
 range. He was alive to all emotion ; and he has 
 reared a fair and enduring monument of his 
 
 genius. 
 
 T. 
 
 NOTE. That part of the above sketch inclosed 
 in brackets, on pp. xv, xvi, has been added since 
 the death of Mr. Thompson.
 
 POEMS.
 
 PART I.
 
 A PICTURE. 
 
 THE farmer sat in his easy chair 
 
 Smoking his pipe of clay, 
 While his hale old wife with busy care 
 
 AVas clearing the dinner away ; 
 A sweet little girl with fine blue eyes 
 On her grandfather s knee was catching flies. 
 
 The old man laid his hand on her head, 
 
 With a tear on his wrinkled face, 
 lie thought how often her mother, dead, 
 
 Used to sit in the self-same place ; 
 As the tear stole down from his half-shut eye, 
 "Don t smoke!" said the child, "how it makes 
 
 you cry 
 
 t " 
 
 The house-dog lay, stretched out on the floor 
 Where the shade after noon used to steal, 
 The busy old wife by the open door 
 Was turning the spinning-wheel, 
 And the old brass clock on the mantletree 
 Had plodded along to almost three. 
 
 Still the farmer sat in his easy chair, 
 
 While close to his heaving breast 
 The moistened brow and the cheek so fair 
 Of his sweet grandchild were pressed ; 
 His head, bent down, on her soft hair lay : 
 Fast asleep were the}- both, that summer day !
 
 PURER THAN SNOAV. 
 
 PURER than snow 
 
 Is a girl I know ; 
 Purer than snow is she ; 
 
 Her heart is light, 
 
 And her cheek is bright. 
 Ah ! who do you think she can be ? 
 
 / know very well, 
 
 But I never shall tell, 
 T would spoil all the fun, 3*011 see ; 
 
 Her e}-e is blue ; 
 
 And her lip, like dew, 
 And red as a mulberry. 
 
 Mild as a dove 
 
 Is a girl I love ; 
 Mild as a dove is she ; 
 
 And dearer, too, 
 
 Than ten like you. 
 Ah ! who do you think she can be?
 
 COME SING ME THE SONG. 
 
 COME sing me the song that you sang j-ears ago, 
 
 When we sat by the soft-flowing brook, 
 With the lilies we d picked from the bank, in each 
 
 hand, 
 
 And the light of first love in each look. 
 Though the clover has faded, and withered the 
 
 flowers, 
 
 That our forms in that summer day pressed, 
 And more loves than one in each bosom have 
 
 been 
 Since then a too well cherished guest ; 
 
 Yet, sing me the song that you sang years ago, 
 
 Wlien ive sat by the soft-flotving brook, 
 With the lilies we d picked from the bank, in 
 
 each hand, 
 And the light of first love in each look. 
 
 Come sing me the song that you sang years ago, 
 
 When your cheek like the morning was fair, 
 When the sweet-elder blow and the strawberry 
 
 vine 
 
 I twined in the curls of your hair. 
 Though your cheek has grown pale, and my hair 
 
 has grown gray, 
 And your lip lost its mulberry red,
 
 And the thousand bright hopes that we talked 
 
 over then, 
 
 Like the passion that nursed them, have fled ; 
 Yet, sing me the song that you sang years ago, 
 
 When ive sat by the soft-flowing brook, 
 With the lilies we d picked from the bank, in 
 
 each hand, 
 And the light of first love, in each look.
 
 THE LATE SEASON. 
 
 THE skies are clouded, and the hail 
 
 Drives at the window all the day ; 
 And, through the gloomy evening, wail 
 
 Uneasy winds along the way ; 
 No herald of the promised flowers 
 
 Above the cheerless plain appears ; 
 And April s cold, ungenial showers 
 
 Fall to the earth like frozen tears. 
 
 With freezing nights and days o ercast, 
 
 Stern Winter ! still thy reign is here, 
 To vex the husbandman, and blast 
 
 The promise of the opening year. 
 And though the month is far behind 
 
 When shouting troops of children deck 
 The lusty Aries, and bind 
 
 The wreath about his snowy neck ; 
 
 Still thou art building o er the streams 
 
 The agile skater s glassy floor, 
 And shaping in the moon s cold beams 
 
 Fantastic shadows, while the roar 
 Of dismal winds is heard at night 
 
 Upon the mountain, and, below, 
 The valley still is cold and white, 
 
 And cheerless with the drifting snow.
 
 How long shall bud and blossom wait 
 
 For thy departure ? It is time 
 To hear the whippoorwill, the prate 
 
 Of birds about their nests, the chime 
 Of running waters by the wa} , 
 
 The busy swallows at the eaves, 
 And soft-winged zephyrs out at play 
 
 Among the grass and growing leaves. 
 
 The seed is waiting for the plough, 
 
 While o er his wet and dreary land 
 The husbandman, with gloomy brow, 
 
 Sees still the frozen waters stand ; 
 And as, with stinted measure, he 
 
 Doles the last labors of the flail, 
 Doubts if he have not lived to see 
 
 The seed-time and the harvest fail. 
 
 Mark how, sometimes, tis seen that Wrong 
 
 Will scowl upon the dawning light ! 
 And gathering up his knotted thong 
 
 Will scourge and buffet back the Right ! 
 But mark how soon, o er all the earth, 
 
 His last black day of hate is won ! 
 And Time s full travail with the birth 
 
 Of radiant Truth comes surety on ! 
 
 So thou shall have thy day, stern child 
 Of tempests ! soon, thy frosty locks 
 
 Shorn from thy brow by zephyrs mild, 
 Shalt thou depart, and grazing flocks
 
 J) 
 
 Shall crop the grass the clouded sun 
 Has checked awhile ; in summer hours 
 
 Above thy grave shall children run, 
 
 And wreath their hair with gathered flowers. 
 
 Lo ! southward, where the horizon s verge 
 
 Sinks its blue circle from the eye, 
 Where still the burly tempests urge 
 
 Their fierce authority, the sky 
 With milder hue begins to glow, 
 
 And clouds, that in the atmosphere 
 Bosom soft gales and rain-drops, grow 
 
 Blushful with the returning year. 
 
 Not long can seasons late, or storms 
 
 Keep back the seed-time, and the grain, 
 That Nature in her bosom warms, 
 
 Shall, in its own due time, again 
 Put forth the promised blade ; and though 
 
 Untimely frosts and rains delay 
 The ear, } - et shall the full corn grow 
 
 And ripen for the harvest day.
 
 10 
 
 OF LOVE AND WINE. 
 
 OF love and wine old poets sung, 
 
 Old poets rich and rare, 
 Of wine with red and ruby heart, 
 
 And love with golden hair ; 
 Of wine that winged the poet s thought, 
 
 And woke the slumbering lyre ; 
 Of love that through the poet s line 
 
 Ran like a flash of fire. 
 
 But wine, when those old poets sung 
 
 Its praises long ago, 
 Was something subtler than the bards 
 
 Of modern ages know ; 
 Ay, wine was wine when Teian girls, 
 
 Flushed with the rosy dew, 
 To old Anacreon s fiery strains 
 
 Through wanton dances flew. 
 
 And love, when those old poets sung 
 
 Its praises long ago, 
 Was something warmer than the bards 
 
 Of modern ages know ; 
 A} , love was love when Teian girls, 
 
 Flushed with the melting fire, 
 With roses crowned Anacreon s brow, 
 
 With kisses paid his lyre.
 
 11 
 
 THE KIDD-MAN. 
 
 TELL you a story ! Alice dear, 
 
 I m afraid } T OU have asked in vain ! 
 
 Since your mother died, in your second year, 
 
 I ve forgotten all that I knew, I fear ; 
 
 And the stories I told when she was here, 
 I can never repeat again. 
 
 But 3 r et, perhaps, as it is not late, 
 
 And here by my watch I see 
 The hands point six on the dial-plate, 
 I ll try if before they are round to eight 
 My fancy fail of her wonted gait, 
 
 And this shall the stoiy be : 
 
 An old man lives, as the story goes, 
 
 In a hut, just out of the town, 
 Where under the hill the hemlock grows, 
 Shading till June the winter snows, 
 And a living springlet bubbling flows 
 From a rock in the mountain brown. 
 
 The queerest man that was ever on earth, 
 
 And a very queer man is he, 
 Nobody knows who gave him birth ;
 
 He never sits down at any man s hearth, 
 And he seems to think of very small worth 
 What was, or what is to be. 
 
 ii. 
 And how does he look? why, Alice, his skin 
 
 Is withered, and brown as tea, 
 And the wrinkles so thick that the point of a pin 
 Anywhere on his face, a wrinkle were in ! 
 Stooping and short, meagre and thin, 
 
 And hands that reach to his knee. 
 
 In his eyes there shines, it is plain to see, 
 
 A disordered and feverish will ; 
 As far in his head as they well can be, 
 The3 r re as blue as } ou ever saw blue-beriy, 
 But dreamy and deep, as though infancy 
 
 Were wondering through them still. 
 
 His hair is white as the falling snow, 
 ^ But silkj- and soft as a girl s ; 
 And falling far down his shoulders below, 
 Like a patriarch s seen in a picture, you know, 
 Streams round his neck in the winds as they 
 
 blow, 
 In a thousand beautiful curls. 
 
 in. 
 But his beard is short, and blacker than jet, 
 
 And it never was shaved, the} say ; 
 And his teeth, through his lips, you can see, are set
 
 13 
 
 Closely together, as though they met 
 To crush the remembrance, lingering yet, 
 Of things that have long passed away. 
 
 Through summer and spring, when the skies are 
 
 fair, 
 
 He scarce ever goes out of the door ; 
 But sits at his hearth, with his dog by his chair, 
 And the smoke of his pipe wreathes round in his 
 
 hair, 
 
 As he crosses his legs with a thinking air, 
 Or wanders about the floor. 
 
 IV. 
 
 But they say, when the sky with a tempest 
 
 scowls, 
 
 And the lightning flares and gleams, 
 When the raving wind through the cavern 
 
 prowls, 
 
 And over the peaks of the mountain howls, 
 And, with long and low intonations, growls 
 The distant thunder, he seems 
 
 Like a man at the top of his element, 
 In the midst of the deafening roar 
 
 Shouts as the hemlock-trees are bent ! 
 
 And the oak by the bolt is torn and rent ! 
 
 And laughs as the riven leaves are sent 
 Like feathers about his door !
 
 14 
 
 v. 
 
 And they say, he ll stand and turn his ear, 
 
 And the peals count one by one, 
 As the cloud sweeps onward, black and near, 
 And the bolts fall fast, distinct and clear, 
 As though each clap that he turns to hear 
 
 Were the burst of a battle gun. 
 
 There is something, twould seem, in summei 
 bright 
 
 That he alwa3 T s seeks to shun ; 
 And tis said that he utterly hates the light, 
 That the leaves and the flowers annoy his sight, 
 That he only can bear the half-day-night 
 
 Of the gloomiest winter sun. 
 
 VI. 
 
 But as soon as the da} r s grow short and dim, 
 And the mountain is covered with snow, 
 When the trees look ghastly, bare, and grim, 
 And the sleet clings closely to trunk and limb, 
 And the rivers are frozen from brim to brim, 
 And the sun to the south runs low, 
 
 Then the old fellow s out ! and }-ou never will 
 find 
 
 Another so strange and queer ; 
 His cap is of coon, with the red-fox lined. 
 Like a bee-hive shaped, with the tail behind, 
 That flaps o er his back in the saucy wind, 
 
 Twould make you laugh for a year.
 
 15 
 
 VII. 
 
 His horse is a poor and a sorry old lout, 
 
 And a sorry old lout is he ; 
 His head hangs down, and his bones stick out, 
 And he scarcely can turn the old pung about, 
 And he cares not a pin for the street-boy s shout, 
 
 Or his master s gee-up ! gee ! 
 
 The harness is shabby and old, alack ! 
 
 A rope and a strap and a thong ! 
 There s a cord for the reins, and a piece of sack 
 Doubled up for a pad, on the old horse s back, 
 While the trace-chains jingle a-whick-a-ty-whack ! 
 
 Round the thills as he shuffles along. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 O er his shoulder he holds, of the blue-beech 
 green, 
 
 A long, sturdy twig, for a whip, 
 And, as forward a little you see him lean, 
 He uses it often and well, I ween ; 
 For thick and large, and plain to be seen, 
 
 Are its marks on the old horse s hip. 
 
 Behind him follows, led by a twine, 
 
 His beautiful dog, Bessie ; 
 Her hair is curly and black and fine, 
 And parts along on her back in a line, . 
 And glossy and bright, in the clear sunshine, 
 
 As a fully-ripe blackberry.
 
 10 
 
 IX. 
 
 So he rides along from street to street, 
 
 Turning that way and this ; 
 He minds not a soul he may chance to meet, 
 He never looks up from his horse s feet, 
 And cares not a straw for the hail and sleet 
 
 That beats in his face, I wis. 
 
 And though the wind s up, and the snow is 
 
 whirled 
 
 So that nobody else can see, 
 
 You d think, as his whip round his head is twirled, 
 And the puffs of smoke from his stub pipe curled 
 Through his jetty black beard, that he owned the 
 
 new world, 
 And a part of the old countrie ! 
 
 x. 
 
 Most terrible tales are about him told, 
 And I ve heard our grandmother sa} , 
 
 She d no doubt, in his hut, he had chests full of 
 gold, 
 
 For which to old Nick his soul he had sold ; 
 
 That he always had been just about so old 
 Since he first came along this waj*. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Tis sua-e, no doubt, the old fellow must be 
 
 As old as the oldest crow ; 
 But whether he s sold to the devil, is he,
 
 17 
 
 Whether he has murdered folks on the sea, 
 Or whether he s wicked or very godly, 
 Nobody pretends to know. 
 
 XII. 
 
 But you know there was once a Captain Kidd, 
 You have heard, I am sure, of him ! 
 
 The man of the song, who " so wickedly did," 
 
 Who all in the sand the Bible hid ! 
 
 And the laws of God to his crew forbid, 
 A pirate, bloody and grim ! 
 
 And this crazy and foolish old man, you see, 
 
 So close in his hut keeps hid 
 That the gossips insist there is some mystery 
 About him, and sagely declare it must be, 
 So strange are his ways and his doings, that he 
 
 Is some such a fellow as Kidd ! 
 
 xnr. 
 
 And so it is now, wherever he goes, 
 
 Sorry to say am I ! 
 
 Every child in the street the old man knows, 
 And whether it shines or whether it snows, 
 Whether it rains or whether it blows, 
 
 " THE KIDD-MAN ! " is the cry.
 
 18 
 
 AS SUMMER FADES AAV AY. 
 
 AH, me ! the sky is dark and cold, 
 
 The leaves are dead and graj , 
 And everything seems growing old 
 
 As summer fades away ; 
 The clouds along the valley drift, 
 
 Or round the mountain run, 
 Too heavy with the rain to lift 
 
 Their bosoms to the sun. 
 
 I hear upon the frozen grass 
 
 The cold and dripping rain, 
 And mark the shadows as the}" pass 
 
 Along the cheerless plain ; 
 See one by one the flowers, across 
 
 The dreary fields, depart ; 
 And of old age the sullen moss 
 
 Feel growing o er my heart ! 
 
 Ah, me ! the sky is dark and cold, 
 
 And sharp and keen the storm, 
 That cuts, as though my blood were old, 
 
 My pinched and shivering form ; 
 The vigor from my blood has fled, 
 
 M}- brain seems in decay, 
 And everything looks dark and dead 
 
 As summer fades away.
 
 19 
 
 THE DEFORMED. 
 
 SHE was not beautiful, poor girl ! 
 
 Her figure or her face 
 Had none of all the charms that give 
 
 To maidenhood its grace ; 
 A gentle being, on whose heart 
 
 All sorrows seem to fall ; 
 Deformed and homely, poor and sad, 
 
 And mind to feel it all ! 
 
 They shunned her at our village sports, 
 
 And, when the gay and fail- 
 Were gathered at the festival, 
 
 I never found her there. 
 They knew the poor and homely girl 
 
 Had little art to speak 
 Where fashion s bold and glaring lights 
 
 Were blazing on her cheek. 
 
 And, never asking look or word 
 
 To cheer the lonely hours, 
 She sought no sympathy beyond 
 
 Her mother and her flowers. 
 Her shrinking soul could never brook 
 
 The haughty eye of pride ; 
 And, hardly known beyond her door, 
 
 She lived and wept and died.
 
 At last, beneath December s snow, 
 
 The few that knew her well 
 Went out and laid the girl to rest ; 
 
 And now there s none can tell 
 Where bloom the clover white and red 
 
 That Nature kindly rears 
 To guard her slumbers, weary child 
 
 Of poverty and tears.
 
 21 
 
 A NEW EUGENE ARAM. 
 
 HE cannot flee it ! since the night 
 
 His murderous hand was laid 
 Upon the weary traveller, 
 
 Far in the lonely glade, 
 That face he saw, upturned and pale, 
 
 A moment in the light 
 The setting moon gave through the pines, 
 
 Has never left his sight. 
 
 The Magi s page, the mystic arts 
 
 Of men who ve sought to tell 
 Our strange and hidden destiny 
 
 By star and crucible ; 
 The thoughts of those who ve dared to search 
 
 The dark and the unknown, 
 Who ve watched the secret springs of life, 
 
 For years he made his own. 
 
 He stood upon the Appenines ; 
 
 Where famed Lepanto swells, 
 And where Marmora heaves her heart 
 
 Along the Dardanelles ; 
 Where, round her cold and ice-bound capes, 
 
 The freezing Arctic sweeps ; 
 Where still above her perished bride 
 
 The Adriatic weeps ;
 
 99 
 
 Amid her ruins who was once 
 
 The mistress of the world ; 
 Where for the banner of the cross 
 
 The battle-axe was hurled ; 
 Upon the hallowed mount where erst 
 
 The God of Abram spoke ; 
 And on the hill where fabled Jove 
 
 His wrathful thunders broke ; 
 
 On Asia s sands, where silence rules 
 
 With unmolested reign ; 
 Beneath the Moslem minaret ; 
 
 Beside the Pagan fane ; 
 Where Egypt s p3*ramids record 
 
 Traditions dark and dim : 
 Yet, like a Presence was that face 
 
 Forever unto him. 
 
 It haunts him in the forest shade , 
 
 It haunts him where the roar 
 Of rushing multitudes is like 
 
 The sea upon the shore ; 
 It haunts him in the blaze of da}*, 
 
 And when on Ida s steeps 
 Her watch above her lover-boy 
 
 The fabled huntress keeps. 
 
 He cannot flee it : from the pines 
 Where shone the moonlight dim 
 
 The night the weary traveller died, 
 That pale face followed him ;
 
 23 
 
 And evermore the pallid brow, 
 Marked by the crimson spot 
 
 Between the locks of fallen hair, 
 Where struck the cursed shot ; 
 
 And ever the half-conscious eyes, 
 
 The dark blow on the cheek, 
 The pale lips parted with a prayer 
 
 They moved in vain to speak, 
 Are with him as they were the night 
 
 His murderous hand was laid 
 Upon the weary traveller, 
 
 Far in the lonely glade.
 
 24 
 
 THE PROMISE. 
 
 I SHOWED my love a budding rose, 
 
 And bade the girl beware ! 
 Believe, I said, as summer flowers 
 
 Our youthful pleasures are ; 
 And love is like the bud we see, 
 
 Whose heart will soon be blown, 
 Most fragrant when its leaves are fresh, 
 
 Ere one soft tint has flown. 
 
 And she, with sweet and bashful eye, 
 
 Her face half from me turned 
 In soft confusion, as I spoke, 
 
 My meaning well discerned ; 
 And promised, when the bud I saw 
 
 Should open to the sky, 
 That she my full desire, at last, 
 
 No longer would deny.
 
 DIRGE. 
 
 SOFTLY ! 
 She is lying 
 
 With her lips apart ; 
 Softly ! 
 
 She is dying 
 
 Of a broken heart. 
 
 Whisper ! 
 
 Life is growing 
 
 Dim within her breast ; 
 Whisper ! 
 She is going 
 
 To her final rest. 
 
 Gently ! 
 
 She is sleeping, 
 
 She has breathed her last ! 
 Gently ! 
 
 While you re weeping 
 She to heaven has passed.
 
 26 
 
 THE APPLE BLOSSOM. 
 
 HERE S an apple blossom, Mary ; 
 
 See how delicate and fair ! 
 Here s an apple blossom, Mary ; 
 
 Let me weave it in your hair ! 
 
 Ah ! th} r hair is raven, Mary, 
 
 And the curls are thick and bright ; 
 
 And this apple blossom, Mary, 
 Is so beautifully white ! 
 
 There ! the apple blossom, Mary, 
 Looks so sweet among j-our curls ! 
 
 And the apple blossom, Man , 
 Crowns the sweetest of the girls. 
 
 But the apple blossom, Mary, 
 You must have a little care 
 
 Not to tell your mother, Mar}*, 
 That I wove it in your hair !
 
 LOVE AND THE POET. 
 
 IN his chamber sits the Poet, 
 
 Beats his heart with feelings dim, 
 
 Love is there ! but who should know it ? 
 Scarcely is it known to him. 
 
 Visions indistinct and shifting 
 Pass before his half-shut eye, 
 
 Like the idle clouds that, drifting, 
 Laze along the summer sky. 
 
 But the visions, ever taking 
 
 Forms of beauty rare and bright, 
 
 In the Poet s heart are waking 
 Indefinable delight. 
 
 Time went on, the visions slowly 
 
 Take a shape of rarest life ! 
 And the Poet s heart so lowly 
 
 Beats with a tumultuous strife. 
 
 Love, at last, with gentle power, 
 
 Opens in the Poet s heart, 
 Like the unfolding of a flower 
 
 When its leaves are blown apart. 
 
 In his chamber sits the Poet, 
 Flit no more the shadows dim : 
 
 Love is his, and all may know it, 
 Well I ween tis known to him !
 
 THE HAUGHTY MAIDEN. 
 
 THE maiden sat beside the brook, 
 
 And gazed upon the sky, 
 The summer wind the maple shook, 
 
 The stream went rippling by. 
 A noble youth before her stood, 
 
 And prayed with earnest tone, 
 By all of earth twas fair and good, 
 That she would be his own. 
 
 But still the maiden s haughty look 
 
 Was bent upon the sky, 
 And still the tvind the maple shook, 
 And still the stream went by. 
 
 A thousand earnest things he said 
 
 To win her cruel ear, 
 She only bent her stately head 
 To show that she could hear. 
 With hand upon his manly breast 
 
 For he could not give o er 
 He urged again, again he pressed 
 What lie had urged before. 
 
 But still the maiden s haughty look 
 
 Was bent upon the sky, 
 And still the icind the maple shook, 
 And still the stream ivent by.
 
 He spoke of heart and feelings wrung, 
 
 Of doubts and hopes and fears ; 
 He told her how his heart had clung 
 
 To hope and her for years ; 
 How, wandering in a foreign land, 
 
 For her an exile, he 
 Had met her face upon the sand, 
 Her image on the sea. 
 
 But still the maiden s haughty look 
 
 Was bent upon the sky, 
 And still the wind the maple shook, 
 And still the stream went by. 
 
 And then, at last, his eye grew dark, 
 
 And pallid grew his face, 
 And on his forehead came the mark 
 
 That slighted love will trace. 
 He turned and left the maiden s side, 
 
 Nor word of parting spoke, 
 But passed with strong and rapid stride 
 Bej ond the ancient oak. 
 
 Yet still the maiden s haughty look 
 
 Was bent upon the sky. 
 And still the wind the maple shook, 
 And still the stream went by. 
 
 And years went on ; he came no more 
 
 TO see the haughty maid ; 
 His first wild dream of love was o er, 
 
 And in oblivion laid ;
 
 30 
 
 He passed into the world and grew 
 
 A strong one in the land, 
 A man with pulse and effort true, 
 And never-failing hand. 
 
 And still the maid whose haughty look 
 
 Was bent upon the sky 
 In summer sits beside the brook, 
 And sees the stream go by.
 
 TO LIVE UPON HER SMILE. 
 
 To live upon her smile, methinks 
 
 It were an idle pain ; 
 To burn beneath her eye, methinks 
 
 It were to burn in vain, 
 If still she runs and still is coy, 
 And still refuse the promised joy. 
 
 To gaze upon her lip, methinks 
 
 It were of little use ; 
 To see and never taste, methinks 
 
 It were a mean abuse, 
 If still she runs and still she flies, 
 And still puts off and still denies. 
 
 To talk of what may be, methinks 
 Were vainly spending breath ; 
 
 To feed on hope too long, methinks 
 Were starving one to death, 
 
 If still she runs, and still will say, 
 
 "Ah, ha ! ah, ha ! another day ! "
 
 IF YOU THINK TO WIN HER. 
 
 Do you think to win her 
 
 With a bashful tongue ? 
 Fie ! thou green beginner, 
 
 You are still too young ! 
 Looks that shun her glances, 
 
 To her feet that go, 
 Make but poor advances, 
 
 Seeking what s so low. 
 
 Love that asks no pressing, 
 
 Knows no daring mood, 
 Yearns for no caressing, 
 
 Dies for want of food. 
 Better seek to win her 
 
 With a bold constraint ; 
 Better be a sinner, 
 
 Than a bashful saint.
 
 COME OVER THE MOUNTAIN TO ME, 
 LOVE. 
 
 Come over the mountain to me, love, 
 
 Over to me ; 
 My spirit is pining for tliee, love, - 
 
 Pining for tliee. 
 SWEET April is here, and the buds 
 
 On the elms are beginning to swell, 
 The meadows look green, and the flowers 
 
 Are blossoming up in the dell : 
 Tis the time when } T OU promised, you know, love, 
 
 To return to your lover, again ; 
 When the robins came back, and the snow, love, 
 Had melted away from the plain. 
 
 Come over the mountain to me, love, 
 
 Over to me; 
 My spirit is pining for thee, love, 
 
 Pining for tliee. 
 A robin was here, 3*estermorn, 
 
 And the leaves of the lilac appear ; 
 The martins around their old nests, 
 
 We soon from the window shall hear ; 
 Tis the time when 3-011 promised, you know, love, 
 
 You d return to your lover again ; 
 When the robins came back, and the snow, love, 
 Had melted away from the plain.
 
 HALF MY LIFE I SPENT IN DREAMING. 
 
 HALF my life I spent in dreaming 
 
 Of a love I dare not speak, 
 In sweet imagination, deeming 
 
 That I lived upon her cheek. 
 And, while I saw her beaut} wasting 
 
 By the silent flight of years, 
 Consoled myself with fancied tasting, 
 
 Lulled with dreams my rising fears. 
 
 And when, at last, my heart no longer 
 
 Satisfied with seeming good, 
 Sought, as its pulse grown older, stronger, 
 
 For a more substantial food, 
 I found, too late, the vain Ideal 
 
 Living in my snowy head 
 Cherished, till, alas ! the Real 
 
 In my heart was cold and dead.
 
 SWEETLY SHE SLEEPS. 
 
 SWEETLY she sleeps ! her cheek so fair 
 
 Soft on the pillow pressed. 
 Sweetly, see ! while her Saxon hair 
 
 Watches her heaving breast. 
 Hush ! all low, thou moving breeze, 
 
 Breathe through her curtain white ; 
 Golden birds, on the maple-trees, 
 
 Let her sleep while her dreams are light. 
 
 Sweetly she sleeps, her cheek so fair 
 
 Soft on her white arm pressed. 
 Sweetly, see ! and her childish care 
 
 Flies from her quiet rest. 
 Hush ! the earliest rays of light 
 
 Their wings in the blue sea dip. 
 Let her sleep, sweet child, with her dreams so 
 bright, 
 
 And the smile that bewilders her lip.
 
 36 
 
 LITTLE BEL. 
 
 THREE summers with their blossoms fair 
 Have on her being smiled, 
 
 How glossy is her waving hair ! 
 How beautiful the child ! 
 
 Pray look a moment in her eye, 
 So like the blue of yonder sky ! 
 
 She is an orphan, Little Bel, 
 With strangers hath she grown ; 
 
 Mar}" mother, shield her well ! 
 Tis hard to be alone. 
 
 She hath no kindred on the earth : 
 
 Her mother perished at her birth. 
 
 She knows it not ; yet something brings 
 
 The tears into her eye, 
 As closer to my heart she clings, 
 
 She cannot tell me why, 
 As though to win by such caress 
 
 Protection for the motherless. 
 
 And sometimes in her talk she ll stop 
 
 Beside her cradle-place, 
 Her playthings from her fingers drop, 
 
 And, looking in my face, 
 Her thoughts seem in her heart to stir 
 As though some mystery troubled her.
 
 37 
 
 And sometimes our dear mother s name 
 
 She speaketh sad and slow, 
 As though to her twere not the same, 
 
 And yet she cannot know, 
 She sleepeth on the same fond breast 
 That all of us in childhood pressed. 
 
 It may be, while the orphan sleeps, 
 
 So sinless she and mild, 
 Her mother s angel spirit keeps 
 
 Communion with her child ; 
 That in her dreams she vaguely learns 
 The loss of that for which she yearns.
 
 38 
 
 MILL MAY. 
 
 THE strawberries grow in the mowing, Mill Ma} r , 
 r And the bob-o -link sings on the tree, 
 On the knolls the red clover is growing, Mill 
 May, 
 
 Then come to the meadow with me ! 
 We ll pick the ripe clusters among the deep 
 grass 
 
 On the knolls in the mowing, Mill May, 
 And the long afternoon together we ll pass 
 
 Where the clover is growing, Mill May. 
 
 Come ! come ere the season is over, Mill May, 
 
 To the fields where the strawberries grow, 
 While the thick-growing stems and the clover, 
 Mill May, 
 
 Shall meet us wherever we go ; 
 We ll pick the ripe clusters among the deep 
 grass 
 
 On the knolls in the mowing, Mill May, 
 And the long afternoon together we ll pass 
 
 Where the clover is growing, Mill May.
 
 39 
 
 The sun, stealing under your bonnet, Mill May, 
 
 Shall kiss a soft glow to your face, 
 And 3 our lip, the strawberry leave on it, Mill 
 May, 
 
 A tint that the sea-shell would grace ; 
 Then come ! the ripe clusters among the deep 
 grass 
 
 "We ll pick in the mowing, Mill May, 
 And the long afternoon together we ll pass 
 
 Where the clover is growing, Mill May.
 
 40 
 
 THE BLIND BEGGAR. 
 
 HE sits by the great high-road all day, 
 
 The beggar blind and old ; 
 The locks on his brow are thin and gray, 
 
 And his lips are blue and cold ; 
 The life of the beggar is almost spent, 
 His cheek is pale and his form is bent, 
 And be answers low and with meek content 
 
 The sneers of the rude and bold. 
 
 All day by the road has the beggar sat, 
 
 Weary and faint and dry, 
 In silence, patiently holding his hat 
 
 And turning his sightless eye, 
 As, with cruel jest and greeting grim 
 At his hollow cheek and eye-ball dim, 
 The traveller tosses a cent at him, 
 
 And passes hastily by. 
 
 To himself the blind old man doth hum 
 
 A song of his boyhood s day, 
 While his lean, white fingers idly drum 
 
 On his thread-bare knee where they la} 7 ; 
 But oft when the gay bob-o -link is heard, 
 And the robin s chirp to the yellow bird, 
 The jar of life and the traveller s word, 
 
 And the noise of the children s play,
 
 41 
 
 He starts as he grasps with a trembling h and 
 
 The top of his smooth- worn cane, 
 And strikes it sturdily into the sand 
 
 Then layeth it down again ; 
 While his black little spaniel, beautiful Spring, 
 That he keeps at his button-hole with a string, 
 Jumps up, and his bell goes ting-a-ling ! ling ! 
 As he yelps at the idle train. 
 
 He sits by the great high-road all day, 
 
 The beggar blind and old ; 
 The locks on his brow are thin and gray, 
 
 And his lips are blue and cold ; 
 Yet he murmurs never, day nor night, 
 But, seeing the world by his inner sight, 
 He patiently waits with a heart all light 
 
 Till the sum of his life shall be told.
 
 42 
 
 THE SPRING-TIME. 
 
 THE earth is green again. The upshooting blade 
 Pierces the sullen mould, and from its bed 
 
 The flower, where round the forest springs were 
 
 made 
 The paths in summer, lifts its timorous head ; 
 
 And clouds, that hang above the narrow glade, 
 O erladen with the gushing rain they shed 
 
 In generous bount} r , crowd the hill and plain 
 
 With greener grass and swelling buds again. 
 
 No more at morn the sharp and cutting gales 
 The watchful husbandman with sorrow fill ; 
 
 No more at night the hollow tempest wails, 
 Nor sweeps at noon the blast along the hill ; 
 
 And save the drifts that in the mountain vales 
 Stretch their huge forms, defying still 
 
 The sunlight, and the ice that to the rocks 
 
 Clings, dripping underneath the cold hemlocks, 
 
 No mark is left to tell of Winter s reign, 
 Of cheerless mornings and of lengthened night ; 
 
 And, sloping downward to the blue Champlain, 
 Lie the smooth meadows, level, green, and 
 bright ; 
 
 And, crowded to their tops with sprouting grain, 
 The noble highlands stretch beyond the sight ; 
 
 While waving trees, with leaves all fresh and green, 
 
 Glance far the mountain valle}*a up between.
 
 43 
 
 Behold ! In vain the stern North-west defies 
 
 The genial influence of the ascending snn, 
 That, circling up the broad, benignant skies, 
 
 With vigorous heat begins to run 
 His summer circle ; and the gales that rise, 
 
 And breathe upon the fields, grown sere and 
 
 dun 
 With snows untimely and with frosts severe, 
 
 Herald the triumph of the coming year. 
 
 Through all the day, along the valley blows 
 The warm and wooing zephyr. O er the plain, 
 
 With measured bounty, cheerful labor sows 
 The broken tillage with the hopeful grain ; 
 
 Along the pastured hills and woodland, flows 
 The brook, full-swollen with the snow and 
 rain ; 
 
 And gloomy fears no more to all the land 
 
 Presage a harvest with an empty hand. 
 
 Distrustful, faithless man ! But yesterday 
 Thy fields were viewed with dark and sullen 
 brow 
 
 And murmuring, as the chilling snow-drifts lay 
 Above the frozen furrows of the plough, 
 
 The sunshine and the fruitful showers of May, 
 The promised seed-time and the harvest, thou 
 
 Half questioned if His power again renew ! 
 
 And now the gales are warm and skies are blue,
 
 44 
 
 And all thy seeds are cherished ; on the hill 
 Thy teeming flocks again the pastures try, 
 
 And vigorous sons go forth at dawn to till 
 Thy meadow-lands beneath a cheerful sky. 
 
 Renewing all her beauties, Nature still 
 
 Spreads out the landscape to thy gladdened 
 eye : 
 
 On every hand the buds of promise start, 
 
 To chide thy fretful lip and murmuring heart. 
 
 Let spring-time, now returning, teach thee, 
 friend ! 
 
 For, lo ! up-rising ever by thy way 
 Assurances, where er thy footsteps tend, 
 
 That Life shall always triumph o er Decay, 
 Teach thee more faithful trust, unto the end, 
 
 In Him who quickeneth the silent clay, 
 And from the mouldering darkness of the tomb 
 Renews the promise of unfading bloom.
 
 45 
 
 A WIFE-SONG. 
 
 I TOUCH my harp for one to me 
 
 Of all the world most dear, 
 Whose heart is like the golden sheaves 
 
 That crown the ripened year ; 
 Whose cheek is fairer than the sky 
 
 When t blushes into morn, 
 Whose voice was in the summer night 
 
 Of silver streamlets born ; 
 
 To one whose eye the brightest star 
 
 Might for a sister own, 
 Upon whose lip the honey-bee 
 
 Might build her waxen throne ; 
 Whose breath is like the air that woos 
 
 The buds in April hours, 
 That stirs within the dreamy heart 
 
 A sense of opening flowers. 
 
 I touch my harp for one to me 
 
 Of all the world most dear, 
 Whose heart is like the clustering vine 
 
 That crowns the ripened year ; 
 Whose love is like the living springs 
 
 The mountain travellers taste, 
 That storm}" winter cannot chill, 
 
 Nor thirsty summer waste.
 
 46 
 
 TWENTY-NINE. 
 
 WITH singing birds and growing leaves, 
 
 With budding flower and vine, 
 My birth-day morning dawns again, 
 
 And I am twentj -nine. 
 And Time, although some marks appear 
 
 By which his flight I trace, 
 Most kindly with my heart has dealt, 
 
 And kindly with my face. 
 
 And if twere not, as I look back 
 
 Along the years I ve run, 
 And through them trace the winding path 
 
 That I have slowl} won ; 
 Or mark the graves where sleep, alas ! 
 
 So many loved and near, 
 Who in the stern life-battle fell, 
 
 Who, lost, v are yet more dear ; 
 
 And that the ghosts of hopes and fears 
 That shook my younger heart, 
 
 Unbidden, will sometimes into 
 The light of memory start,
 
 47 
 
 But little there were left to tell 
 
 That I am older now 
 Than when a laughing boy I ran 
 
 To kiss my mother s brow. 
 
 So soft has been the tread of Time, 
 
 Like children s feet on snow ; 
 So quietly the years have passed, 
 
 And still so calmly go, 
 Twere wrong for me to murmur, while 
 
 I scrawl this foolish line, 
 That dawns my birth-day morn again, 
 
 And I am twenty-nine. 
 
 It is no idle thing to live ! 
 
 And he who clearly sees 
 The thousand snares that haunt his life, - 
 
 Sin, accident, disease ; 
 Who marks how he escapes this ill 
 
 By slighest circumstance, 
 And hardly grasps that passing good 
 
 By mere and rarest chance ; 
 
 Who notes his whole existence changed, 
 
 Even sometimes by a dream, 
 His fortune warped by incidents 
 
 Most trivial that seem, 
 Will start to find how near his feet, 
 
 In ignorance, have shaped 
 His path along some peril s brink 
 
 That he has barely scaped.
 
 48 
 
 A fearful thing to live ! and when 
 
 My slender bark has passed 
 Thus safely by the rapids, where 
 
 So many wrecks are cast, 
 I look upon my life, and find, 
 
 Upon the record set, 
 More cause for joy and thankfulness 
 
 Than sorrow or regret.
 
 49 
 
 SHADOWS. 
 
 How they come and go, 
 Shadows on the snow ! 
 Coming ever, 
 Going ever ; 
 Rapidly they shift 
 Over plain and drift, 
 Leaving where they were 
 Nothing but the air. 
 
 See them ! as a cloud, 
 Slowly, like a shroud, 
 Folds the darkened moon, 
 At its noon. 
 
 How they run and quiver. 
 Shadows on the river ! 
 Coming ever, 
 Going ever ; 
 Flitting o er the stream, 
 Like the memory of a dream, 
 Leaving not a trace 
 On its quiet face. 
 
 See them ! as a cloud, 
 Slowly, like a shroud, 
 Moves across the sun, 
 Mid-day won.
 
 50 
 
 Come they and depart, 
 Shadows o er the heart 
 Coming ever, 
 Going ever. 
 Wherefore, who can tell? 
 Indefinable ! 
 
 Dim and dark they pass, 
 Like vapor o er a glass. 
 
 See them ! as a cloud, 
 Slowl}*, like a shroud, 
 Settles on the heart, 
 To depart. 
 
 How they gather nigh, 
 Shadows o er the eye ! 
 Coming ever, 
 Going never ! 
 Gathering o er the strife 
 Of departing life, 
 Leaving in a breath 
 The mystery of death. 
 
 See them ! as a cloud, 
 Slowly, like a shroud. 
 Passes o er the light 
 It is night !
 
 51 
 
 LILY.* 
 
 TELL me, pretty Lily, 
 With 3 our lips apart, 
 
 Here among the lilacs, 
 Have you found a heart? 
 
 Mine, I cannot find it, 
 Searching in the dew, 
 
 Sure I am I lost it, 
 Playing here with you. 
 
 Lily! have you found it? 
 
 Cruel ! ah, I see ! 
 Pity a poor rhymer ! 
 
 Give it back to me ! 
 
 Away the beauty bounded, 
 Laughing as she flew ; 
 
 My heart, among the lilacs, 
 From her bosom threw. 
 
 Glad I seized it, hidden 
 In a rose half blown, 
 
 Lily ! careless Lily ! 
 Ah, it was her own ! 
 
 * The reader of the former edition of " Eastman s Poems " 
 will hardly recognize these rhymes. It is proper to state that, 
 after its original publication, the Author prepared many other 
 versions, in a selection from which the Editor has followed his 
 own judgment. ED.
 
 52 
 
 I SEE HER NOT! 
 
 I SEE her not ! the spring is here 
 
 With gladness for the budding earth ; 
 I see her not ! the one so dear, 
 
 Nor at the board, nor at the hearth ; 
 The dust is on her window-sill, 
 
 Her bird is dumb, her flowers are dead, 
 And, in the fastened shutter, still 
 
 The spider weaves her gloomy thread. 
 
 Here, in her silent chamber, where 
 
 The solitary shadows dwell, 
 I watched, with sweet and patient care, 
 
 The sister I had loved so well ; 
 And when a day of sharper pain 
 
 Had left her hopeless, pale, and weak, 
 I sought to cheer her heart again, 
 
 And kiss the color to her cheek. 
 
 Here, through the long, long winter night, 
 
 She wore the weary hours away, 
 Until at last the morning light 
 
 Came through her window cold and gray 
 Ah, how the dull beam on the glass 
 
 Would still to her the hope restore, 
 That she the leaves and growing grass 
 
 Might live to look upon, once more !
 
 I could not tell her what, to learn, 
 
 Would only needless anguish give, 
 That spring to her would ne er return ; 
 
 For on that hope she seemed to live : 
 She could not, so she d come to think, 
 
 She could not sleep beneath the snow ; 
 Yet, as each da}" I saw her sink, 
 
 I knew too well it must be so. 
 
 And so it was : but yet, her breath 
 
 So quietly one morn was stilled, 
 While yet that hope was strong, that death 
 
 To her was but that hope fulfilled ; 
 For, hours before her spirit passed, 
 
 Sweet names of flowers her lips would spell. 
 And, murmuring faintly, " Spring at last ! " 
 
 Upon her face the shadow fell. 
 
 I see her not ! the spring is here ! 
 
 And gladness reigns through all the earth ; 
 I see her not ! the one so dear, 
 
 Nor at the board, nor at the hearth ; 
 The dust is on her window-sill, 
 
 Her bird is dumb, her flowers are dead, 
 And, in the fastened shutter, still 
 
 The spider weaves her gloom}- thread.
 
 54 
 
 PRAYERS FOR A SICK CHILD. 
 
 i. 
 SPARE the sufferer, cruel Pain ! 
 
 Spare the child ! 
 Let her breathe in sleep again, 
 
 Calm and mild. 
 
 All our hopes are centred here, 
 And we pray with many a tear, 
 
 Spare the child ! 
 
 She hath never injured aught 
 
 Neath the sun ! 
 Pure is she as Love s first thought, 
 
 Gentle one ! 
 
 Ah ! we cannot bear the fear 
 That her life must vanish here, 
 
 Just begun. 
 
 Spare the sufferer, cruel Pain ! 
 
 Spare the child ! 
 Let her breathe in sleep again, 
 
 Calm and mild. 
 
 For ourselves we ve little fear 
 For the suffering angel, hear ! 
 
 Spare the child !
 
 oo 
 
 II. 
 
 Vainly we have striven, 
 
 And our skill is o er ; 
 Aid the child thou st given ! 
 
 We can do no more. 
 Ah, the moan it utters ! 
 
 It can take no rest ; 
 And the low breath flutters 
 
 Faintly from its breast. 
 
 We have no ambition, 
 
 We re a humble pair, 
 Seeking no condition 
 
 Save our lot of care ; 
 We have murmured never, 
 
 Unto labor wed, 
 But with chaste endeavor 
 
 Sought our daily bread. 
 
 This poor child we cherish, 
 
 That thy mercy gave ; 
 Father ! shall it perish ? 
 
 It is all we have ! 
 Bid the burning fever 
 
 The gentle sufferer spare ! 
 A little longer leave her 
 
 To our humble care !
 
 ISABEL. 
 
 ARE thy thoughts upon the sea, 
 
 Isabel? 
 Are thy thoughts upon the sea, 
 
 Isabel ? 
 
 All day sitting, 
 Thinking, knitting, 
 
 Scarcely ever looking slyly up as formerly at me ; 
 Where s thy chatter? 
 What s the matter, 
 Isabel ? 
 
 Are thy thoughts upon the sea, 
 
 Isabel? 
 With a lover on the sea, 
 
 Isabel? 
 
 Poor aunt Lizzy 
 Was so dizzy 
 When the symptoms made appearance of this 
 
 maiden malady ! 
 And the labors 
 Of the neighbors, 
 Isabel ! 
 
 Are thy thoughts upon the sea, 
 
 Isabel ? 
 With " that fellow" on the sea. 
 
 Isabel ?
 
 57 
 
 That poor hoddy 
 That nobody ! 
 Have you ever seen him noticed by the first 
 
 society ? 
 
 Mind thy mother ! 
 Love another, 
 Isabel ! 
 
 Are thy thoughts upon the sea, 
 
 Isabel? 
 Are they still upon the sea ? 
 
 Isabel ? 
 
 Hear thy betters ! 
 
 Burn his letters ! 
 
 Let thy very kind relations make a proper match 
 
 for thee ; 
 
 Cash and station, 
 Rich relation, 
 Isabel ! 
 
 If th} heart is on the sea, 
 
 Isabel, 
 And thy thoughts are on the sea, 
 
 It is well ! 
 Round thy lover 
 Let them hover, 
 Though thy mother says Old Skinflint has more 
 
 mortgages than he ; 
 Thy lip s hone3 r 
 Sold for money, 
 Isabel !
 
 58 
 
 HOW CALMLY PASS HER QUIET DAYS. 
 
 How calmly pass her quiet days 
 
 In womanly repose ! 
 As sometimes bj r the dusty ways 
 
 A stream, half-hidden, flows, 
 So softly that the traveller s ear 
 Scarce hears its current bubbling near. 
 
 Most beautiful, yet never proud ; 
 
 Beloved, yet never vain ; 
 Though courteous to the idle crowd 
 
 That come and go again, 
 Yet happiest when her time is spent 
 With those she loves in calm content. 
 
 She knows but little of the art 
 By which we learn the right : 
 
 Her knowledge lieth in her heart, 
 In woman s keen insight ; 
 
 And much she teaches by her looks 
 
 That we could never find in books. 
 
 With patient grace she moves along 
 Through all her duties ; oft 
 
 Beguiling them with sweetest song, 
 And chastened mirth and soft ; 
 
 And all the da} , like some sweet bird, 
 
 The music of her voice is heard.
 
 59 
 
 Long may she live ! see clearer still, 
 With ever-brightening eye, 
 
 And learn serenely to fulfil 
 Her woman-destiny ; 
 
 And happier, purer, grow each da} r , 
 
 As steals her quiet life away.
 
 NAY, MOTHER! TELL ME NOT. 
 
 NAT, mother ! tell me not that he 
 
 Is lost to virtue yet, 
 Though well I know ten thousand snares 
 
 His youthful feet beset. 
 And, mother ! well I know that you 
 
 His dearest hopes have crossed, 
 And now, when he has fallen, cry, 
 
 I told 3 ou ! he is lost ! 
 
 I know him, mother, and I know 
 
 How much you hate that boy ! 
 But it shall prove, though you despise, 
 
 You never can destroy ! 
 He loves me, mother, and for that 
 
 These snares his feet beset ; 
 And, mother, though the world combine, 
 
 That love shall save him yet !
 
 (31 
 
 SHE PERISHED ERE HER HEART HAD 
 KNOWN. 
 
 SHE perished ere her heart had known 
 
 A sorrow or a fear, 
 Ere o er her spirit care had thrown 
 
 A shadow, Mary, dear ! 
 And life to her was like a gleam 
 Of sunshine on a valley stream. 
 
 She sleeps beneath a rising hill 
 That looks upon the West ; 
 
 Dead to the world, but living still 
 To those who knew her best : 
 
 And on her grave, with folded wings, 
 The sober blue-bird sits and sings. 
 
 We miss her ; she was dear ; we miss 
 
 Her laugh at eventide, 
 Her fondling arms, her gentle kiss. 
 
 But yet, tis well ! she died 
 All pure and bright as at her birth, 
 
 A gain to heaven, a loss to earth.
 
 WE WEEP IN VAIN. 
 
 WE weep in vain ; the book is shut 
 The fountain sealed and there ! 
 
 The one we loved so much is but 
 The dust of hopes that were ! 
 
 The eye is closed, the ear is dull, 
 
 Alas, alas ! so beautiful ! 
 
 We weep in vain : above her head, 
 
 With all its golden wealth, 
 Steeped in our tears, the pall is spread 
 
 So young, so full of health ! 
 Ah ! who that met her yesternoon 
 Had dreamed to see her thus, so soon ? 
 
 We weep in vain : there ! let her sleep 
 
 Beneath the maple-tree ; 
 The stars above her grave will keep 
 
 Their vigils ; sadly we 
 Return to life, with many a tear, 
 And one tie less to bind us here.
 
 03 
 
 SONG IN AUTUMN. 
 
 TAKE down the sickle, boys ! hurrah ! 
 
 The ears of ripened grain 
 Are waiting for the reaper s hand, 
 
 Upon the fruitful plain ! 
 The mellow moon, the changing leaves, 
 
 The earlier setting sun, 
 Proclaim at last, my merry boj s, 
 
 The harvest-time begun. 
 
 Thick on the hills, to-morrow noon 
 
 The gathered stook must see, 
 And with the loads of yellow corn 
 
 Shall groan the axle-tree ; 
 The frost, my boys, will soon be here ! 
 
 And winter s on the way ; 
 These glorious da} T s will never, boys, 
 
 For lazy farmers stay ! 
 
 Take down the sickle, boys ! hurrah ! 
 
 While loads of ripened grain 
 Are waiting for the reaper s hand, 
 
 Upon the fruitful plain, 
 We ll gather up the golden corn 
 
 In thankfulness, once more, 
 And fill with the returning seed 
 
 Our basket and our store.
 
 64 
 
 HER GRAVE IS BY HER MOTHER S. 
 
 HER grave is by her mother s, 
 
 Where the strawberries grow wild, 
 
 And there they ve slept for man} a year, 
 The mother and the child. 
 
 She was the frailest of us all, 
 
 And from her mother s breast 
 We hoped and prayed and trembled more 
 
 For her than all the rest. 
 
 So frail, alas ! she could not bear 
 
 The gentle breath of spring, 
 That scarce the yellow butterfly 
 
 Felt underneath its wing. 
 
 How hard we strove to save her, love 
 
 Like ours alone can tell ; 
 And only those know what we lost 
 
 Who ve loved the lost as well. 
 
 Some thirteen summers from her birth, 
 When the reaper cuts the grain, 
 
 We laid her in the silent grave, 
 A flower without a stain. 
 
 We laid her by her mother, 
 
 Where the strawberries grow wild, 
 
 And there the} sleep together, 
 The mother and the child.
 
 SHE REIGNETH IN THIS HEART OF 
 MINE. 
 
 SHE reigneth in this heart of mine, 
 
 My beautiful, my own ! 
 She reigneth in this heart of mine, 
 
 A queen upon her throne ; 
 And I, a poor and humble man, 
 Yield to her rule as best I can. 
 
 She reigneth in this heart of mine, 
 
 By night, and all the day 
 She reigneth in this heart of mine ; 
 
 And I have naught to say, 
 Save, now and then, to sigh, " Ah, me ! 
 Was ever such harsh tyranny ? " 
 
 She reigneth in this heart of mine, 
 
 All rivalry hath flown ; 
 She reigneth in this heart of mine 
 
 Despotic and alone. 
 I strove awhile against the chain ; 
 But I shall never strive again ! 
 
 She reigneth in this heart of mine, 
 
 A queen upon her throne ; 
 She reigneth in this heart of mine 
 
 As though it were her own. 
 So long a slave, I cannot tell 
 If to be free were now as well.
 
 66 
 
 SHE LIVETH BY THE VALLEY BROOK. 
 
 SHE liveth by the valley brook. 
 
 Away from care and wrong, 
 Her heart a pure and open book, 
 
 Her lip a mellow song. 
 A mother, meek and old, is all 
 
 The kindred that she knows ; 
 Her playmates are the waterfall, 
 
 And every flower that blows. 
 
 She singeth when the earth is spread 
 
 With green, and spring has come ; 
 And weepeth when the flowers are dead, 
 
 And her sweet brook is dumb. 
 And thus the gentle maiden s life 
 
 Steals quietly away, 
 Without a shade of care or strife 
 
 To cloud its summer day. 
 
 She liveth by the valley brook, 
 
 Awa} from care and wrong, 
 Her heart a pure and open book, 
 
 Her lip a mellow song. 
 Ah, never may the maiden dream 
 
 Of this sad world of ours, 
 Or stra} T beyond her sister stream, 
 
 Its valley and its flowers !
 
 MARY OF THE GLEN. 
 
 lias anybody spoke for you, 
 
 Mary of the Glen ? 
 Is there a heart that s broke for you, 
 
 Mary of the Glen? 
 I have lands and I have leases, 
 
 I have gold and cattle, too, 
 I have sheep with finest fleeces 
 Can I many } r ou ? 
 
 Nobody, sir, has spoke for me, 
 
 Mary of the Glen ; 
 There is no heart that s broke for me, 
 
 Mary of the Glen; 
 But there is blue-eyed Willie, 
 
 Who labors with the men, 
 Who brings the sweet pond-lily 
 To Mary of the Glen ! 
 
 He has neither lands nor leases ; 
 
 But his cheek is cherry red, 
 And finer than your fleeces 
 Are the curls upon his head. 
 
 And though he s never spoke for me, 
 
 I know he loves me true ; 
 And his heart it would be broke for me, 
 If I should marry you.
 
 I BLAME THEE NOT! 
 
 I BLAME thee not ! I knew it all 
 
 Before a glance from thee 
 Could stir my heart as doth the wind 
 
 The slumber of the sea ; 
 I knew, before thy presence made 
 
 Of this fair life a part, 
 Another, many a year, had been 
 
 The idol of thy heart. 
 
 I never strove to check a love 
 
 So hopeless and so bright, 
 Like some sweet star the school-boy sees 
 
 In the far heavens at night ; 
 And though at times there came a thought 
 
 That I was wronging thee, 
 I could not quench that star myself, 
 
 For it was life to me. 
 
 I never wished to steal a look 
 
 Or thought of thine from him ; 
 I would not for the world have seen 
 
 His worshipped light grow dim ; 
 I never meant to let thee know 
 
 God grant I never did ! 
 That in my heart I nursed for thee 
 
 A love by love forbid.
 
 69 
 
 So hoping without hope I loved ; 
 
 Too blest to think how fast 
 The hour was stealing on me when 
 
 I must awake tis past ! 
 The fault was mine I knew it all 
 
 And yet, despite this pain, 
 As I have loved, I dare not say 
 
 I should not love again. 
 
 Well ! Southern suns will soon renew 
 
 Thy cheek s half-perished health, 
 While he God bless him ! proudly shares 
 
 Thy heart s long-treasured wealth ; 
 The bark that bears thee from the North, 
 
 With sails set for the sea, 
 Is fading on the mist} 7 main. 
 
 Good-bye to that and thee !
 
 70 
 
 EVENING IN SUMMER. 
 
 THE sun has set at last ! the sky, 
 
 That all the hot and stifling day 
 Hung like a burning arch on high, 
 
 Grows, as the fierce heat dies away, 
 Cool and refreshing ; o er the glades 
 
 The hills frown giant-like and grim ; 
 And meadows, in the misty shades 
 
 Of night, look shadowy and dim. 
 
 The sun is down ; yet, in the West 
 
 Is lingering still the day s last light 
 Around the hills his glory blest 
 
 When sinking slowly from the sight ; 
 And, far above the mountain brown, 
 
 Along the dreamy azure, sleep 
 The small, white clouds, like tul ts of down 
 
 Upon the bosom of the deep. 
 
 As twilight fades, how all the earth 
 
 The night with solemn gladness fills ! 
 The moon, as fair as at her birth, 
 
 Where heaven is wedded to the hills 
 Through fleecy clouds around her flung, 
 
 Wheels up beside the same sweet star. 
 That, with her, when the sky was young, 
 
 Looked over Eden from afar.
 
 71 
 
 Beneath the moon the wild brook learns 
 
 Its own sweet music ; o er the plain, 
 The tired husbandman returns 
 
 Rejoicing to his home again ; 
 While, from the dense old forest-trees, 
 
 Where, shrouded from the scorching heat, 
 All day it slept, the evening breeze 
 
 Comes sweeping up the dusty street ; 
 
 And, passing on its mission, goes 
 
 To cool the parched and fevered soil, 
 To bless the fainting vine that throws 
 
 Its tendrils round the door of toil, 
 And stir the m} riad leaves, until 
 
 Their rising murmur swells along 
 With all life s utterances, that fill 
 
 The world with a perpetual song.
 
 72 
 
 MARY BLANE. 
 
 HERE S a health to thee, Mary Blane ! 
 
 Here s a health to thee, Mary Blane ! 
 Here s a health to the girl that I loved when a boy, 
 
 Though I never shall see her again. 
 Tis right to remember old friends ; 
 Till well, is it not, Mary Blane, 
 When the heart s growing old and the blood s 
 . getting cold, 
 
 To live our first love o er again ? 
 Hurrah for thee, Mary Blane I 
 
 Hurrah for thee, Mary Blane ! 
 Hurrah for the girl that I loved when a boy, 
 Though 1 never shall see her again ! 
 
 Here s health to thee, Mary Blane ! 
 
 Here s health to thee, Mary Blane ! 
 To thee, wherever thou art, Mary Blane, 
 
 This full glass of sherry I drain. 
 Twas a sweet little time that we had, 
 
 A nice little time, Mary Blane ! 
 And with sorrow I think, while I scribble and 
 
 drink, 
 
 We shall see no more like it again ! 
 Hurrah for thee, Mary Blane ! 
 
 Here s a health to thee, Mary Blane! 
 Though the wine that I drink, in my head, 
 
 Mary Blane, 
 Like thy love in my heart, leave a pain I
 
 73 
 
 I VE THROWN THEM ALL AWAY ! 
 
 I VE thrown them all away ! away ! 
 
 And not a single token 
 Is left me to recall the day 
 
 His fickle vows were spoken. 
 The scarf he o er my shoulders threw, 
 
 The ring (his name was on it) , 
 His card, the flowers, the billet-doux, 
 
 The warm and flattering sonnet, 
 Away ! away ! 
 
 I ve thrown them all away ! 
 
 I ve thrown them all away ! away ! 
 
 And brightly on the morrow 
 Will beam the e} e that yesterday 
 
 Was dimmed an hour with sorrow. 
 The chain, the lute, the singing-bird, 
 
 The books he used to bring me, 
 The letters which nvy tears have blurred, 
 
 The songs he used to sing me, 
 Away ! away ! 
 
 I ve thrown them all away !
 
 74 
 
 I ve thrown them all away ! away ! 
 
 All thoughts of the false-hearted. 
 And now my heart s as wild and gay 
 As though we d never parted ; 
 
 The glow is on my cheek again, 
 
 And every idle token 
 He left me to recall the pain 
 
 Of vows so falsely spoken, 
 Away ! away ! 
 
 I ve thrown them all away !
 
 r.) 
 
 THE TOWN PAUPER S BURIAL. 
 
 BURY him there 
 
 No matter where ! 
 Hustle him out of the way ! 
 
 Trouble enough 
 
 We have with such stuff 
 Taxes and money to pay. 
 
 him there 
 No matter where ! 
 
 Off in some corner at best ! 
 No need of stones 
 Above his old bones 
 
 Nobody ll ask where they rest. 
 
 Bury him there 
 
 No matter where ! 
 None by his death are bereft ; 
 
 Stopping to pray? 
 
 Shovel away ! 
 We still have enough of them left. 
 
 Bury him there 
 
 No matter where ! 
 Anywhere out of the way ! 
 
 Trouble enough 
 
 We have with such stuff 
 Taxes and money to pay.
 
 76 
 
 THE REAPER. 
 
 BENDING o er his sickle, 
 
 Mid the yellow grain, 
 Lo, the sturdy reaper, 
 
 Reaping on the plain ! 
 Singing as the sickle 
 
 Gathers to his hand, 
 Rustling in its ripeness, 
 
 The glory of his land. 
 
 Mark the grain before him 
 
 Swaying in the wind, 
 See the even gavel 
 
 Following behind ! 
 Bound, in armful bundles, 
 
 Standing one by one, 
 Yester-morning s labor 
 
 Ripens in the sun. 
 
 Long I ve stood and pondered, 
 
 Gazing from the hill, 
 While the sturdy reaper 
 
 Sung and labored still ; 
 Bending o er his sickle, 
 
 Mid the yellow grain, 
 Happy and contented, 
 
 Reaping on the plain ;
 
 77 
 
 And as upon my journey 
 
 I leave the maple-tree, 
 Thinking of the difference 
 
 Between the man and me, 
 I turn again to see him 
 
 Reaping on the plain, 
 And almost wish my labor 
 
 Were the sickle and the grain.
 
 78 
 
 I WOULD THAT HE WERE BACK! 
 
 I WOULD that he were back again, 
 
 From lands beyond the sea ! 
 I cannot bear to hear them say, 
 
 44 He will be false to thee ! " 
 I know tis childish idle weak 
 
 I know tis wrong in me ; 
 But yet, I would that he were back, 
 
 From lands beyond the sea. 
 
 I would that he were back again ! 
 
 While he is far awa} , 
 They breathe their slanders in my ear 
 
 Through all the weary day ; 
 He s harsh, they say, and proud and cold, 
 
 That one beyond the sea ; 
 He may be so to them, perhaps, 
 
 He never was to me. 
 
 I would that he were back again, 
 
 To crush this servile throng ! 
 One glance from his indignant eye 
 
 Wh} 7 is he gone so long? 
 Oh ! if he knew how I have borne, 
 
 As none but Heaven knows, 
 The doubtings ofhis fickle friends, 
 
 The insults of his foes !
 
 I would that he were back again ! 
 
 Tis hard to hear them say, 
 Ambition or another s love 
 
 Prolongs his weary stay. 
 I fear him not ! his love is true ! 
 
 And yet, though weak in me, 
 I would that he were back again, 
 
 From lands beyond the sea !
 
 80 
 
 THANATOS. 
 
 i. 
 
 HUSH ! her face is chill, 
 
 And the summer blossom, 
 Motionless and still, 
 
 Lies upon her bosom ; 
 On the shroud so white, 
 
 Like snow in winter weather, 
 Her marble hands unite 
 
 Quietly together. 
 
 Ah, how light the lid 
 
 On the thin cheek presses ! 
 Still her neck is hid 
 
 B} her golden tresses ; 
 And the lips, that Death 
 
 Left a smile to sever, 
 Part to woo the breath 
 
 Gone, alas ! forever.
 
 81 
 
 FANNY HALL. 
 
 THE sweetest girl of all I know 
 
 Is charming Fanny Hall ; 
 The wildest at a husking, 
 
 The gayest at a ball ; 
 Her cheek is like a Jerse} 7 peach, 
 
 Her eye is blue and clear, 
 And her lip is like the sumac 
 
 In the autumn of the year. 
 
 Canova never made a hand 
 
 Like hers so plump and fair ; 
 Poor Raphael had been crazed with her 
 
 Madonna brow and hair ; 
 And I m inclined to think if Powers 
 
 Could see her, he would grieve 
 To find a romping Yankee girl 
 
 Had beaten Mrs. Eve ! 
 
 There s not a blemish in her form, 
 
 No fault about her face. 
 Sit down and gaze from morn till night - 
 
 You ll find her perfect grace. 
 And then, to finish all, her voice ! 
 
 From the sweetest bird s in spring 
 You couldn t tell its warble ; but 
 
 She " doesn t know a thing ! "
 
 82 
 
 APRIL RAIN. 
 
 i. 
 
 GENTLY fall upon the plain 
 April rain ! 
 
 Bless the oak and maple bud, 
 Rouse the faint and sickly flood ; 
 But the gentle flowers, 
 
 Tender leaf and blow, 
 Ah ! the heavy showers, 
 Kill them where the} r grow. 
 
 ii. 
 
 Do th} r mission on the plain 
 April rain ! 
 
 Bless the grass and apple bud, 
 Cheer the faint and sickly flood ; 
 But the gentle flower, 
 
 On the meadow s breast, 
 Spare its little hour, 
 Short enough at best !
 
 83 
 
 MUTABILITY. 
 
 ALAS, how soon the heart forgets 
 
 Its wildest, deepest pain ! 
 A tear an hour the eyelid wets, 
 
 And all is joy again ! 
 Still rushes on the tide of men 
 As though the past had never been. 
 
 A year, one } T ear, is scarcely gone, 
 
 Since, in the dreary fall, 
 We heaped the frozen clay upon 
 
 The dearest of us all ; 
 And now, alas ! as twere a dream 
 The memory of that day doth seem. 
 
 She was our life but yestermorn, 
 And by her tombstone now 
 
 We sing and plant the yellow corn, 
 And drive the furrowing plough, 
 
 As gay as though beneath that stone 
 
 Were sleeping one we d never known.
 
 OLD TIME STEALS ON. 
 
 Old Time steals on, and away he goes ! 
 
 Away he goes, goes he ; 
 He stealeth away, and nobody knoivs 
 
 Whence cometh or goeth he. 
 He lingereth never for rich or for poor, 
 For palace or hovel, for prince or for boor ; 
 O er the grave and the cradle he glideth along, 
 And alike amid sorrow, alike amid song, 
 
 Old Time steals on, and atvay he goes I 
 
 Away he goes, goes lie; 
 He stealeth away, and nobody knows 
 Wlience cometh or goeth he. 
 
 From youth to age, how quick is his flight ! 
 From night to morn, from morning to night ! 
 And hurrying on in his own silent way, 
 Mid the snows of December, the blossoms of Ma}-, 
 Old Time steals on, and away he goes ! 
 
 Away he goes, goes he; 
 He stealeth away, and nobody knows 
 Whence cometh or goeth he. 
 
 For war or for peace, for loss or for gain, 
 For love and for hate, for pleasure or pain, 
 For grace or dishonor, for glory or shame, 
 Not a moment he tarries ; but, ever the same,
 
 85 
 
 Old Time steals on, and away he goes! 
 
 Away he goes, goes he; 
 He stealeth away, and nobody knows 
 
 Whence cometh or goeth he. 
 
 "Well ! since it is settled that this is the way 
 Old Time dashes on with us, day after day, 
 Sweet girls ! while in handfuls we pile on his 
 
 wing 
 The soft, dewy roses of Love, let us sing 
 
 Old Time steals on, and atvay he goes I 
 
 Away he goes, goes he; 
 He stealeth away, and nobody knows 
 Whence cometh or goeth he.
 
 86 
 
 SHE IS THE LAST! 
 
 SHE is the last of all that God 
 
 Has given to our hearth ; 
 Two brothers sleep beneath the sod 
 
 They perished at their birth ; 
 Ah ! fondly did we hope that she 
 Would live through her frail infancy. 
 
 She is the last, and there she lies ! 
 
 Beneath the locust-tree 
 We ve laid to rest, with streaming eyes, 
 
 The last of all the three ; 
 We ve heaped the clay above her breast, 
 And left her sleeping with the rest. 
 
 She is the last : we give her up 
 
 With silent lips to Heaven. 
 Submissively we take the cup, 
 
 Tis bitter, but tis given : 
 And, trusting still in Him who gave, 
 We yield our last hope to the grave.
 
 87 
 
 THE UNKNOWN SLEEPER. 
 
 BENEATH an aged locust-tree 
 
 Upon the blue Lamoille, 
 Where, all the summer day, the bee 
 
 Sings at her busy toil, 
 By brake and grass and vine o ergrown, 
 A child s unlettered grave is shown. 
 
 None know how long the sod has been 
 
 Above the sleeper s breast, 
 And none can tell the stranger when 
 
 The child was laid to rest ; 
 No kindred has it left to tell 
 
 Its birth, its death, or burial. 
 
 Long, long ago, they ll tell you, when 
 The deer came there to drink, 
 
 Before a hut in all the glen 
 Stood on the river s brink, 
 
 A hunter in his wanderings found 
 
 The locust and the gentle mound. 
 
 And since, though sire and son, the land 
 Have tilled with thrift} cai e, 
 
 Yet all have let the locust stand, 
 And still the grave is there. 
 
 Beside the river on the plain 
 
 Of waving grass and yellow grain.
 
 88 
 
 About the mound they ve built a pale 
 
 Of rude and artless form, 
 Through which the bending meadow-swale 
 
 Sighs in the autumn storm ; 
 And where their young the ground birds feed 
 Among the grass and yellow weed. 
 
 As twere their own, that nameless child, 
 
 They watch its long repose 
 Beneath the brake and brier wild, 
 
 The strawberry and the rose ; 
 And every spring an hour they save 
 To mend the pale that guards the grave.
 
 89 
 
 LOOKING IN THE RIVER. 
 
 LOOKING in the river, 
 
 Smiling to herself, 
 Sits a little maiden 
 
 On a moss3 r shelf; 
 Looking in the river, 
 
 What s the maiden see ? 
 Than herself, I m certain, 
 
 Something it must be ! 
 
 Looking in the river, 
 
 Where the shimmering sun, 
 Than the orb above her 
 
 Seems another one ; 
 Looking in the river, 
 
 There the maiden sees 
 Something than the heavens, 
 
 Or the mirrored trees ! 
 
 Looking in the river 
 
 With a dreamy stare, 
 Wonder what the maiden 
 
 Can be seeing there ? 
 Looking in the river, 
 
 What if /should be? 
 Then I ma}- be certain 
 
 What the girl can see.
 
 90 
 
 Looking in the river 
 
 Now, ah, ha ! I know 
 What the little maiden 
 
 Gazes at below ! 
 Looking in the river, 
 
 Now I understand 
 Why the little maiden 
 
 Sits upon the land ! 
 
 Looking in the river, 
 
 As the water stirs, 
 There I see another 
 
 Face look up with hers ! 
 Looking in the river, 
 
 Close beside her own, 
 There I see another 
 
 Face in shadow thrown. 
 
 Looking in the river, 
 
 Just behind the maid, 
 There I see her lover 
 
 In the maple shade ! 
 Looking in the river, 
 
 Now I understand 
 Why the little maiden 
 
 Sits upon the land ! 
 
 Looking in the river 
 With her other self, 
 
 Sits the little maiden 
 On a rocky shelf;
 
 91 
 
 Looking in the river, 
 Maiden, never run ! 
 
 That s a thing I m certain 
 All of us have done. 
 
 Looking in the river ! 
 
 All of us have been, 
 And can tell the summer 
 
 We remember, when, 
 Looking in the river, 
 
 B} the shadow thrown, 
 We have seen another 
 
 Face beside our own.
 
 NOVEMBER. 
 
 THE da}"s we ve so long dreaded, 
 
 The da} s of frost and snow, 
 Of winds that sweep the frozen street, 
 
 And whistle as they go 
 The daj-s of fickle temperament, 
 
 A smile and then a blow ! 
 Of mud and mire and dirtiness, 
 
 Again, are " here below " ! 
 
 We sit and sneeze and cough in rooms 
 
 Insufferably hot, 
 And tumble over old accounts 
 
 Were never worth a groat ! 
 And, looking from the window 
 
 Into our neighbor s lot, 
 We really argue if twere best 
 
 To steal his sheep or not ! 
 
 The vines, frost-bitten, from the eaves 
 
 Hang blackening in the rain ; 
 And trickling drops, like silent tears. 
 
 All day the windows stain ; 
 The leaves are gone, the dead weed-stalks 
 
 Grow black upon the plain, 
 And herds are lowing in the fields 
 
 Where stood the gathered grain.
 
 93 
 
 All day you hear the noisy crow 
 
 Upon the hemlock high ; 
 In flocks, about the mountain ash, 
 
 The chirping robins fly ; 
 The rustling leaves drive waywardly 
 
 In mimic whirlwinds by, 
 Or on the wet and muddy walks, 
 
 In heaps, together lie. 
 
 The dripping of the rain is heard 
 
 Upon the roof all night, 
 And dark and heavy clouds obscure 
 
 The early morning s light : 
 We gape and stretch, and feel as dull 
 
 As our grandmother s sight, 
 " Some " older than Methuselah, 
 
 And cross enough to bite ! 
 
 That summer s gone, and gone for good, 
 
 Tis useless to protest, 
 When all the hills that you can see, 
 
 In snowy caps are dressed ; 
 When fogs upon the valley 
 
 From morn till evening rest, 
 And in his journey scarce the sun 
 
 Is seen from east to west. 
 
 Alas ! these days of dumps and of 
 
 Interminable rains, 
 Of overcoats and overshoes, 
 
 And pothecary grains,
 
 94 
 
 Of drops for coughs, and slops for colds, 
 From catnip tea to S Wayne s, 
 
 Make the effort to survive appear 
 A questionable pains !
 
 SONG 
 
 " BRING me a cup, a brimming cup ! 
 
 Bubbling with rosy, red wine ; 
 For, soon as the blossoms of summer shall bud, 
 Sweet Alice has sworn to be mine. 
 
 Joy ! joy ! 
 Sweet Alice has sworn to be mine ! " 
 
 " But women are gay, and light as the air, 
 
 As faithless as faithless can be ; 
 And their love is as fickle and as false as the 
 
 moon, 
 The wind, or the waves of the sea ! 
 
 Drink, boy! 
 But Alice will never be thine ! " 
 
 " Bring me a cup, a brimming cup ! 
 
 Laughing with rosy, red wine ; 
 For women are true as the sun, 
 
 And Alice has sworn to be mine ! 
 
 Joy ! joy I 
 And Alice has sworn to be mine!" 
 
 " A gallant I saw at her feet but now, 
 
 I swear by this goblet of wine ! 
 And he said, as he pressed her lip to his own, 
 Sweet Alice has sworn to be mine! 
 
 Drink, boy! 
 But Alice ivill never be thine I "
 
 96 
 
 " Bring me a cup, a brimming cup ! 
 
 Laughing with rosy, red wine ; 
 For women are true, and thou liest, I know, 
 For Alice has sworn to be mine ! 
 
 Joy! joy! 
 For Alice has sworn to be mine I " 
 
 " Well ! since, foolish boy, thou wilt never be 
 lieve, 
 
 Nay, drain off that cup of red wine ! 
 Then say who that bride is that comes from the 
 
 church ! 
 Is it Alice who swore to be thine ? 
 
 Drink, boy! 
 But Alice will never be thine I " 
 
 " Bring me a cup, a brimming cup ! 
 
 Sparkling with rosy, red wine : 
 The blossoms of summer will bud, alas ! 
 
 But Alice will never be mine. 
 For women are gay, and light as the air, 
 
 And faithless as faithless can be ; 
 And their love is as fickle and false as the moon, 
 
 As the winds, or the waves of the sea ! "
 
 97 
 
 HELEN. 
 
 SPLENDOR on her brow, 
 
 Beauty in her eye, 
 Whiter than the snow, 
 
 Bluer than the slry ; 
 Shaped for rarest power, 
 
 Gleaming with the light, 
 Beauty s richest dower, 
 
 Beauty s sweetest might ! 
 
 Everything hath she 
 That nature or that art 
 
 Deemeth womanly, 
 Save an honest heart ! 
 
 On her cheek the rose 
 
 Bloometh in its pride, 
 And the lily knows 
 
 Where its rivals hide ; 
 And the amorous South, 
 
 Coming from the sea, 
 Knoweth not her mouth 
 
 From the clover lea. 
 
 Everything hath she 
 That nature or that art 
 
 Deemeth womanly, 
 Save an honest heart !
 
 98 
 
 Falling round her throat, 
 
 Marble white and bare, 
 In the soft winds float 
 
 Curls of sunny hair ; 
 And her voice is clear 
 
 Like a bird s, and fills 
 Heart and soul and ear 
 
 With delicious thrills. 
 
 Everything hath she 
 That nature or that art 
 
 Deemeth womanly, 
 Save an honest heart ! 
 
 Moveth she along 
 
 In her maiden prime, 
 Like a brilliant song 
 
 With a perfect rhyme ; 
 Admiration bends 
 
 To her beauty, low : 
 There the homage ends 
 
 For, alas ! all know 
 
 Everything hath she 
 That nature or that art 
 
 Deemeth womanly, 
 Save an honest heart.
 
 90 
 
 KNITTING. 
 
 SHE sits by the window, knitting, see ! 
 
 Her fingers small and white 
 Ply the shining needles, busily, 
 
 From early morn till night ; 
 
 From early morn till night, 
 
 Her fingers small and white 
 Ply the shining needles, busiry, 
 
 From early morn till night. 
 
 She sits by the window, knitting, see ! 
 
 How low she bends her head ! 
 And over the needles, rapidly, 
 
 Weaveth the colored thread ; 
 
 Weaveth the colored thread, 
 
 As low she bends her head, 
 And over the needles, rapidly, 
 
 Weaveth the colored thread. 
 
 She sits by the window, knitting, see ! 
 
 She works the glittering skein, 
 With her shining needles, curiously, 
 
 That glance through the window pane ; 
 
 That glance through the window pane, 
 
 As she works the glittering skein, 
 With her shining needles, curiously, 
 
 That glance through the window pane.
 
 She sits by the window, knitting, see ! 
 
 She holds it up to the light ; 
 And her shining needles, cautiously, 
 
 Pick the fallen stitch to her sight ; 
 
 Pick the fallen stitch to her sight, 
 
 As she holds it up to the light, 
 Her shining needles, cautiously, 
 
 Pick the fallen stitch to her sight. 
 
 She sits b} the window, knitting, see ! 
 
 From morn to the evening s close ; 
 And her shining needles, busily, 
 
 Are weaving what? who knows? 
 
 Are weaving what? who knows? 
 
 From morn to the evening s close, 
 Her shining needles, busily, 
 
 Are weaving what ? who knows ?
 
 101 
 
 THE MOSS ROSE. 
 
 THE moss rose that she gave me, 
 
 When we were both at school, 
 "When she was like a singing-bird. 
 
 And I a stupid fool ; 
 The moss rose that she gave me, 
 
 Alas for me and her ! 
 Too late I learned the language 
 
 Of the little messenger. 
 
 The moss rose that she gave me 
 
 1 folded in my book ; 
 And, years from then, I saw it all ! 
 
 The meaning and the look. 
 But, ah ! the days had long gone b} 
 
 When we were both at school, 
 When she was like a singing-bird. 
 
 And I a stupid fool. 
 
 The moss rose that she gave me, 
 
 That in my book I thrust, 
 The stem is white and broken, 
 
 And the leaves are blushing dust ; 
 About my temples I can trace 
 
 The glittering threads of snow ; 
 And the singing-bird, from sorrow, flew 
 
 To heaven, years ago.
 
 102 
 
 GONE. 
 
 GONE ! gone at last, in brighter skies 
 
 To his eternal rest ! 
 Silent and still the blossom lies 
 
 Upon its mother s breast ; 
 Still folded to that faithful heart 
 As though, alas ! they could not part. 
 
 Though earl} with the morning sun 
 
 They bore the child away, 
 And laid him where the waters run, 
 
 And where the soft winds play ; 
 And now the da}" his course fulfils 
 Behind the glowing western hills ; 
 
 Yet there with tears and folded hands, 
 And lips dumb with despair, 
 
 The mother by the cradle stands 
 As though her boy were there ; 
 
 His last dear bed with tears is wet 
 
 She hath not strength to move it yet.
 
 103 
 
 in. 
 
 We buried him beneath a tree 
 Just down the meadow glade, 
 
 That, alwa}*s, from the window, we 
 Could see where he was laid ; 
 
 And sometimes it seems hard to bear 
 
 The loss of one so young and fair.
 
 UP THE MOUNTAIN VALLEY 
 
 UP the mountain valley, 
 
 Hark, the rolling drum ! 
 There our brethren rallj-, 
 
 There the invaders come ; 
 There our flag is waving, 
 
 There a gallant band, 
 Foreign hirelings braving, 
 
 For their county stand. 
 
 Hark ! the charge is given ! 
 
 And their lines of steel 
 Freedom s band has riven, 
 
 Like a thunder-peal ; 
 On the horseman dashes ! 
 
 Down the hirelings go ! 
 And the cannon flashes 
 
 O er a flying foe. 
 
 Up the mountain valley, 
 
 In the setting sun, 
 There our brethren rallj , 
 
 And the fight is done ; 
 Echoes through the gorges, 
 
 As the invaders flee, 
 " Death to him who forges 
 
 Fetters for the free ! "
 
 105 
 
 LOVE S VAGARIES. 
 
 LITTLE Love got mad one morning in Ma} , 
 
 Twas one of his whimsical days, 
 And he swore in his wrath, I am sorry to sa} T , 
 
 That the very old Nick he would raise ! 
 So he mounted the back of a young butterfly 
 That he caught on the blow of a thistle just b} r , 
 And over his shoulder he slung in a trice 
 His bow with a quiver of arrows so nice ; 
 And vowing to take, in the space of an hour, 
 Full vengeance on all who had scouted his power, 
 He threw his bare feet o er the back of his steed, 
 And chirruped him off at the top of his speed. 
 
 Away, like the glance of the earliest dawn, 
 
 He rode on his yellow steed s wing ; 
 
 His bow was all strained, and a keen arrow drawn, 
 
 And set to the well-tightened string. 
 A Doctor, long famed for the cure of all ills, 
 Sat boxing his rarest and surest new pills, 
 And his rain-water drops and his ground rotten 
 
 wood, 
 
 Ha, ha ! said the Doctor, they re all just as good ! 
 Twang went the bow ! and the poor Doctor s face 
 Grew pale like a man s in a critical case ; 
 Love left him preparing with cunningest art 
 A pill to relieve an attack of the heart.
 
 10G 
 
 Away, like the glance of the earliest dawn, 
 
 Love rode on his yellow steed s wing, 
 His bow again strained, and a keen arrow drawn, 
 
 And set to the well-tightened string. 
 A Law3 r er well known for his quips and his 
 
 cranks, 
 
 And the way he had played veiy fine legal pranks, 
 Was preparing a case just to come to the stand, 
 While the fees from both parties he held in his 
 
 hand ; 
 Twang went the bow ! and the poor Lawyer s 
 
 la! 
 Looked as though in the case he d discovered a 
 
 flaw, 
 
 And the last of his practice that an} one knew, 
 His suing and pleading, was pleading for Sue. 
 
 Away, like the glance of the earliest dawn, 
 
 Love fled on his yellow steed s wing ; 
 His bow again strained, and a fresh arrow drawn, 
 
 And set to the well-tightened string. 
 A Clergyman who for some twent}* 3 ears stood, 
 And preached to his flock as a clergyman should, 
 With fearful precision that moment had hurled 
 A bolt at the devil, the flesh, and the world ; 
 Twang went the bow ! tis reported when next 
 He preached to his flock he had taken the text, 
 And had by authority perfectly shown 
 That for man twas not good that he should be 
 alone.
 
 107 
 
 Away, like the glance of the earliest dawn, 
 
 Love fled on his } ellow steed s wing, 
 His bow again strained, and a fresh arrow drawn, 
 
 And set to the well-tightened string. 
 An Editor sat in his sanctum up stairs, 
 Directing the ways of all human affairs, 
 And stealing " original" quietly out 
 From a pile of exchanges he d scattered about ; 
 Twang went the bow ! but the editor s eye 
 Never turned, for he thought twas the bite of 
 
 a fly! 
 
 The arrow that bounded away from his side 
 Like pigeon-shot from the rhinoceros hide, 
 On the exchange he was cutting unluckily flew, 
 And his rusty old scissors just snipped it in two !
 
 N IMPORTE. 
 
 SIIK loved me when my father held 
 
 Bank stock and cash and cattle, 
 When to her door my splendid gra} - s 
 
 At five o clock would rattle ; 
 Ah ! how, in some romantic spot 
 
 As rolled the cushioned carnage, 
 She blushed and sighed at all m}- talk 
 
 Of wedded love and marriage ! 
 
 At all the routs and all the balls 
 
 I was her constant suitor ; 
 And Tom and Ned stood back, because 
 
 They knew I had the pewter ; 
 And though Miss Brown and Mrs. Smith, 
 
 Twas said, felt rather nettled, 
 Yet all the gossips in the town 
 
 Declared the thing was settled. 
 
 So shone the sun, until one day 
 
 My father s name was doubted ! 
 She only sighed and wept at first, 
 
 And bit her lip and pouted ; 
 But when the bank went down, the sky 
 
 Portended stormy weather, 
 And next day week the stocks and I 
 
 Went down the tide together !
 
 109 
 
 I swore from twelve to one o clock, 
 
 At two was hardly righted, 
 And up to three I felt, tis true, 
 
 A ver}- little slighted. 
 Twas very hard for one so young 
 
 To read the truth in minion, 
 That gold is the specific part 
 
 Of Love s resplendent pinion. 
 
 No matter ! let it pass tis true 
 
 I loved with boyish passion, 
 And trimmed my hair and wore my coat 
 
 Exactly in the fashion ; 
 Some little pains I took to please 
 
 Her sister and her mother, 
 Discussed her father s Saxonies, 
 
 Drank soda with her brother. 
 
 I wrote some letters which were warm, 
 
 Some sonnets which were tender, 
 And gilt-edged notes and billet-doux 
 
 By reams I used to send her ; 
 I went to church, if she was there ! 
 
 Three times a day on Sunday ; 
 And asked her mother how she liked 
 
 The sermon, every Monday. 
 
 It cost me something for the " Gems" 
 And " Tokens" that I bought her, 
 
 And something at the jeweller s 
 For rings and orange water ;
 
 110 
 
 And in my bill at Brown s I found 
 
 An item rather thrifty, 
 " To horse and chaise, at sundry times," 
 
 Some forty dollars, fifty. 
 
 Well I have lived to bless the good 
 
 My earl}- lesson taught me, 
 To quietly enjoy the fruits 
 
 That time and luck have brought me ; 
 A busy hand has filled my purse 
 
 With man}* a golden clinker ; 
 And she, I hear, on Ripton Flats 
 
 Is stopping with a tinker !
 
 Ill 
 
 A CHANGE. 
 
 SHE glided down the mazy dance, 
 
 All eyes upon her glancing, 
 And everybody vowed, who saw, 
 
 Twas floating more than dancing ; 
 The bluest e} T e, the rosiest cheek, 
 
 A lip like morning weather 
 When on the flower and grass } 7 ou have 
 
 The dew and sun together. 
 
 The beaux, half crazy, seemed intent 
 
 Upon their own destruction, 
 And crowding round her where she sat, 
 
 Begged for an introduction ; 
 And everybody sought her hand, 
 
 And everybody wondered 
 If she were worth a thousand, or 
 
 Were worth a cool five hundred. 
 
 Again she glided down the dance, 
 
 A single season after, 
 And there was still as much of fun, 
 
 Of music, mirth, and laughter; 
 Her cheek was still as fair and sweet, 
 
 Her lip as soft and rosy, 
 But yet about her charms the beaux 
 
 Had grown most strangely prosy !
 
 112 
 
 A fellow in a white cravat, 
 
 And vest of latest trimming, 
 Through waltz with her and through quadrille 
 
 Familiarly was swimming. 
 And when the dance was done, I saw 
 
 Her fan and salts he carried ; 
 A.nd then the thing was clear enough, 
 
 Alas ! the girl was married !
 
 113 
 
 ELLEN VAN DUZEE. 
 
 Miss Ellen was a prett}" girl, 
 
 As even* body knew ; 
 She wore a satin-beaver hat, 
 
 A very little shoe. 
 Her lips were like the berry of 
 
 You ve seen the mountain ash ? 
 Her figure, like the cedar. She d 
 
 Considerable cash. 
 
 She d worshippers from far and near, 
 
 Some fifty in them all, 
 And partners lay the million at 
 
 The last Thanksgiving ball ; 
 And many a fop looked mellow things, 
 
 And many a dandy sad, 
 While fortune-hunters, as the} snapped 
 
 Their fingers, cried, " Egad ! " 
 
 Oh ! many an offer Ellen had, 
 
 And many a vow had she, 
 She soon became so sorely pressed, 
 
 Twas very sad to see ; 
 But all her offers, somehow twas, 
 
 She didn t like them much 
 She looked upon love s agony 
 
 As twere the blankest Dutch.
 
 114 
 
 They thronged her parties, ate her cake, 
 
 And drank her father s wine ; 
 They talked of broken hearts and sighed - 
 
 To her twas all moonshine. 
 She never seemed to care a straw 
 
 About their sighs and tears ; 
 That they were getting into debt, 
 
 And she somewhat in years. 
 
 One April day there came to town 
 
 It was the twenty-fourth 
 A Southern chap who seemed to be 
 
 On business at the North. 
 He purposed, so twas said, to stop 
 
 Until the last of May ; 
 But June came round, and his affairs 
 
 Required still further stay. 
 
 Twas rather strange, the people thought 
 
 What could his business be? 
 But soon conjecture ended with 
 
 He s rich and twenty-three ! " 
 He saw Miss Ellen, it was true ; 
 
 Danced with her at a ball ; 
 And said some pretty things, of course : 
 
 But this, it seemed, was all. 
 
 And so affairs went on, and he 
 
 Was welcomed everywhere : 
 The older ladies liked his cash, 
 
 The younger liked his hair !
 
 115 
 
 At last a story got afloat, 
 
 And like a wild-fire flew, 
 That Polly Peep had said she knew 
 
 Exactl} what she knew ! 
 
 Ah ! there was strange commotion then 
 
 Among fair Ellen s beaux ! 
 And there was one his name was Smith ; 
 
 John Smith, you may suppose 
 Who talked particularly large 
 
 Beneath his little hat, 
 And swore upon his honor he 
 
 AVould put a stop to that ! 
 
 He said he d been to New Orleans, 
 
 And owned a Spanish dirk, 
 Had fought ten duels, winged, at times, 
 
 Three Russians and a Turk ; 
 He hinted to the stranger that 
 
 The world was rather round ! 
 And asked him if he d ever seen 
 
 The general burying-ground ! 
 
 But time and tide will never wait, 
 
 Our old grandmothers say ; 
 And both about this time went on 
 
 Their old accustomed way. 
 September came and went, and still 
 
 The stranger was in town, 
 And it was thought when Smith looked up 
 
 He looked a little down.
 
 116 
 
 One Sabba day, just after " Old 
 
 Mortality " was sung, 
 While }*et upon the parson s lips 
 
 The benediction hung, 
 Lo ! suddenly the old Town Clerk, 
 
 That venerable man ! 
 Ahemed three times, and then, at length, 
 
 With lifted voice began : 
 
 I take this opportunity 
 
 To publish in this place, 
 That marriage is intended tween, 
 
 By God s permitting grace, 
 John Hamilton McNeal, Esquire, 
 
 Of Western Tennessee, 
 And " silence hushed its breath to hear 
 
 " And Ellen Van Duzee ! " 
 
 Then came the scowl and smothered curse, 
 
 Hints of percussion locks, 
 As Smith rose up, and shut the lid 
 
 Of his tobacco-box ! 
 At first, to heal his sorrows, he d 
 
 Attach her father s lands ! 
 And then he winked, and felt relieved 
 
 To have her off his hands ! 
 
 At last he thought that, after all, 
 
 Twas not so great a catch, 
 And rather pitied Mac because 
 
 He d made so bad a match !
 
 117 
 
 He knew some things, he thought he did ! 
 Could make disclosures which 
 
 Old Van Duzee notes borrowed cash- 
 Not everlasting rich ! 
 
 The wedding came, and Ellen s beaux 
 
 Were welcomed to the scene ; 
 And most of them got dreadful blue 
 
 Because they d been so green ! 
 Next morning Ellen started off 
 
 To Nashville on her way, 
 And left some folks to think of things 
 
 They re thinking of this day.
 
 118 
 
 COUNT SWAGERDORFF. 
 
 Miss Emily Angeline Agatha Jane 
 
 Clementina Victoria Sleeper 
 Fell in love with the elegant Count Swagerdorff, 
 
 A foreigner just from the Dnieper. 
 He had cash b} the ocean, the people all said ; 
 
 And yet, I persist in it stoutly, 
 That never occurred to Miss Agatha s ma 
 
 When she smiled on the Count so devoutly ! 
 
 Count SwagerdorfFs whiskers were large, and so 
 
 black ! 
 
 And his hair lay in such pretty ringlets ! 
 Who could wonder that love, who is blind as the} 
 
 say, 
 
 Found the curls tangled up with his winglets ? 
 Count SwagerdorfFs eyes ah, how soft and how 
 
 blue ! 
 
 And his voice was like zephyrs that mingle 
 Their murmurs at eve on the bosom of June 
 He wore on his finger a single 
 
 Gold ring with a stone of remarkable cost ; 
 
 His waist was as small as a lady s, 
 And his cheek and his lip were as red and as 
 warm 
 
 As they say are the young girls of Cadiz.
 
 119 
 
 His feet and his hands were of noble-blood size, 
 And he trod the old earth with such hauteur 
 
 No wonder Miss Agatha s suitors all fled 
 
 In despair, when Count Swagerdorff sought her. 
 
 Count Swagerdorff danced, and Count Swager 
 dorff sung, 
 
 Count Swagerdorff played very finely, 
 Spoke Russian and Spanish, Italian and French, 
 
 And lolled on a sofa divinely. 
 In English he d learned a thousand sweet songs, 
 
 Whose virtue some think rather brittle ; 
 Could repeat Parisina, Don Juan, and all 
 
 Of Tom Moore in his sobriquet, Little. 
 
 Count Swagerdorff spoke to Miss Agatha s pa, 
 And declared his affections were blighted, 
 
 Unless the sweet hand of his daughter were his, 
 Miss Agatha s pa was delighted ! 
 
 So the thing was all settled at once, and the day ! 
 
 Ere June a May blossom had wilted, 
 
 The day was appointed. The cake and the dress 
 Were done, and the comforter quilted. 
 
 Count Swagerdorff sat at his hotel at tea 
 
 With a noli me tangere phiz on, 
 When the sheriff came in, in search of a chap 
 
 Who had broke from the Windsor State Prison. 
 Count Swagerdorff laughed, and Count Swager 
 dorff frowned ; 
 
 ]>ut the fellow grew saucy and bolder,
 
 120 
 
 Walked up to his chair with, " How are ye. ray 
 
 bird ! ". 
 And laid a broad hand on his shoulder. 
 
 Count Swagerdorff looked at the man with a stare, 
 
 And called on the landlord to take him 
 Away ; then ordered his servant, black Sam, 
 
 To collar the scoundrel and shake him. 
 But the fellow just gave Count Swagerdorff s curls 
 
 A brush with his hands in the scuffle ; 
 And, alas ! twas all up with Jim Brown, and his 
 wrists 
 
 "Were quietly graced with a ruffle. 
 
 So they marched Count Swagerdorff back to his 
 cell, 
 
 With a face on that could not be painted ; 
 Poor Agatha s pa and Agatha s ma ! 
 
 One swore, and the other she fainted. 
 And the laugh of the town was the source of 
 great pain, 
 
 When the Count left the place with his keeper, 
 To ladies, the moral I pray you will heed 
 
 Miss Angeline Agatha Sleeper.
 
 121 
 
 KATE WAS ONCE A LITTLE GIRL. 
 
 KATE was once a little girl, 
 
 Heigh-ho ! heigh-ho ! 
 
 Eyes of blue and teeth of pearl, 
 Heigh-ho ! heigh-ho ! 
 
 In the spring when school was done, 
 
 Full of life and full of fun, 
 
 O er the hills awuy she d run, 
 Heigh-ho ! heigh-ho ! 
 
 Gentle breezes all the da} , 
 
 Ileigh-ho ! heigh-ho ! 
 
 Through her sunn}* locks would play. 
 Heigh-ho ! heigh-ho ! 
 
 All her thoughts were pure and bright 
 
 As the stars we see at night, 
 
 Shining with a joyous light, 
 
 Heigh-ho ! heigh-ho ! 
 
 Kate s a little older now, 
 
 Heigh-ho ! heigh-ho ! 
 Still as fair her radiant brow, 
 
 Heigh-ho ! heigh-ho ! 
 Still on her cheek as brightly plays 
 The sunshine of her youthful days, 
 And still as sweet her girlish ways, 
 Heiu h-ho ! heigh-ho !
 
 122 
 
 Care may scowl and age 1x133- blame, 
 
 Heigh-ho ! heigh-ho ! 
 Kate will always he the same, 
 Ih-igli-ho ! heigh-ho ! 
 ;> -th Time shall steal away, 
 Ke as bright and gay 
 laughed in girlhood s day, 
 Ili-inh-ho! luigh-ho!
 
 123 
 
 THE YELLOW CORN. 
 
 Come, boys, sing ! 
 
 Sing of the yellow corn; 
 Sing, boys, sing, 
 
 Sing of the yellow corn ! 
 He springeth up from the fallow soil, 
 
 With the blade so green and tall ; 
 And he pa3 eth well the reaper s toil, 
 When the husks in the autumn fall. 
 The pointed leaves, 
 
 And the golden ear, 
 The rustling sheaves, 
 In the ripened year 
 Sing, boys, xig ! 
 
 Sing < if the yellow corn; 
 Sing, boys, sing, 
 
 Sing of the yellow corn, 
 
 He drinks the rain in the summer long 
 
 And he loves the streams that run, 
 And he sends the stalk so stout and strong, 
 To bask in the summer sun. 
 The pointed leaves, 
 
 And the golden ear, 
 The rustling sheaves, 
 In the ripened year 
 
 Sing, boys, sing! 
 
 Sing of the yellow corn; 
 Sing, boys, sing, 
 
 Sing of the yellow corn.
 
 124 
 
 He loves the dews of the starry night, 
 And the breathing wind that plays 
 With his tassels green, when the mellow light 
 Of the moon on the meadow stays. 
 The pointed leaves. 
 
 And the golden ear, 
 The rustling sheaves, 
 In the ripened year 
 
 Sing, boys, sing ! 
 
 Sing of the yellow corn ; 
 Ring, boys, sing, 
 
 Sing of the yellow corn. 
 
 A glorious thing is the 3 ellow corn. 
 With the blade so green and tall ; 
 A blessed thing is the 3 ellow corn, 
 When the husks in the autumn fall. 
 Then, sing, boys, sing! 
 
 Sing of the yellow corn ; 
 Sing, boys, sing, 
 
 Sing of the yellow corn. 
 The pointed leaves, 
 
 And the golden ear, 
 The rustling sheaves, 
 In the ripened year 
 Come, sing, boys, sing, 
 
 Sing of the yellow corn ; 
 Sing, boys, sing, 
 
 Sing of the yellow corn 1
 
 125 
 
 TO LILY. 
 
 PRETTY Lily, dearest Lily, 
 
 Pray what shall I do 
 With my head so full of verses, 
 
 My heart so full of } ou? 
 
 All my time and all my sonnets, 
 All my thoughts, you claim ; 
 
 I am nothing, dearest Lily, 
 Nothing but a name. 
 
 I am nothing, dearest Lily, 
 
 E en myself I miss ; 
 Lily, Lily, wicked Lily, 
 
 You re to blame for this. 
 
 Pretty Lily, dearest Lily, 
 
 Pray what shall I do 
 With my head so full of verses. 
 
 And my heart of you ?
 
 126 
 
 THE HOMESTEAD. 
 
 Tis many a da} since in the spring. 
 
 My own sweet native dell. 
 I bade thee, with a sad, sad heart, 
 
 My first and long farewell ; 
 Tis many a day, yes. many a year, 
 
 And 3 et, as then, I see 
 Mj- mother waving, from the door, 
 
 A long good-bye to me. 
 
 M} T dearest mother ! Sad and strange 
 
 Has been the lot I ve known 
 Since when that morn thy loving arms 
 
 About my neck were thrown ; 
 And scarcely now remains a line 
 
 My boyish features wore 
 When looked I last on home, to me 
 
 A home, alas ! no more. 
 
 Of those I left, long years ago, 
 
 Around that old hearth-stone, 
 Two perished when the leaves grew pale 
 
 Beneath the autumn sun ; 
 And those who still remain of all 
 
 That gay and thoughtless band, 
 Changed, like the place that gave them birth. 
 
 Are scattered o er the land.
 
 Still onward sweeps the tide that bears 
 
 Us to our long, dark home ; 
 And, whereso er our lot be cast. 
 
 Together we shall come, 
 And lay our heads upon the lap 
 
 Of our good mother ; there 
 Shall sleep and peace be ours once more, 
 
 And rest from toil and care.
 
 128 
 
 SWEET ALICE GRAY. 
 
 WOULD that I had loved thee never, 
 
 Sweet Alice Gray ; 
 Then thine image would not ever 
 
 Haunt me by day ; 
 
 And this struggle to forget thee, 
 
 Sweet Alice Gray, 
 Had not worn, if I d not met thee, 
 
 My life away. 
 
 Grew my love to thee as groweth, 
 
 Sweet Alice Gray, 
 Where alone the wild brook flowetli, 
 
 Flowers by the way. 
 
 Still I hoped till hope was banished, 
 
 Sweet Alice Gray, 
 And my star of life has vanished 
 
 Ever awa} .
 
 129 
 
 THE WORLD GOES ROUND AND ROUND. 
 
 THE world goes round and round, they say ; 
 
 They say that the world goes round ; 
 Twas lucky, no doubt, that by some great man 
 
 This very great truth was found ! 
 For how should we know that the world goes 
 round, 
 
 That the world goes round and round ; 
 Unless it had been, that, by some great man, 
 
 This very great truth had been found? 
 
 There are other strange things, as I have been told, 
 
 Besides that the world goes round ; 
 And others as strange, I m inclined to think, 
 
 That nobody yet has found ; 
 But still it is certain, about the world, 
 
 That the world goes round and round ; 
 And that by some great man, sometime in the 
 world, 
 
 This veiy great truth has been found. 
 
 Well ! since it is true that the world goes round, 
 
 That the world goes round and round ; 
 That we stand on our feet, on .our feet, you see ! 
 
 While the world goes round and round ; 
 Why, then let the world go round and round, 
 
 Let the world go round and be shot ! 
 J suspect it is bound to go round and round, 
 
 Whether you and I like it or not !
 
 130 
 
 SONG 
 
 Is she co} r and is she wary, 
 
 Flying from your suit ; 
 Do her lips and passions vary, 
 
 Like her idle lute ? 
 
 Vex the girl with frozen glances, 
 
 Taunt her with your eye, 
 Woo another with advances ; 
 
 From her presence fly ! 
 
 Soon the heart will change the fashion 
 
 Of the tongue s deceit ; 
 Lips no more deny the passion ; 
 
 Eyes no longer cheat.
 
 131 
 
 THE POET. 
 
 HE was dying in his garret, 
 
 And his cheek was thin and white ; 
 But his soul was full of music, 
 
 And his eye was full of light. 
 He saw a radiant Vision, 
 
 And its awful presence smote 
 His sickly blood to fever, 
 
 And he seized his pen and wrote. 
 
 He wrote Into his window 
 
 The light of morning streamed, 
 And the poet from his labor 
 
 Looked up as one who di eamed : 
 He saw the early sunshine 
 
 Glance round his restless pen ; 
 But the Vision still was with him, 
 
 And he saw and wrote again. 
 
 He wrote Into his window 
 
 The setting sunlight streamed, 
 And the poet from his labor 
 
 Awoke as one who dreamed : 
 He saw the fading shadows 
 
 Grow dark upon his floor ; 
 The Vision had departed, 
 
 And he saw and wrote no more.
 
 132 
 
 And never in his garret 
 
 Was the poet seen again : 
 His humble name had faded 
 
 From the memory of men. 
 His hand and brain had failed him, 
 
 Though his heart was stout and strong ; 
 And he died, alone, but trusting 
 
 To the glory of his song. 
 
 From the hovel to the palace 
 
 A might}" sound is heard. 
 And the nations seem to ponder 
 
 O er a bright and glorious Word ; 
 And armies rush to battle, 
 
 And the millions, in their might. 
 Dash down their chains forever, 
 
 In their battling for the right ! 
 
 Twas the Vision of the Poet ! 
 
 Twas the Word he wrote, at last, 
 That thrilled through all the millions 
 
 Like a fearful trumpet blast ; 
 Twas the Vision of the Poet ! 
 
 Twas the Song he wrote ! Twas clone 
 The armies sang his battle-songs. 
 
 And victories were won ! 
 
 O 3 r e who labor, doubting. 
 
 Growing sullen at the wrong ; 
 When few seem to be listening 
 
 To the music of your song !
 
 133 
 
 Write ! write in faith, and upward 
 Let your glance be on the sky : 
 
 The Prophets never perish ; 
 True singers never die. 

 
 134 
 
 RETALIATION. 
 
 " WELL ! here they are, the letters which 
 
 Yon sent me years ago ; 
 They re somewhat soiled, as you will see, - 
 
 Of qourse they d be, you know. 
 I need not say what they contain. 
 
 Perhaps it is not meet ; 
 Nor what you told me, will I take 
 
 The trouble to repeat." 
 
 " What did I say, that now I have 
 
 The honor of a call. 
 From one I scarcely recollect, 
 
 And never knew at all ? " 
 " No matter now : we will not have 
 
 A single word of strife ; 
 I understood 3~ou, though, to say 
 This spring you d be my wife." 
 
 lt Perhaps I did ; but I was 3 oung, 
 
 And now have quite forgot 
 That silly freak of childish love, 
 
 And wonder you have not ; 
 Besides, I m sure, whate er I said, 
 
 I never did intend 
 To seem to 3 ou more than I was, 
 
 Your most devoted friend."
 
 4i All just as well : good morning, ma am ! 
 
 Oh ! do you know, they say 
 That Colonel Charles Fitz Albert Hill 
 
 Last evening ran awa}* ; 
 Intending to return, no doubt, 
 
 Ned Hunter s watch and chain ? 
 I see the papers state, besides, 
 
 He has a wife in Maine." 
 
 " Impossible ! how could the man ! 
 
 The wretch ! deceive me so ? 
 Tis dreadful ! Oh ! how can I bear, 
 
 How can I bear this blow ? " 
 " Good morning, ma am ! I hope you ll feel 
 
 Forgive me ! on my life 
 I ve loved you only didn t you say 
 That I should be your wife ? " 
 
 " Perhaps I did ; but I was young, 
 
 And now have quite forgot 
 That sill} freak of childish love, 
 
 And wonder you have not ! 
 Besides, I m sure, whate er I said, 
 
 I never did intend 
 To seem to you more than I was, 
 
 Your most devoted friend."
 
 136 
 
 I STOOD BESIDE TDK SEA. 
 
 I STOOD beside the sea, 
 
 The billows, soft and slow 
 Came drifting up the sands to me, 
 
 Like wreaths of winter snow ; 
 And she, who smiled upon the shore, 
 
 Her soft hand clasped in mine, 
 Thought not of those who dream no more 
 
 Beneath the cruel brine. 
 
 I stood beside the sea, 
 
 The ship had left the land, 
 And, waving sad farewell to me, 
 
 She kissed and kissed her hand ; 
 I prayed the sea be true and fair, 
 
 Alas ! the treacherous tide, 
 Enamoured of her golden hair, 
 
 Despoiled me of my bride. 
 
 I stand beside the sea, 
 
 I curse the faithless tide, 
 I curse the false and craven sea, 
 
 That robbed me of my bride ! 
 It moans and writhes, like one who yearns 
 
 A damning sin to flee ; 
 But never more my bride returns, 
 
 Ah ! never more to me !
 
 PART II.
 
 HYMN. 
 
 (Written for the occasion of the dedication of GREEN-MOUNT 
 CEMETKUY, at Montpclicr, Vt., Sept. 15, 1855.) 
 
 THIS fairest spot of hill and glade, 
 
 Where blooms the flower and waves the tree, 
 And silver streams delight the shade, 
 
 We consecrate, O Death ! to thee. 
 
 Here all the months the year may know 
 Shall watch this " Eden of the. Dead," 
 
 To wreathe with flowers, or crown with snow, 
 The dreamless sleeper s narrow bed. 
 
 And when above its graves we kneel, 
 
 Resigning to the mouldering urn 
 The friends whose silent hearts ^Uall feel 
 
 No balni}- summer s glad return, 
 
 Each marble shaft our hands may rear, 
 To mark where dust to dust is given, 
 
 Shall lift its chiselled column here 
 To point our tearful eyes to heaven.
 
 140 
 A HYMN. 
 
 (A FRAGMENT.) 
 
 PRAISE ye the Lord of hill and dell ! 
 
 Praise ye the Lord of earth and sky ! 
 Praise ye the Lord ! Let the anthem swell 
 
 To Judah s God on high. 
 
 He sends the rain on thirsty hills ; 
 
 His bounty Labor s basket fills ; 
 
 And the flowers that live by the water s brim 
 
 With their scented breath acknowledge him. 
 
 Then, praise ye the Lord of hill and dell ! 
 
 Praise ye the Lord of earth and sky ! 
 Praise ye the Lord ! Let the glad song swell 
 
 To Judah s God on high.
 
 141 
 AN EVENING IN SUMMER. 
 
 (A FRAGMENT.) 
 
 THE sun is down ; dark grow the glades ; 
 
 The stars are gathering in the deep ; 
 And, o er the earth, night s misty shades 
 
 Are stealing like a quiet sleep. 
 The wild winds, wandering through the sk} r , 
 
 Stoop from their paths as day declines, 
 And nestle, with a shivering cry 
 
 And weary wing, among the pines.
 
 112 
 
 I LL TUNE MY HARP TO DREAMS NO 
 MORE. 
 
 I LL tune my harp to dreams no more, 
 
 No more to idle song ; 
 Tis time to strike to war and strife, 
 
 To war against the Wrong. 
 While Might still holds his throttling grasp 
 
 On Freedom s blackened throat, 
 And o er the earth the robber-flags 
 
 Of red Oppression float ; 
 
 While tongues are stifled, Right borne down, 
 
 And Error s banded host 
 In triumph tramples down the Truth 
 
 With coarse and mocking boast ; 
 While, scowling, still sits brutal Force 
 
 In sweet Persuasion s place, 
 And low Lust turns his serpent-eye 
 
 On shrinking Virtue s face ; 
 
 While Luxury shuts her marble halls 
 
 On Hunger, wild and gaunt ; 
 While some in swollen surfeit live, 
 
 And millions die of want : 
 I ll tune my harp to dreams no more, 
 
 No more to idle song ; 
 I ll strike its chords for war and strife, 
 
 For war against the Wrong !
 
 143 
 
 REQUIESCAT. 
 
 Tis finished, and Death s sleep at last 
 Has settled on thy pallid brow ; 
 
 And anguish, strife, and pain have passed, 
 And left thee to thy slumbers now ; 
 
 As steals the mother from her child 
 By soft and quiet slumbers blest, 
 
 So passed thy soul, when sleep had wiled 
 weary bod into rest. 
 
 So quiet is tlry marble face, 
 
 So few the marks of strife appear, 
 That scarce a line is left to trace 
 
 That Death has done his mission here. 
 Fair through thy lids the blue veins shine ; 
 
 Thy cheek is hardly paler ; while, 
 Life-like around those lips of thine, 
 
 Is lingering still a gentle smile. 
 
 Thou rt only sleeping ! round thy bed 
 
 Thy children gather as before ; 
 And bend above thy shrouded head, 
 
 And ask to kiss thy lips once more. 
 Thou rt only sleeping ! speak to us ! 
 
 In vain ! Thy eyes are closed and dark. 
 In vain we weep and call thee thus ; 
 
 Gone is the bright ethereal spark.
 
 144 
 
 Forever gone ! and }-et there s left 
 
 No trace behind, no clew to tell 
 Where it hath wandered ; cold , bereft, 
 
 The form we loved so long and well 
 Lies motionless. The life that yearned 
 
 For freedom from the sickly clay, 
 Escaped at last from Death, has turned 
 
 From sorrow to the cloudless da} . 
 
 The song of birds, the fitful breeze, 
 
 Henceforth to thee are nothing. Near 
 Thy dwelling winds shall stir the trees ; 
 
 But nothing to thy drowsy ear 
 Shall be the thunder, or the tread 
 
 Above thee. Gentle summer rains 
 Shall prattle o er thy narrow bed ; 
 
 And, clothed in beauty, all the plains 
 
 Shall yellow with the yellowing corn : 
 
 But thou shalt know the harvest moon, 
 The increase of the autumn, morn. 
 
 The darkness of the winter noon. 
 No more. For thee the flowers shall keep 
 
 Their sweets in vain ; the shouting floods 
 Awaken ; and the warm winds sweep 
 
 To music all the budding woods. 
 
 A time, and those thy life has nursed 
 Ca n claim no kindred to thee there ; 
 
 From thy short being still shall burst 
 Xew life, and many a form shall bear,
 
 145 
 
 Unconsciously, thine image, when 
 Thy name has perished, or will seem, 
 
 Far down the race of by-gone men, 
 A dim and half-remembered dream. 
 
 Yet, passing from us, tliou dost leave 
 
 The never-tailing trust to those 
 Who, summoned round thy pillow, grieve, 
 
 That from thy dull and void repose 
 Thou all renewed shall rise and take, 
 
 Where life is ever blossoming, 
 A form more beautiful, and wake 
 
 From darkness to perpetual spring. 
 
 Farewell ! we wrap thee in th} T shroud, 
 
 And bear thee to thy long-sought rest : 
 So hushed, it seems a breath aloud 
 
 Would jar to life thy pulseless breast. 
 Sleep ! envying thee, we rather mourn 
 
 Our lot to weep and suffer here, 
 To feel each da} 1 some new tie torn, 
 
 And see some loved one disappear.
 
 146 
 
 THE MOTHERLESS. 
 (FRAGMENT.) 
 
 SWEET child ! she s weaiy with her play ; 
 
 And o er her, like the spell 
 Of music at the close of day, 
 
 Sleep stealeth. Arabel ! 
 I gaze upon thee and I bless 
 Thee, beautiful and motherless. 
 
 Thankful to Heaven that thou art thus 
 
 Upon our bounty thrown ; 
 Thou rt welcome ! share our lot with us, 
 
 As though thon wert our own ; 
 All thou has lost we ll seek to be, 
 Through all thy life, sweet child, to thee. 
 
 I see she cometh from the hills ! 
 
 And in her bosom presses 
 The flowers she gathers from the rills, 
 
 Lilies and water-cresses ; 
 Yet none of all are half so fail- 
 As she with her soft Saxon hair. 
 
 Well may these flowers, so sweet and pure 
 Shrink from her breast away : 
 
 The} cannot, envious things, endure 
 A flower more fair than they ; 
 
 If all that envy her came here, 
 
 The fields were rather bare, I fear.
 
 BOY LOVE. 
 
 YEARS, } - ears ago, when life was new, 
 
 A wild and laughing girl 
 Lived up the lane, with eyes of blue, 
 
 And many a golden curl. 
 Forever hand in hand we ran, 
 
 Two beings with one life ; 
 Ah ! how I wished I were a man 
 
 To " wed my little wife " ! 
 
 She sleeps upon a grassy hill, 
 
 Where, in the autumn night. 
 Upon the elm the whip-poor-will 
 
 Sings in the pale moon-light. 
 The stone we raised above her head 
 
 Is broken and defaced ; 
 The sunken earth above her bed 
 
 Sho\vs where the child was placed. 
 
 I pass along the road at night, 
 
 And, leaning on the stile, 
 Think of her face, all love and light, 
 
 Her bright and sunny smile ; 
 And o er my heart my childish grief, 
 
 That sad and early dream, 
 Steals, like the shadow of a leaf 
 
 Along a summer stream.
 
 148 
 
 A FRAGMENT. 
 
 "AND that!" 
 
 " That was a charger s i.eigh. 
 When they harness him for a battle da} , 
 And the rider strives to check him in vain 
 With a goad of the spur and a jerk of the rein : 
 And there comes a sound, this way to the right, 
 Like forming men for a coming fight ; 
 Does the sentry hear it ? " 
 
 "Yes! 
 
 Through the street, 
 
 There s a sudden sound of trampling feet, 
 And, ho ! that glare o er the city s gloom ! 
 
 Up to the sky how that rocket sings ! 
 While, starting up from his dreams of home. 
 
 Each Briton on the rampart springs." 
 
 " The plain grows dark as the moon goes down. 
 And shadows huge o er the city frown, 
 Like wrathful giants ; over the wall 
 The flags of the tyrant rise and fall, 
 The " 
 
 Hark! what was that? there, that! did 
 
 3 ou hear?" 
 
 " No ! what was it? where was it? near?" 
 " And that?"
 
 149 
 
 " Was the wail of a bugle " 
 
 No! 
 
 Twas more like the wind when its breath is low " 
 " There ! that ! what was that? " 
 
 " That was the blast, 
 No, twas a horseman riding fast."
 
 150 
 
 THE AMERICAN. 
 
 HALF covered by the wild woodbine 
 
 And scented by the brake, 
 O ershadowed by the princely pine, 
 
 And rnirrowed in the lake ; 
 Oh ! dearer far to him than all 
 
 The pomp of foreign lands, 
 The humble cot his labor builds 
 
 With free, unshackled hands. 
 
 He gazes on his mother-land, 
 
 Her rivers rolling by, 
 Her monarch mountains, as they stand, 
 
 Their blue peaks in the sky, 
 To brave the fury of the storms 
 
 That round their heads have birth ; 
 
 Her plains, where life in all its forms 
 Wakes from the nursing earth, 
 
 And asks himself, with manly pride, 
 Where is the land like this, 
 
 Of mountain, flood, and prairie wide. 
 And solemn wilderness? 
 
 While others boast of lordly hall. 
 
 Of regal pomp and pride. 
 Of fallen mosque and mouldering wall. 
 
 And fields where Icings have died ;
 
 151 
 
 Of crumbling tombs and monuments, 
 Round which, when time was young, 
 
 The wandering Arabs pitched their tents 
 And wild war chants were sung ; 
 
 Of banners brave, and flags that love 
 
 To look on riven shields, 
 Whose haughty folds have waved above 
 
 A thousand battle-fields ; 
 Of Bannockburn. Pultowa s day, 
 
 Napoleon s bloody star. 
 Of Marathon, Thermopylae, 
 
 Of Bos worth, Trafalgar, - 
 
 He treads the land of Bunker Hill ! 
 
 Where Yorktown s day was won, 
 Where looks upon Potomac still 
 
 The tomb of Washington ; 
 And boasts of sacred battle-plains, 
 
 Where, by oppression driven, 
 A nation broke a tyrant s chains 
 
 With blows for freedom given.
 
 MY UNCLE JERRY. 
 
 r. 
 
 JUST round the corner, up the street, 
 
 Among the elms and maples, 
 Beyond the noise of trucks and cars 
 
 And "rush of Northern staples ; 
 Where ladies never promenade 
 
 To show their latest dresses, 
 And where the loud, uneasy tide 
 
 Of business never presses, 
 
 There stands a mansion, built before 
 
 You ever sa\v a steeple, 
 Ere Treasury notes and Taritf acts 
 
 Had vexed a growing people ; 
 When the Hampshire Grants were tracts of 
 laud 
 
 Somewhat in disputation, 
 Tracked by the most untractable 
 
 Of all the Yankee nation ; 
 
 When Ethan Allen ruled the State 
 
 With steel and stolen scriptur , 
 Declared his ^beech-seal" war against, 
 
 New York, anil took and whipt her : 
 A gambrel-roofed, one-story house, 
 
 In front a tall black cherry ; 
 And there, a type of olden times, 
 
 Resides my uncle Jerry.
 
 153 
 
 n. 
 A noble, old-school gentleman, 
 
 A personage quite rare 
 In these exquisite modern times 
 
 Of stays, rattans, and hair: 
 One of your true, world-hearted men, 
 
 Whose purse and store and basket 
 Are always open, and whose heart 
 
 Is 3 ours before you ask it. 
 
 Prompt, courteous, and dignified, 
 
 With few but meaning words ; 
 He never plays at mediums ; 
 
 He knows no halves or thirds : 
 And never, like some Yankees, stops 
 
 To reckon, s pose, or guess ; 
 But everything goes with a ve- 
 
 Ni vidi vici-ness. 
 
 A vexy temperate man is he, 
 
 Though it is true, no doubt, 
 He had his " train," when, years ago, 
 
 The " Flood -wood " was called out ; 
 And though of " Rum " not very shy, 
 
 Yet little of a rover, 
 He wisely chose to be on land 
 
 When he was " half-seas over." 
 
 So honest, too, that through a life 
 Of sharp and constant dealing, 
 
 He never took a cent or dime 
 But with the kindest feeling.
 
 154 
 
 And never made a charge that he 
 In conscience thought was skittish ; 
 
 Not e en the charge, tis said, he mack- 
 At Plattsburgh, on the British. 
 
 He wears a rather longish cue 
 
 Tied with a ribbon black, 
 That hangs itself most solemnly 
 
 Adown my uncle s back. 
 His snuff-box is a relic of 
 
 The days of old Queen Ann ; 
 A Dutchman s name is on the lid, 
 
 Tis something after Van. 
 
 My uncle still adheres to shoes 
 
 With buckles on the top, 
 And still about his dress you see 
 
 He might have been a fop ! 
 When he was A oung and in his prime, 
 
 And frolics were in vogue, 
 I ve heard some ancient spinsters sa\" 
 
 He was a " wicked rogue ! " 
 
 And even now, when he recounts 
 
 His days of youth and glorj , 
 He ll make my aunt look daggers with 
 
 Some rather rakish stor} ; 
 You d laugh to see him cock his eye. 
 
 As by the light-stand sitting, 
 She seems intent to find the stitch 
 
 She d just dropped in her knitting!
 
 155 
 
 His hickory cane, you always see 
 
 He carries in bis hand, 
 With smooth-worn knots and loosened point, 
 
 And polished golden band ; 
 Where, half effaced, his name is carved 
 
 Upon the ivory head, 1 
 He brought from old Connecticut, 
 
 As I have heard it said. 
 
 With children never blest, he frets 
 
 And scolds at neighbor Pickens ; 
 And wonders why lie need to let 
 
 His act so like " the dickens." 
 If lie had children, if he /tad, 
 
 By old John Jacob Astor ! 
 (He alwa}"s swears b} him) he d see 
 
 7/e tZ see who d be the master. 
 
 in. 
 
 He talks of politics sometimes ; 
 
 Although he never spends 
 Much time or sense, in latter years, 
 
 Disputing with his friends. 
 Though somewhat pugilistic once, 
 
 And famous in a row, 
 The men he fought, he says, are dead, 
 
 Sha n t light their children now ! 
 
 But if 3"ou d know what times we luid 
 
 With John Munro and Tryon ; 
 The mighty stir they made about 
 
 The people s Matthew Lyon ;
 
 156 
 
 Or anything of matters, when 
 Our freedom we were winning, 
 
 He ll talk from dark to twelve o clock, 
 And that for a beginning. 
 
 He ll tell you how, in 83, 
 
 To Guilford Allen went, 
 To quell in that Republic, there, 
 
 Some little discontent ; 
 The time, you know, the Colonel swore, 
 
 And looked upon their farms, 
 He d Sodom-and-Gomorrah em, 
 
 If they didn t stack their arms ! 
 
 And how the Yorker part stood out, 
 
 And swung their scythes and axes. 
 And swore by all twas black and white 
 
 They wouldn t pay their taxes ; 
 How Bradley left the town without 
 
 A Lamb among her birches. 
 And Mrs. Hunt s ungodly son 
 
 Despoiled her of her Churches. 
 
 How John Munro came on, one day. 
 
 With all his Yorker train, 
 And took Remember Baker up. 
 
 And set him clown again. 
 How one Ben Hough, who practised law 
 
 And freedom in his speech, 
 Received in full for services 
 
 A fine back-load of beech.
 
 157 
 
 He ll tell you how for years we lived 
 
 Without a constitution, 
 And put the laws we made, in force 
 
 With perfect execution ; 
 When the Prophets and Committees were 
 
 Our only Legislators, 
 And Seth and Ethan, of the law, 
 
 The sole administrators. 
 
 IV. 
 
 There s much, he says, about Vermont 
 
 For history and song ; 
 Much to be written yet, and much 
 
 That has been written wrong. 
 The Old Thirteen, united, fought 
 
 The Revolution through ; 
 While, single-handed, old Vermont 
 
 Fought them, and England, too. 
 
 She d Massachusetts and New York, 
 
 And so the record stands 
 New Hampshire, England, Guilford, and 
 
 The Union on her hands ; 
 Yet still her Single Star above 
 
 Her hills triumphant shone. 
 And when the smoke of battle passed 
 
 She d whipt them all, alone ! 
 
 Talk, says my uncle, growing warm, 
 
 About the South and West ! 
 Far s I know, they are well enough, 
 
 Their lands may bo the best ;
 
 158 
 
 But when you come talk of men. 
 
 You may depend upon t, 
 No State can boast of such a race 
 
 Of people, as Vermont. 
 
 They, independent as the winds 
 
 That fanned them where they stood ; 
 They were the men who took old Ti , 
 
 Because they thought they would ! 
 They were the men, who, through Cham plain, 
 
 Swept on to Montreal ; 
 The first to strike, the last to yield, 
 
 At Freedom s battle-call. 
 
 Insulted by neglect, when they 
 
 For simple justice called, 
 With contumely turned away. 
 
 By rank oppression galled, 
 The}* were the men to stand alone, 
 
 Alone their rights maintain, 
 Alone their battles fight and win. 
 
 Alone their freedom gain. 
 
 And when the record shall be made, 
 
 And their position shown, 
 Their struggles clearly understood, 
 
 Their conquests fair!} 7 known, 
 No men of any clime or age 
 
 In history will outshine 
 The heroes of the Single Star. 
 
 The Doe s-hend and the Pine.
 
 159 
 
 The Aliens, Thomas Chitteuclen, 
 
 And Bradley (Stephen Hoe), 
 Paul Spooner, Baker, Haswell, Hunt, 
 
 And many more, you know ; 
 Seth Warner, Fassett, Tichenor, 
 
 The Robinsons and Fays, 
 Are men. my uncle thinks, to grace 
 
 A nation s proudest days. 
 
 v. 
 But I can never tell yon half 
 
 You d better call and see 
 My uncle with his solemn cue, 
 
 And buckles on his knee ; 
 He ll entertain you many an hour 
 
 With things twere vain to write. 
 And keep you listening to his talk, 
 
 And laughing, half the night. 
 
 You ll find a welcome in the st}"le 
 
 Our fathers ate and drank ; 
 A welcome free and full to all, 
 
 With little care for rank ; 
 The style that by the table showed 
 
 A bountiful provider, 
 When the parson blessed the food prepared, - 
 
 And took his mug of cider. 
 
 VI. 
 
 But uncle Jerry s getting old, 
 And leans upon his cane ;
 
 160 
 
 He tries to walk erect, but tben, 
 
 It gives 1113- uncle pain ; 
 My cousin Ellen ties his cue, 
 
 And reads the latest papers. 
 And sings his favorite songs when he 
 
 Seems troubled with the vapors. 
 
 Poor fellow, he will soon be done ! 
 
 He never liked a bank, 
 The chains of death are riveting, 
 
 Tis sad to hear them clank : 
 I m sorry I shall miss his " hem ! " 
 
 And his accustomed " Jeny ! 
 I say, my boy, } r ou ll go it yet ; 
 
 You re like your uncle, very ! "
 
 OLD MARGARET. 
 
 i. 
 
 THERE is a poor old woman 
 Lives down below the mill, 
 
 Just where the turnpike-road begins 
 Up struggle up the hill. 
 
 Below the mill this woman lives, 
 
 Below the mill, alone ; 
 A very strange old woman. 
 
 The strangest ever known. 
 
 Some fifty years ago her hut 
 Of logs was built, they say ; 
 
 And since they made the river road 
 Tis almost in the way. 
 
 So when you rattle down the hill, 
 
 If you re in reckless mood, 
 Be careful, or 3-0111- wheel will hit 
 
 Her scanty pile of wood ; 
 
 A little heap of mouldy bark, 
 And strips of boards and sticks, 
 
 That from the river s neighb ring brink 
 In heavy rains she picks.
 
 162 
 
 A little brook that, cross the road. 
 Creeps through the gray stone- wall, 
 
 And to the river, just below, 
 Glides with an easy fall, 
 
 With purest water through the year, 
 
 And never known to fail, 
 Fills from a rude and mossy spout 
 
 Old Margaret s water-pail. 
 
 And those, and they are very few. 
 
 Her fancy deigns to heed, 
 Supply her small necessities 
 
 With all she seems to need. 
 
 And so this poor old woman 
 
 Lives down below the mill, 
 Just where the turnpike road begins 
 
 To struggle up the hill. 
 
 This very poor old woman 
 Below the mill, alone, 
 
 This very strange old woman, 
 The strangest ever known. 
 
 Sometimes, for hours, beside the brook, 
 
 In summer she will stand, 
 Her gray locks straggling round her neck. 
 
 A willow in her hand,
 
 And scold and blame the little stream 
 
 That ripples in the sun, 
 Because so very swift to her 
 
 Its current seems to run. 
 
 And then, a moment gazing down 
 
 Its soft and quiet flow, 
 She stoops, with sharp and angry words 
 
 And quick and fretful blow ; 
 
 And strikes her stick across its face, 
 
 Intent with flashing e}-es, 
 And stamping fiercely, %i Faster, now ! " 
 
 And ; Faster still ! " she cries. 
 
 Within her hut, so poor and old, 
 
 So desolate and mean, 
 Besides herself, no living thing, 
 
 "Pis said, is ever seen ; 
 
 Except, that in a marble vase, 
 
 Carved by the subtlest art 
 To represent a maiden s hand 
 
 Clasped round a broken heart, 
 
 A strange and nameless plant, at times, 
 
 Is seen upon the floor, 
 Its curious colors shaded and 
 
 Half hidden by the door ;
 
 1G4 
 
 And this she seems to watch and nurse 
 
 With never-ending care, 
 And, when it blossoms, from her vase 
 
 Finds little time to spare. 
 
 Whence came the plant, or what its name, 
 
 Twere idle if we sought, 
 Or whence her marble vase, by such 
 
 Exquisite labor wrought. 
 
 Some think it is no earthly thing, 
 
 For never }-et, they say, 
 Of earthly birth was seen a flower 
 
 With leaves so fair and gay ; 
 
 And never flower was known to grow 
 
 By natural agencies, 
 Within whose heart twere possible 
 
 Such wondrous odor lies. 
 
 And those who ve seen, by rarest chance, 
 
 The vase upon the floor, 
 When warm and bright the sun, at noon. 
 
 Streamed through the open door. 
 
 Declare the slender fingers clasp 
 
 The white and graven heart 
 So human-like, they cannot be 
 
 The work of mortal art.
 
 165 
 
 But whence the flower, or what its name, 
 
 The foolish ones who seek, 
 For answer have the angry flush 
 
 Upon old Margaret s cheek. 
 
 Tis certain that the plant must link 
 Her warped and wandering brain, 
 
 To something that is past and gone. 
 By a mysterious chain : 
 
 And it is well, if e en in that 
 
 She find a fancied bliss ; 
 For little of the world there seems 
 
 To her, poor soul ! but this. 
 
 She gathers, through the winter months, 
 
 The snow-flakes as they fall, 
 And melts them with her breath, to cheer 
 
 Her plant against the wall ; 
 
 And, in the summer, robs the grass 
 
 Before the sun is hot, 
 Of sweet and coolest drops of dew 
 
 To feed her marble pot. 
 
 While every month, nursed by her care, 
 The snow-flakes and the dews, 
 
 Her plant, within the broken heart, 
 A single flower renews.
 
 And when her llower appears, a change 
 
 Conies ovei her : she seems 
 Like one who suddenly awakes 
 
 From wild and troubled dreams. 
 
 The lines about her mouth are gone, 
 
 And on her pallid face, 
 All hushed and calm, you something of 
 
 Its former beauty trace. 
 
 The fierceness leaves her eye ; her brain 
 
 Grows clearer, and a smile, 
 That brightens all her haggard face, 
 
 Her shrunken cheeks beguile. 
 
 She wraps about her slender form 
 
 A robe of snowy white, 
 And decks herself with ornaments, 
 
 And colors pure and bright. 
 
 She binds a wreath about her brow, 
 Her gray and straggling hair 
 
 Is neatly braided, and her dress 
 Arranged with bridal care. 
 
 As by her marble vase she sits, 
 Her heart subdued and mild, 
 
 She smiles and hums old, simple tunes. 
 And calls the flower her child.
 
 167 
 
 And while its fragrance feeds her hear, 
 
 She never leaves her hut, 
 Her brook creeps on its way alone. 
 
 Her door is alwa}*s shut. 
 
 And nothing then is seen from which 
 
 A passer-by would know 
 That human soul lived there, except 
 
 Her pathway through the snow, 
 
 In winter, to her little brook ; 
 
 And, in the summer day, 
 That to her door a restless foot 
 
 Had worn the grass away. 
 
 So still that you can almost hear 
 The Snow-flake s fluttering wing. 
 
 Or, in her cell, the yellow wasp 
 Upon the rafter sing. 
 
 One day her flower lives ; and when 
 
 Its life, at night, is done, 
 She sobs and weeps ; and as the leaves 
 
 Fall slowly one by one. 
 
 She buries them beside the root. 
 Last leaf with the last tear ! 
 
 And waits with patience till again 
 Her lost child reappear.
 
 168 
 
 And so her wondrous plant lives on, 
 And fades, and blooms again, 
 
 The only thing that can control 
 Her dark and wandering brain. 
 
 Alas ! it is a mournful thing 
 
 A darkened intellect ! 
 A brain so warped and shattered that 
 
 It only can reflect 
 
 Disjointed fragments of the light ; 
 
 Whose household gods are things 
 Of fitful fancies, vain designs, 
 
 And false imaginings ; 
 
 To which, all purpose, object, thought, 
 
 The images it sees, 
 Are the disordered impulses. 
 
 The forgeries, of Disease. 
 
 A fearful thing to see the Mind, 
 
 In its full strength, beset 
 With swarming shadows, dismal shapes. 
 
 And a base counterfeit 
 
 Of Reason all o ermastering 
 
 Its mighty energies ; 
 While, stricken by its unseen foes, 
 
 The blinded giant lies.
 
 109 
 
 There s no one in the village knows 
 Whence the old woman came : 
 
 She never told her history, 
 Her lineage, or her name. 
 
 They called her Margaret ; but why, 
 If any knew, they ve passed ; 
 
 And so, from this, she came to be 
 Old Margaret, at last. 
 
 Some twenty years, last spring, they say, 
 
 She came into the place, 
 And through the summer season lived 
 
 By Charity s sweet grace ; 
 
 But when the winds grew sharp and chill, 
 
 The elm leaves sere and old, 
 And Charity s lean hand became 
 
 Few-cented, shy, and cold, 
 
 She found the hut below the mill, 
 
 Half fallen from the roof, 
 Beyond the village and the noise, 
 
 And from the crowd aloof, 
 
 And patched it up with moss and slabs, 
 To keep the rain away ;
 
 170 
 
 And there, alone, as I have sung, 
 Has lived unto this day, 
 
 TJiis poor and strange old woman, 
 In the hut below the mill, 
 
 Just where the turnpike-road begins 
 To struggle up the hill.
 
 171 
 
 THE FIRST SETTLER. 
 
 i. 
 
 His hair is white as the winter snow, 
 His years are man\ T , as you may know, 
 
 Some eight}--two or three ; 
 Yet a hale old man, still strong and stout, 
 And able when tis fair, to go out 
 
 His friends in the street to see ; 
 And all who see his face still pray 
 That for many a long and quiet da}" 
 
 He ma}* live, by the Lord s 
 
 n. 
 
 He came to the State when the town was new, 
 When the lordl} 7 pine and the hemlock grew 
 
 In the place where the court-house stands ; 
 When the stunted ash and the alder black, 
 The slender fir and the tamarack, 
 
 Stood thick on the meadow lands ; 
 And the brook, that now so feebly flows, 
 Covered the soil where the farmer hoes 
 
 The corn with his hardy hands. 
 
 He built in the town the first log hut ; 
 And he is the man, they say, who cut 
 The first old forest oak ;
 
 172 
 
 His axe was the first, with its echoes rude, 
 To startle the ear of the solitude, 
 
 With its steady and rapid stroke. 
 From his high log-heap through the trees arose. 
 First, on the hills, mid the winter snows, 
 
 The fire and the curling smoke. 
 
 On the land he cleared the first hard year. 
 When he trapped the beaver and shot the deer, 
 
 Swings the sign of the great hotel ; 
 By the path where he drove his ox to drink 
 The nn 11-dam roars and the hammers clink. 
 
 And the factor}* rings its bell. 
 And where the main street comes up from the 
 
 south, 
 
 Was the road he "blazed" from the river s 
 mouth, 
 
 As the books of the town will tell. 
 
 In the village, here, where the trees are seen, 
 Circling round the beautiful Green, 
 
 He planted his hills of corn ; 
 And there, where } ou see that long brick row, 
 Swelling with silk and calico, 
 
 Stood the hut he built one morn : 
 Old Central Street was his pasture lane. 
 And down by the church he will put his cane 
 
 On the spot where his boys were born.
 
 173 
 
 VI. 
 
 For insiny an hour I have heard him tell 
 Of the time, he says, he remembers well, 
 
 When high on the rock he stood, 
 And nothing met his wandering aye 
 Above, but the clouds and the broad blue sky, 
 
 And below, the waving wood ; 
 And how, at night, the wolf would howl 
 Round his huge log-fire, and the panther growl, 
 
 And the black fox bark by the road. 
 
 He looks with pride on the village grown 
 So large on the land that he used to own ; 
 
 And still as he sees the wall 
 Of huge blocks built, in less than the time 
 It took, when he was fresh in his prime, 
 
 To gather his crops in the fall ; 
 He thinks, with the work that, somehow, he 
 Is identified, and must oversee 
 
 And superintend it all. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 His hair is white as the winter snow, 
 
 And his }"ears are many as you may know, 
 
 Some eighty-two or three ; 
 Yet all who see his face will pray, 
 For many a long and quiet day 
 
 By the Lord s good grace, that he 
 Ma} be left in the land, still hale and stout, 
 And able still when tis fair, to go out 
 
 His friends in the street to see.
 
 174 
 
 SCENE IN A VERMONT WINTER. 
 
 i. 
 Tis a fearful night in the winter-time. 
 
 As cold as it ever can be ! 
 The roar of the wind is heard like the chime 
 
 Of the waves of an angry sea. 
 The moon is full but the wings, to-night, 
 Of the furious Blast dash out her light ; 
 And over the sky from south to north, 
 Not a star is seen, as the storm comes forth 
 
 In the strength of a mighty glee. 
 
 II. 
 
 All day had the snow come down, all day, 
 
 As it never came down before, 
 Till over the ground, at sunset, lay 
 
 Some two or three feet or more ; 
 The fence was lost, and the wall of stone, 
 The windows blocked, and the well-curb gone. 
 The haystack rose to a mountain-lift, 
 And the woodpile looked like a monster drift 
 
 As it lay by the farmer s door. 
 
 As the night set in, came wind and hail, 
 While the air grew sharp and chill, 
 
 And the warning roar of a fearful gale 
 Was heard on the distant hill ; 
 
 And the Norther ! see ! on the mountain peak.
 
 175 
 
 In his breath, how the old trees writhe and 
 
 shriek ! 
 
 He shouts on the plain, "Ho, ho ! " 
 He drives from his nostrils the blinding snow, 
 And growls with a savage will. 
 
 Such a night as this to be found abroad 
 
 In the hail and the freezing air, 
 Lies a shivering dog, in the field, by the road, 
 
 With the snow on his shaggy hair : 
 As the wind drives see him crouch and growl, 
 And shut his eyes with a dismal howl ; 
 Then, to shield himself from the cutting sleet, 
 His nose is pressed on his quivering feet: 
 
 Pray what does the dog do there ? 
 
 An old man came from the town to-night ; 
 
 But he lost the travelled way, 
 And for hours he trod with main and might 
 
 A path for his horse and sleigh ; 
 But deeper still the snow-drifts grew, 
 And colder still the fierce wind blew, 
 And his mare, a beautiful Morgan, brown. 
 At last o er a log had floundered down. 
 
 That deep in a hollow lay. 
 
 x 
 
 Many a plunge, with a frenzied snort, 
 
 She made in the heavy snow, 
 And her master urged, till his breath grew short, 
 
 With a word and a gentle blow ;
 
 170 
 
 But the snow was deep and the tugs were tight. 
 His hands were numb and had lost their might ; 
 So he struggled back again to his sleigh, 
 And strove to shelter himself, till day, 
 With his coat and the buffalo. 
 
 IV. 
 
 He has given the last faint jerk of the rein 
 
 To rouse his dying steed ; 
 And the poor dog howls to the blast in vain. 
 
 For help in his master s need. 
 For awhile he strives with a wistful cry 
 To catch the glance of his drowsy eye ; 
 And wags his tail when the rude winds flap 
 The skirt of his coat across his lap. 
 
 And whines that he takes no heed. 
 
 v. 
 The wind goes down ; the storm is o er ; 
 
 Tis the hour of midnight past ; 
 The forest writhes and bends no more 
 
 In the rush of the sweeping blast. 
 The moon looks out with a silver light 
 On the high old hills, with the snow all white ; 
 And the giant shadow of Camel s Hump, 
 Of the ledge and tree and the ghostly stump, 
 
 On the silent plain are cast. 
 
 But cold and dead, by the hidden log, 
 Are they who came from the town ; 
 
 The man in his sleigh, the faithful dog, 
 And the beautiful Morgan, brown !
 
 17 
 
 He sits in his sleigh ; with steady grasp 
 
 He holds the reins in his icy clasp ; 
 
 The dog with his nose on his master s feet, 
 
 And the mare half seen through the crusted 
 
 sleet, 
 Where she lay when she floundered down.
 
 178 
 
 SAN JACINTO. 
 
 VENGEANCE calls you, quick ! be ready ! 
 
 Blood and fortune for the strife ! 
 Gather fast ! be firm and stead} ! 
 
 Up. for freedom ! up for life ! 
 Ho ! be quick ! with bayonet gleaming 
 
 Cover every hill and field ; 
 See, the tyrant s banner streaming ! 
 
 Are ye cowards? Will ye yield? 
 
 Will ye ? with your brethren gasping 
 
 In the despot s tightening clutch ? 
 Will ye ? with your old men grasping 
 
 Broken staff and harmless crutch ? 
 Will ye ? stop a moment ! number 
 
 Those who died where Fanning stood ! 
 The heroes that by Goliad slumber, 
 
 Murdered, weltering in their blood ! 
 
 Will ye ? hark ! the widow dashes 
 
 From her eye the blinding tear, 
 And wildly by her children s ashes 
 
 Shrieks for vengeance ; do ye hear? 
 Will ye do it? will ye falter, 
 
 With the struggle so begun? 
 Do it, then, and there s the halter ! 
 
 Do it ! and vour chains are on.
 
 179 
 
 Who will let a tyrant juggle 
 
 Freemen of their birthright? who? 
 Who wears chains without a struggle? 
 
 Is it you ? or you ? or you ? 
 Who forgets the men who perish 
 
 In the dungeons of the foe? 
 By all the hopes that patriots cherish, 
 
 Up ! revenge them ! rally ! ho ! 
 
 Rouse ! hurrah ! be quick ! be read} ! 
 
 Every patriot in his place. 
 Grasp 3 our chains ! be firm ! be steady ! 
 
 Dash them in the tyrant s face ! 
 Onward ! charge from hill and valley ; 
 
 On with musket, sword, and pike ! 
 Be your watchward as you rally, 
 
 " Alamo for vengeance ! strike ! "
 
 180 
 
 PULASKI. 
 
 [Count Pulaski fell at the siege of Savannah, in the war of 
 the Revolution. 
 
 The attack was made on the city, occupied by the English, 
 by the combined forces of the French and Americans, just be 
 fore daybreak, on the morning of the ninth of October, 1779. 
 Proving unsuccessful, Pulaski, at the head of a company of 
 light horse, attempted to retrieve the fortunes of the day by 
 penetrating a breach into the town. He fell, mortally wounded. 
 His troops, after rescuing his body, retreated, and the siege 
 was abandoned.] 
 
 THE battle raged ; but they who strove 
 
 With tyranny and wrong, 
 Were struggling vainly in the fight, 
 
 A sad and broken throng. 
 
 n. 
 They battled still, though fainter grew 
 
 The fierce and desperate charge they made ; 
 They battled, though the strongest fought 
 
 With wearied arm and broken blade. 
 And weltering on the field in heaps, 
 
 Beside their weapons, lay 
 The lion-hearted troops that led 
 
 The fierce and bloody fray ; 
 Yet still they fought, though vainly still, 
 
 Before the leaguered town, 
 And with the first faint light of morn 
 
 The starry flag \vent down.
 
 181 
 
 " Be ready, now ! " cried the gallant Pole, 
 As he sprang to his eager steed ; 
 
 " Be ready, now, in the tyrant s teeth 
 One blow for } r our country s need ! " 
 
 There s a rush like the wind, and a crash of steel, 
 As Pulaski s fiery squadrons wheel, 
 Ho for the breach ! " 
 
 And on they sweep ! 
 
 With the flashing shot and the rushing leap ; 
 And everywhere in the thickest storm, 
 Towers aloft their leader s form ; 
 
 And his breast, like a living targe, 
 Seems to ward the stroke from his struggling 
 
 band, 
 
 As, waving aloft his gleaming brand, 
 He dashes onward, loud and clear 
 O er the rallying shout, and the leaguers cheer, 
 Like a thunder-peal in a summer sky, 
 Rings his terrible battle-cry, 
 
 " Pulaski I onward ! charge ! " 
 
 Hurrah ! the flag of the free once more 
 
 Its place in the red van holds ! 
 With the print of the charger s steel-shod hoof, 
 
 And the blood of the foe on its folds. 
 Pulaski ! on ! "
 
 182 
 
 That cry is heard 
 Wherever a shout or a fiery word 
 
 Can stead} the heart, or nerve the blow : 
 Pulaski! on!" 
 
 And on they go ! 
 
 Thundering down in their leader s track, 
 Hurling the ranks of the British back ; 
 And their, snorting chargers, dashing through 
 The broken ranks, as though they knew 
 That the crushing blow of the riders might 
 Was nerved for its deadliest work in the fight, 
 
 With their proud necks arched to the rein, 
 Rear and plunge with the deadly aim, 
 As they leap to the breach through the smoke and 
 flame, 
 
 And dash o er the heaps of the slain. 
 
 The foe go down by the broadsword s reach, 
 By the whizzing ball and the pistol s breech ; 
 One sweep, -and the blade in the brain is crashed ; 
 One blow, arid the corpse in the ditch is dashed ; 
 One thrust, and the hireling s breast is pinned : 
 "Pulaski!" 
 
 Ho ! how the} quail ! 
 And at every shout the ranks are thinned 
 
 Like corn b} the summer hail. 
 Down with them ! "
 
 183 
 
 Fiercer they mix 
 
 The cut and the shivering stroke ; 
 And the falling blade leaves a track behind 
 
 Like a line of fire in the smoke ; 
 They crowd to the breach, and hand to hand 
 
 They level the deadly thrust, 
 They cheer, they defy, their faces black 
 
 AVith smoke, and with blood and dust. 
 
 " Down with the Rebels ! back in their teeth 
 
 Like hail let the death-shots go ! " 
 Charge on the Red-coats ! trample them 
 down ! 
 
 Down with them ! so ! and so ! 
 Pulaski-i-i ! on ! Pulaski-i-i ! on 
 
 There, now, at the Briton s breast ! 
 Down with them ! down ! over them there ! 
 
 Our chargers heels do the rest ! 
 Pulas Pulas " he is down ! he is down ! 
 
 Down in the midst of the swarming foe ; 
 His dread war-cry half breathed on his lips, 
 
 And his arm on high for a fearful blow. 
 
 VI. 
 
 One charge they make, and bear awa}" 
 Their fallen leader from the fray. 
 One charge for him, whose plume was tossed 
 Above the battle fought and lost.
 
 184 
 
 VII. 
 
 The fight is done, and the morning sun, 
 
 As it gleams through the battle-smoke, 
 Reveals the retreat of Freedom s host, 
 
 With their banners rent and their weapons 
 
 broke. 
 Slowly they wheel with weary tread 
 
 From the long and fruitless fray ; 
 In silence gathering their spirits up 
 
 For sterner toil on another day. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 And he who fell, with his faithful blade 
 
 In the wars of Freedom red ; 
 Whose life in her cause was quenched far awa} r 
 
 From the soil where his fathers bled, 
 Now sleeps in the land he died to save, 
 
 In the home of the exiled brave ; 
 Sleeps, with a world to tell his fame, 
 
 With a nation s heart for his grave.
 
 18,-) 
 
 THE OLD PINE-TREK. 
 
 BY my lather s house, this side of the hill, 
 As you followed the road to the cider-mill, 
 
 Was the " swamp," as we called it then, 
 A low, wet spot, where the cat-bird mewed, 
 The tadpole bred, and the bullfrog spughed, 
 
 And the muskrat built his den ; 
 And stealing out from his hiding hole, 
 Through the rotten grass, came the meadow-mole 
 
 To peep at the works of men. 
 
 In the swamp, on a knoll, in the summer dry. 
 But half-covered up when the springs were high, 
 
 A magnificent Pine had grown : 
 Last of a race that the State shall see, 
 Last of his race ! that glorious tree, 
 
 Supreme on his forest throne, 
 Like a man of strong and wondrous rhyme, 
 Towering above the rest of his time, 
 
 Stood up in the land alone ! 
 
 The swamp b} the road to the cider-mill, 
 And the old Pine-Tree, I remember still, 
 And well, you will think, I may ; 
 For there were the bovs of the village seen
 
 186 
 
 When the ice was strong, or the leaves were 
 green, 
 
 From morn till the night at play, 
 Skating stones, or rolling the snow 
 Into cities and forts and castles, you know, 
 
 Or chasing the frogs away. 
 
 In winter time, when the snow was deep, 
 Through the drifts by the old slash-fence they d 
 leap, 
 
 And tumble each other in ; 
 Then all hands hold, they would " snap the 
 
 snake ! " 
 How the old " Red Lion " his mane would shake, 
 
 When his prey he chanced to win ! 
 And then, with the old Pine-Tree for a " gool" 
 They d play " I-spy " till twas time for the school 
 
 In the afternoon to begin. 
 
 In the spring when the winter had gone to the 
 
 North, 
 And the weeds on the knoll came peeping forth, 
 
 And the little wild flowers between, 
 When the buds swelled out in the April sky, 
 And the farmer saw that his winter rye 
 
 Came up on the hill-side, green, 
 From the three-months school and the ferule free, 
 With shout and laugh, at the old Pine-Tree 
 
 Again were the boys all seen.
 
 187 
 
 And there on the grass for hours they d lie. 
 Making ships and things of clouds in the sky ; 
 
 While clear in the fragrant spring, 
 The bobolink, on the mullein stalk, 
 Would rattle away like a sweet girl s talk, 
 
 And the ga} yellow birds would sing 
 And chirp to each other with merry call, 
 As, poised on the top of the milk-weed tall, 
 
 In the wind the} reel and swing. 
 
 When summer came, and the weeds were thick, 
 And their blood grew warlike, warm, and quick, 
 
 The train-band company, 
 
 With a brake for a plume and a shingle sword, 
 The gloomy wilds of the swamp explored, 
 
 Their trowsers rolled to the knee ; 
 With broken bricks, and hands full of stones, 
 At their deadly fire how the cat-tail groans, 
 
 And the hosts of the thistle flee ! 
 
 Fore George ! what a siege we had one time 
 With a brave old frog who lived in the slirne 
 
 Of a lordly pool at the south ! 
 How he d dodge out of sight, till our hail had sped, 
 Then poke up again his great, green head, 
 
 And wink in the cannon s mouth ! 
 The bricks round his head went thud ! thud ! 
 
 thud ! 
 Till the captain lisped, all covered with bl-mud, 
 
 " We can never tear down hith houth."
 
 There many an hour Thanksgiving Day, 
 When the ice was glare, the girls would stay 
 
 And share in our glorious fun ; 
 While the shouting boys, with cap in hand, 
 Would chase them off from the ice to the land, 
 
 Till the Governor s meeting was done ; 
 Till grace was said, the turkey carved, 
 The mince-pie cooled and the pudding sarved, 
 
 And the gravy too cold to run. 
 
 The}* are gone, ah, me ! those merry boys, 
 All gone from the scene of their earl} joys ; 
 
 Alas, that it should be so ! 
 Some have gone to the West to shake with the 
 
 ague, 
 And some to the South to die with that plague- 
 
 Y Jack, " Yellow Jack," you know ; 
 One s made a great spec in Missouri lead ; 
 And one, the}* say, got a broken head 
 
 At the fall of Alamo ; 
 
 And one has gone where the soft winds blow 
 O er the vine-clad hills of Val d Arno, 
 
 With his wife, and children two, 
 And his cheek s regained the glow it lost 
 In our Northern land of snow and frost ; 
 
 One s in Kalamazoo ; 
 
 And one through the drifts of the Northwest snow 
 Tracks the prairie wolf and the buffalo, 
 
 With a tribe of wild Sioux.
 
 189 
 
 The swamp is ditched : where the leaves used to 
 
 float 
 A Frenchman has raised some " vary fine oat," 
 
 The frogs have all hopped off ; 
 And the little green knoll, where the boys used to 
 
 play 
 Through the spring and the fall and the winter 
 
 day, 
 
 And the cares of manhood scoff, 
 Is gouged by a premium Berkshire brood, 
 And the old Pine-Tree by the great high-road 
 Is used for a watering trough.
 
 190 
 
 SONG OF THE VERMONTERS BEFORE 
 THE BATTLE OF PLA.TTSBURGH. 
 
 HE who has still left of his two hands but one, 
 
 With that let him grapple a sword ; 
 And he who has two, let him handle a gun ; 
 
 And forward, boys ! forward ! the word. 
 The murmuring sound of the fierce battle-tide 
 
 Already resounds from afar ; 
 Forward, boys ! forward, on every side, 
 
 For Vermont and her glittering star ! 
 
 Who lingers behind when the word has passed 
 down 
 
 That the enemy swarm o er the line ? 
 When he knows in the heart of a North border- 
 town 
 
 Their glittering bayonets shine ? 
 Push on to the North ! the fierce battle-tide 
 
 Already resounds from afar ; 
 Push on to the North, from every side, 
 
 For Vermont and her glittering star ! 
 
 Forward ! the State that was first in the fight 
 When Allen and Warner were here, 
 
 Should not be the last now to strike for the right. 
 Should never be found in the rear !
 
 11)1 
 
 Then, on to the North ! the fierce battle-tide 
 
 Already resounds from afar ; 
 Push on to the North, from every side, 
 
 For Vermont and her glittering star ! 
 
 Hark ! booms from the lake, and resounds from 
 the land, 
 
 The roar of the conflict. Push on ! 
 Push on to the North ! on every hand 
 
 Our boys to the rescue have gone ; 
 Forward ! the State that was first in the fight 
 
 When Allen and Warner were here, 
 Should not be the last now to strike for the right, 
 
 Should never be found in the rear.
 
 B A R N E T . 
 
 [" So," muttered the dark. and musing prince, unconscious 
 of the throng, "so perishes the Race of Iron! Low lies the 
 last baron that could control and command the people. The 
 Age of Force expires with Knighthood and deeds of arms. 
 And over this dead great man I see the New Cycle dawn. 
 Happy, henceforth, he who can plot and scheme, and fawn 
 and smile ! " Last of the Barons.] 
 
 AND so the Race of Iron passed ! 
 
 So Barnet s bloody field 
 Saw, cold and still, its lion-heart 
 
 Lie crushed with Warwick s shield. 
 And when the victor s trumpet rang 
 
 Above his fallen head, 
 The Age of Knightly Deeds had passed, - 
 
 And Baron-power was dead ! 
 
 Lord of a hundred baronies ! 
 
 Chief of a mighty race ! 
 His lightest word the people s law, 
 
 The throne his knotted mace ; 
 Girt by his more than royal host, 
 
 He heard his war-trump ring, 
 And towered among his barons bold, 
 
 Too proud to be a king ! 
 
 But time was working wond rous change, 
 And, from his native realm
 
 193 
 
 Were passing fast the baron s rule, 
 
 The hauberk and the helm. 
 The land was dealt to nobles new ; 
 
 And men of foreign birth 
 And London loons were swarming round 
 
 The broad old Norman hearth. 
 
 His age had perished ; and the race 
 
 That gave the age renown 
 Fell with it, and the Castle bowed 
 
 In silence to the Town : 
 Low lay its great and mighty chief, 
 
 Its last and noblest man ; 
 And, dawning o er his broken brand, 
 
 The Age of Trade began. 
 
 The age when Barter sneered at Birth, 
 
 And parchment pedigrees 
 Outweighed the names the Normans bore 
 
 Across the storm} seas ; 
 When shone no more the honest brow 
 
 Beneath the burgonot, 
 And men began to fawn and smile, 
 
 And cheat, and lie, and plot ; 
 
 When knaves trod on the knightly heel, 
 
 And avarice, like a rust, 
 Eat out the brave old chivalry, 
 
 And swords grew thick with dust ; 
 When churls and serfs grew fat with gain, 
 
 And villains bought the land,
 
 194 
 
 And scorned the iron men of yore, 
 The battle-axe and brand. 
 
 The pen usurped the sword ; the loom. 
 
 The mace ; the plough, the spear ; 
 And Agriculture cut the grain 
 
 Where rang the battle cheer ; 
 And men began to feel the rule 
 
 Of Trade, more potent grown 
 Than baron grim, or iron earl, 
 
 Or monarch on his throne. 
 
 "i was best, perhaps : yet from the age 
 
 When trick and traffic came, 
 When knights turned knaves, and ladies fair 
 
 Grew false to woman s fame ; 
 The age in mincing merchant kings, 
 
 And London Tailors, great 
 When craft and cunning, fawn and fraud, 
 
 Began to rule the State, 
 
 We turn, great Baron ! to the men 
 
 Who crowned thy regal times ! 
 Admire their rude, gigantic strength, 
 
 And half forget their crimes ! 
 The Castle nursed a mighty race, 
 
 A race of nature s mould 
 And Worth meant something more than 
 Wealth, 
 
 And Grandeur more than Gold.
 
 195 
 
 Those monarch earls and lion lords, 
 
 And barons stout and brave, 
 Despised the crawling sycophant, 
 
 The sleek and cringing knave ! 
 Their grim, baronial banners told 
 
 Of battles they had fought, 
 Of glory passed from sire to son, 
 
 And not of titles bought ! 
 
 But trade and traffic, stock and steam, 
 
 The platter and the plough, 
 The mallet and the milliner, 
 
 Are Lord and Lady now ! 
 The Castle crowns the mousing mart, 
 
 The Palace sails the deep, 
 Ambition mounts to bantam hens, 
 
 And chivalry to sheep. 
 
 The Earl discusses early blues, 
 
 The Baron runs to seed ! 
 And Fame combines a purgative, 
 
 And Skill invents a mead ! 
 Nobility is stock and starch, 
 
 And Greatness fat sirloin, 
 And Worth and Quality are found 
 
 In calico and coin.
 
 196 
 
 THE OLD AND NEW. 
 
 O GENTLE Muse ! while still the tale is told 
 That crowns the dead and glorifies TUB OLD, 
 And books abound in ever}* town and tongue, 
 Like ancient Herod, death upon the young, 
 Be ours the song whose sacrilegious rlmnc 
 To newer impulse beats the rapid time : 
 Let bilious bards, in paralytic verse, 
 To all the street their dolorous strains rehearse, 
 Like wandering showmen serve the shivering 
 
 crowds 
 
 With nameless mummeries and ghostly shrouds ; 
 We strike the note and sound the bolder la}- 
 That hails THE NEW, and sings the live TO-DAY. 
 
 The careful pilot holds with steady force 
 The bounding vessel to her onward course, 
 Marks where afar the beacon s warnirg light 
 Streams o er the waters from the distant height, 
 And learns from maps and ancient charts to 
 
 know 
 
 When shoals are near and rocks lie hid below : 
 But if, when rising storms his skill demand 
 To sheer the reef and shun the treacherous sand, 
 The boastful master of his watery realm 
 Forgets his vessel and neglects his helm,
 
 And gazing backward from his reeling deck 
 In stupid reverence on the burning speck, 
 And half-bewildered with his musty chart, 
 Hears not the storm, nor sees the lightning dart, 
 His drifting prow obeys the billow s force, 
 And howling tempests shape his aimless course. 
 Tis well at times, perhaps, to pause and turn 
 To mark the lights that down the distance burn ; 
 To note what impulse or what hope deceived, 
 Where error failed and where the truth achieved ; 
 For olden days to ring the sounding chimes, 
 And bow in homage for the ancient times ; 
 To praise the deeds and glorify the names 
 That history gathers and tradition claims : 
 But when tis claimed that everything is wrong 
 vSince Hector fought and Homer tuned his song ; 
 That honor, glory, virtue, manhood, pride, 
 With Pompey perished, with the Caesar died ; 
 That useless struggles in these modern da}*s 
 Seek greener laurels, yearn for brighter bays ; 
 That fair is fair because tis thick with mould ; 
 That good is only good because tis old, 
 The Muse shall lift the showy mantle, cast 
 In reverent folds above the boastful Past ; 
 Reveal the sorrow, bigotry, and wrong 
 That blot the record and disgrace the song ; 
 Point where, at last, in some poor corner hide 
 The hero s glory and the conqueror s pride ; 
 And show the gods which modern worship owns, 
 The pride of Sambo, half-a-dozen bones.
 
 198 
 
 THE OLD you worship, round whose broken 
 
 shrine 
 
 Your homage trembles and your offerings shine, 
 How scarred his heart by ever}^ sin and shame 
 By human language honored with a name ! 
 How thick his path with bleaching bones are 
 
 piled, 
 
 With skulls his steps, with blood his hands, de 
 filed ! 
 
 Round every ruin where the lizard glides, 
 Through ever}- cavern where the darkness hides, 
 The halter whitens and the gallows stands, 
 The torture howls, and gleam the smouldering 
 
 brands ! 
 
 There lie the ashes, heaped above the sod, 
 Where murdered martyrs passed through fire to 
 
 God; 
 
 In vain the bones, still crumbling, seek to hide 
 The block where saint and brave apostle died ; 
 The cruel cross, the shameful gibbet, tell 
 Where bled the Christs, and where the prophets 
 
 fell ; 
 And bones of Genius, which no power could 
 
 kill, 
 
 Rust in their fetters in his dungeons still. 
 There lies the Worshipped ! robbery and lust, 
 And blood by ages hardened into crust ! 
 There lies the Reverend ! every daring crime 
 That blots and blurs the history of time ! 
 This is the god to which you humbly bow, 
 And these the bavs that deck your idol s brow.
 
 199 
 
 Hail to THE NEW ! behold her as she stands 
 Where breaks the morn along the silent sands ! 
 The star that through the night the dawning led, 
 In radiant glory glitters o er her head ; 
 She lifts her brow, and, lo ! the mists of night 
 Creep through the valleys from its wondrous 
 
 light; 
 
 She waves her hand, the ghosts of many a year 
 That haunt the present fade and disappear ; 
 And Wrong and Error, long by men misnamed, 
 Shrink from her presence, naked and ashamed ; 
 While all the life her living breath renews, 
 From blushing day to evening s glittering dews, 
 The falling leaf, the flower that hails the morn, 
 The winds that wave the tassels of the corn, 
 The song of birds, the shoot of waterfalls, 
 The thousand wings that glance along the walls ; 
 And spring and hope, and all things rich and 
 
 rare 
 
 That love the earth or sweep the liquid air, 
 Like troops of children on the lawn at play, 
 Cling to her robe, and dance along the way. 
 THE OLD, exhausted, weak and worn at last, 
 No future hoping, living in the past, 
 Turns sadly back his dim and weary eye 
 Where love and hope in mournful records lie ; 
 By foiled endeavor, broken strength, oppressed, 
 For quiet yearns, and sighs to be at rest : 
 Or, idly musing over broken schemes, 
 Like one remembering half-forgotten dreams, 
 Worn with his grief, and trembling with his fears,
 
 200 
 
 Weeps o er the graves of all his fallen years : 
 So the pale mourner, lingering by the tombs 
 Till ghostly midnight o er the landscape glooms, 
 While through the clouds the moon s uncertain 
 
 light 
 Shows now the darkness, now the headstone 
 
 white, 
 
 Stands trembling as the mournful winds that pass 
 Lift the light leaf and stir the murm ring grass, 
 And, shuddering at the shapes his fancy weaves, 
 Shrinks from the shadows and the rustling leaves. 
 THE NEW, all life and vigor, laughs to scorn 
 The chattering ghosts of age and darkness born, 
 Her health} nerves disdain the idle fears, 
 The wandering shapes a sickly fancy rears ; 
 No ghostly stone, no pale sepulchral light, 
 Deludes her sense, or scares her fearless sight. 
 Far to the future, lo ! her daring eye 
 Sweeps the horizon, pierces to the sky ; 
 Her restless energy all this essays, 
 No struggle hinders and no force delays ; 
 Bold, confident, and daring, to her track, 
 Where Faith grows dizzy and where Hope looks 
 
 back ! 
 
 She robs the earth of treasures hid below, 
 In cunning coffers, centuries ago ; 
 Dares her bold course where fabled rivers roll, 
 And seas lie frozen round the Northern pole ; 
 \Vrings from the sea the wrecks by tempests 
 
 strown ; 
 Invades the sun upon his regal throne ;
 
 201 
 
 Hails to the coming years that, dark and dim, 
 
 Lie far and pale on the horizon s rim ; 
 
 And, sweeping on through realms of brooding 
 
 Night, 
 
 Drags hidden worlds and trembling stars to light. 
 THE OLD, in mind, religion, science, law, 
 Sees only what the reverend fathers saw ; 
 Still loves the forms, and still adores the pride, 
 By custom sanctioned and by usage tried ; 
 Still fearing only restless change to see, 
 Content if only what has been may be : 
 THE NEW denies the laws and forms that bind 
 To things that were, the muscle or the mind ; 
 Scorns mouldy compacts, sneers at musty rules, 
 Laughs at your edicts, and defies the schools ; 
 And bravely battling with all sodden creeds, 
 Your worshipped idols and your gilded deeds, 
 Against the bulwarks of established things 
 Her cannon thunders and her falchion rings ; 
 And, where the world in bigotry has nursed 
 A bloated custom or a law accursed, 
 Hurls her wild strength, and swings her fearful 
 
 might, 
 
 To crush the Wrong and vindicate the Right. 
 She builds your monuments, she carves your 
 
 stones, 
 
 She rears the marble o er the martj-r s bones ; 
 She piles the granite where the hero lies, 
 She lifts the column where the patriot dies, 
 She weaves the halo round the prophet s head, 
 She bids us weep where all the good have bled ;
 
 202 
 
 She keeps the ashes, garners all the tears, 
 Where Genius perished, and where wept the 
 
 seers ; 
 
 She lights the dungeon grim with hoary moss, 
 She gilds the block and consecrates the cross. 
 THE NEW redeems and purifies THE OLD ! 
 Observe the oak in autumn, and, behold ! 
 When frosts appear and through the withered 
 
 leaves 
 
 The long night darkens and November grieves, 
 The sap will leave its chilled and naked form 
 To all the scourges of the wintry storm, 
 The bitter tempest and the howling blast 
 Pluck from its frozen hands the ripened mast ; 
 Through mournful months they lie beneath the 
 
 snow, 
 
 While rains descend and freezing winters blow. 
 But Spring revives the cold and sluggish blood, 
 Redeems the leaf, and swells the shrunken bud : 
 And life, from sullen death renewing still, 
 Crowns with new oaks the valley and the hill. 
 From all the death that wastes the buried heart. 
 New flowers appear and fresher leaves will start ; 
 The fallen beauty and the dark decay, 
 O er which December mourns, the smile of May 
 Renews again, and, bursting from the tomb, 
 See fairer forms and brighter glories bloom. 
 Lo ! when the scourge on all the city falls, 
 And ghostly shadows throng deserted walls, 
 When all our skill the pestilence defies, 
 Dries up the blood and wastes the glazing eyes,
 
 203 
 
 Far from the forest where the healthful breeze, 
 In playful circles stirs the Northern peas. 
 THE NEW, rejoicing, speeds her hopeful wa} 1 , 
 With cooler nights and fresher, purer day. 
 When all the summer months grow hot and dry, 
 And burning suns flame down a brazen sky ; 
 When lakes lie shrunken in their narrow shores, 
 And brooks no longer murmur by the doors ; 
 When faints the river, and its sickly strength 
 Scarce round the pebble drags its shallow length ; 
 When noons are burning, and the nights refuse 
 The cooling zeph}-r and the balmy dews ; 
 When pools grow noisome, stagnant waters breed 
 The wasting scourge, and deadly fevers feed, 
 At midnight, lo ! the dark and troubled West 
 Glooms with the storm that rears its billowy crest, 
 And far along, the wide old forest through, 
 The morning hails the purifying NEW. 
 The gathered blasts she pours along the seas, 
 And hurls the winds against the groaning trees, 
 Cleaves through the land, and on the grateful 
 
 plain 
 
 Descends in floods of cool and healthful rain. 
 THE OLD, at times, grows insolent and strong, 
 Defies the world with every hated wrong ! 
 His hissing rods, with fierce and grim delight, 
 The naked necks of cowering nations smite ; 
 While loud and sad, the pale and weeping land 
 Groans with the scourge that smites her lifted 
 
 hand. 
 Hark to the shout that rings along the plains !
 
 204 
 
 Aroused at last, THE NEW has crushed her chains, 
 And, sweeping onward like the fearful roar 
 When summer whirlwinds up the valley pour, 
 Her knotted fists, her howling millions shake, 
 And fearful vengeance on oppression take. 
 In righteous judgment on the bloated Wrong, 
 With power grown insolent, with murder strong, 
 Stripped to the retribution as she bends, 
 The torture hisses and the scourge descends. 
 The fest ring ulcers, that had grown, at length, 
 A wasting drainage of the nation s strength, 
 Gangrened, offensive, that for years had passed 
 All peaceful remedy, her sword, at last, 
 Leaps to its poise, like light descends, and, lo ! 
 Cuts from the morbid system at a blow. 
 
 Tis passing strange, the Muse reluctant sings, 
 The love of some for old and rotten things. 
 Before his flock the reverend pastor stands, 
 The quiet sheep are feeding from his hands, 
 Dried herbs ! from which a thousand years of rust 
 Have cut the life, and left them crumbling dust ; 
 No living leaf, no spear of grass is seen, 
 T would hardly seem could ever have been green. 
 His audience sit in dull respectful seats, 
 While must} saws the orator repeats, 
 And closing off with golden glories fled, 
 With cj cles finished and with systems dead, 
 Bids all the world, in vapid strains, behold 
 How great the Past, how very wise THE OLD.
 
 205 
 
 Grim War once more has dashed his iron heel 
 Upon the nations ; thrones and kingdoms reel ; 
 From out the record with a lawless hand 
 He tears the names of empires, in the sand 
 Stamps out the lines of old dominions ; pours 
 His swart and howling legions like the roar 
 Of whirlwinds in the valley ; from the hill 
 Boom the loud thunders of his savage will ; 
 Forward ! and in the name of truth and God 
 He grapples with the old and blood-stained rod. 
 How firm his red hand grasps the glittering 
 
 sword ! 
 
 How fiercely on he cheers his savage horde ! 
 How follow on his carnage mute Despair ! 
 How loathsome Death, and Fire with streaming 
 
 hair ! 
 
 THE OLD has fallen ! and THE NEW, its law 
 Fulfilled ; and those who understood it saw 
 The millions, in their fearful anger, rise, 
 With huge bare arms, knit brows, and glaring 
 
 eyes, 
 
 Against oppression s rusted bars, and dash 
 Them down forever ; saw in the days that splash 
 The heaven with blood a whole accursed race 
 Of tyrants strangled at a grasp ; the embrace 
 Of Force and Ignorance torn apart, and blows 
 Dealt justly out against unrighteous foes. 
 THE NEW has passed a fierce and bloody day ; 
 And yet the fire, though scathing, cleared away 
 The mouldering old opinions, wrongs that lay
 
 206 
 
 Like millstones on the people s palsied strength. 
 The festering ulcer, that had grown at length 
 So gangrened and offensive, and had passed 
 All peaceful remedy, the sword at last 
 Has scalpelled from the system ; and the men 
 Beneath whose frown the world shook as the glen 
 Cowers in the shadow of the hills ; whose lives 
 For centuries had been sapless, and whose gyves 
 And fetters had been worn, because the slaves 
 Who wore them deemed that they to lords and 
 
 knaves 
 
 Were born to pander, nor had dreamed the power 
 That slumbered in their sinews, till the hour 
 When, mighty as the fabled voice of Thor, 
 Clanged in their ears the brazen peal of War, 
 Bed-ridden, palsied men, worm-eaten, dead, 
 Cumb ring God s heritage ; the bolt that sped 
 Dashed them to earth : as in the forest, see ! 
 Towering aloft, some huge o ershadowing tree, 
 Whose rotten heart no sap for years has nursed, 
 The storms that darkly from the heavens burst 
 Whirl to the ground its useless bulk ; the blast, 
 With its war strength, accomplishes at last 
 What years of peaceful sunshine, quiet rain, 
 And slow decay, had striven to do in vain. 
 The learned doctor cures our mortal ills 
 With father s plasters and with gra n ther s pills. 
 " We re all," he says, " so very near the same, 
 There s need to change the physic but in name ; " 
 And gravely dosing as the books declare, 
 A blister here, a pill or powder there,
 
 207 
 
 Relieves the liver, lets the lazy vein, 
 Just as they did in Doctor Galen s reign. 
 And where in law our modern practice storms 
 The stilted customs or established forms, 
 The staid old lawyer, stiff with starch and time, 
 Shows his contempt ineffably sublime, 
 Abates your writ, declares your pleading dead, 
 If, in the whole, you ve missed a single said. 
 The poet tunes his harp, and ancient times, 
 Like moss and weeds, lie tangled in his rhymes ; 
 And soft his simple sonnet sighing swells 
 Of nameless nymphs and dear delightful dells, 
 Exciting maids with heat from wasted flames, 
 And ancient men with ghosts of ancient dames. 
 He mourns the times, now lost in endless night, 
 When god and goddess blest our mortal sight ; 
 And dreaming still of soft Elysian days, 
 To whittling Yankees tunes Arcadian lays. 
 The mighty member from his native town, 
 Wrapped in his linen and his suit of brown, 
 Mourns for the seat where, forty years before, 
 The people sent his ancestors to snore ; 
 Tells how his gran ther, in his homespun drabs, 
 Sat out the session on a seat of slabs ; 
 Scowls at the varnish and the pictured wall, 
 The sure forerunner of the nation s fall ; 
 Shakes his bald head, and flaps his lengthened 
 
 ear, 
 
 AVhere modern fops the granite columns rear, 
 And, firm against such wastefulness and show, 
 Hurls his bad English and his thundering No !
 
 208 
 
 E en Fashion stoops to train her flowers and 
 
 fold, 
 
 In humble reverence for the sainted OLD ; 
 And we who once could dare to risk a guess 
 What motive-power controlled the moving dress, 
 Behold it now, with trailing length of skirt, 
 Dragged like great Hector in ignoble dirt, 
 And find our streets, in sunny afternoons, 
 A waving mass of family balloons ; 
 The snowy robe, that round her bosom steals, 
 Heaves with the Beauty whom it half conceals, 
 Who, strangely modest, when she stems the street 
 Strips half her person to conceal her feet ; 
 Bare in the sun, to all the gaping town 
 She hides the bonnet and displays the crown ; 
 And sweetly deigns, in all her pride to stoop, 
 Like Sioux chiefs, to glory in a (w)hoop. 
 
 There s worth to some so far their reverence 
 
 goes 
 
 In napless beavers and in seedy clothes ; 
 No name a thought, no history a word, 
 By palsy threatened nor by wrinkle blurred ; 
 Of war afraid, they start and shrink with pain 
 Where searching lancets find an oozing vein ; 
 No hope, alas ! from anything derive 
 By age left breathing, or by time alive ; 
 For modern days, so great their nervous fears, 
 So deep their reverence for THE OLD appears, 
 Like frightened children, lost among the firs, 
 They shudder if they touch a thing that stirs.
 
 209 
 
 New men, new things, new movements, they 
 
 abjure, 
 
 These from the past the fickle crowd may lure ; 
 Abhorring notions, manners, customs, all 
 Whose date they trace this side of Adam s fall, 
 They curse the law, refuse to hear the creed 
 Not having run a century to seed, 
 And, looking wise, pronounce your genius base 
 If royal George disdain a dirty face. 
 So full of reverence for THE OLD, the}* trace 
 A mould or wrinkle as a special grace ; 
 Regretting when they see the look of new, 
 From Cheshire cheese to some religious view ; 
 They choose alike their sirloin and their saint 
 Less for their virtue than their ancient taint ; 
 Preferring, when their gastric juice the} suit, 
 A speck of rotten in their autumn fruit. 
 You broach a subject, you suggest a view, 
 The answer s ready, " Bah ! the thing is new ! " 
 You write a song, you make a plough or book, 
 Be careful, friend, it has a newish look ! 
 A grand discovery the Nation hails ! 
 The noisy shout all fogydom assails ! 
 And gathering round, in shy and nervous bands, 
 All half-distracted, peer through trembling hands : 
 " All folly ! folly ! worse than folly, dross ! 
 I see no rust about it, there s no moss ! " 
 Advance your proposition. v Sir, I say, 
 I know how tis : I m wise, of course ; I m gray ! 
 Produce your reasons, and at once you re told, 
 If they re a little knotty, " Sir, I m old ! "
 
 210 
 
 And, if a moment standing to } our pride, 
 You dare defend, and, worse, dispute beside, 
 To end the strife, the last grand stroke employ, 
 They shake their hoary locks, and call you Boy ! 
 Advance is sinful, and all progress wrong, 
 All new discoveries but an evil throng : 
 The scholar, searching through the mazy creeds 
 To glean the wheat among the lust}- weeds ; 
 The genius, watching through the starry night 
 For newer glories and more radiant light, 
 In jumbling books by hoary ages sealed, 
 And seeking what is not to be revealed ; 
 The sager science that inspires the age 
 Blasts all the land with infidelic rage ; 
 Grim Mathematics, crazy with her signs, 
 Through Pluto s regions runs her impious lines ; 
 While bold Astronomy, with curves and cubes, 
 Glares into heaven through her brazen tubes ; 
 The rumbling engine and the rushing car 
 Wage on the Past a sort of impious war ; 
 And, lo ! in Fulton s glory, hissing steam, 
 A fettered devil shouting in his dream ; 
 To sail through space without a wing, alas ! 
 When understood, is scaling heaven with glass ; 
 And strangely daring the electric fire, 
 To write by lightning with a common wire. 
 Not to be old and half-obscured by time, 
 Is alwa} s foll} T , frequently a crime ; 
 Nothing that s old can ever need defence, 
 And want of age is always want of sense ;
 
 211 
 
 Their squinting vision, blurred and flat with 
 
 years, 
 
 Discerns the best what farthest off appears : 
 Tis always something safely kept in dust ; 
 Tis always something sacred in its rust ; 
 Some ancient name, whose phosphorescent light, 
 Like rotten wood, shines only in the night ; 
 Some mighty deed, that held to modern view, 
 Grins grim defiance to the groping NEW. 
 And so tis alwa3*s, when THE NEW appears, 
 The bigot OLD receives the child with sneers ; 
 Who can be great that every day we meet? 
 How prophet he who lives across the street? 
 " That drivelling idiot ! let the fool be bound ! 
 The noisy babbler says the world is round ! " 
 " That imp of Satan ! seize, or we are lost ! 
 And all the gods protect us from this Faust ! " 
 " Columbus ! hear him, mighty dons of Spain ! 
 New worlds, he saj-s, lie hid across the main ! " 
 " Ye learned doctors ! revered since the Flood ! 
 Hear crazy Harve} preach about the blood? 
 What strange delusions ! what an idle dream ! 
 Propelling boats and factories by steam ! 
 And here s a man to what strange things we 
 
 come ! 
 
 Corks lightning as a grocer corks his rum ! " 
 And so tis always, priest or prophet sent 
 To heal the land, and bid the world repent, 
 THE OLD, indignant when a newer light 
 Dawns on the world, and pains his shrivelled 
 
 sight,
 
 212 
 
 Besotted, ignorant, self-sufficient, vain, 
 Fights everything that cuts his bloated reign, 
 And praising still, with paralytic awe 
 Some dotard hero or some rotten law, 
 Bends meekly down to kiss the graven stone, 
 And rises up to crucify his own. 
 
 Tis well, indeed, tis well to reverence age, 
 To crown the locks that grace the tottering 
 
 sage; 
 
 But vain the task, with leaves however green, 
 To hide the snows that time reveals between. 
 With the dark locks that graced her waiting-maid, 
 Her faded brow the waning belle may shade, 
 And, when the lamp deludes the dazzled sight, 
 May glow with rouge, and gleam with lily white ; 
 The faded fop among the crowd may glide, 
 His hair be-Bogled. and his whiskers dyed : 
 But truthful Day disdains the shallow feint, 
 Reveals the barber, and displays the paint. 
 It may be well with sober steps to tread 
 Where mould ring greatness fills its narrow bed ; 
 Around the idol wrapped in awe to kneel, 
 The fault to cover and the sin conceal. 
 But, gild the shrine however much we may, 
 Howe er so deep our reverent homage pay, 
 Time slowly crumbles all the blocks we rear 
 To mark the tomb and consecrate the bier. 
 And Truth at last, stern justice on her lips, 
 Disrobes the idol, and the altar strips.
 
 213 
 
 Still, hail THE NEW when sigh the summer 
 
 bowers, 
 
 The robin warbles, and descend the showers, 
 Where drifts the bark on far Dakotah s shores, 
 Or Arabs wander where the Jordan pours, 
 Where Winter reigns along the Northern seas, 
 Or glows the orange in the tropic breeze, 
 Where cities swarm, or burns the barren steep, 
 Whose deserts lie, or green savannahs sweep, 
 Wherever life in all its varied forms 
 Glows in the sun or freezes in the storms. 
 Her radiant beauty blushes in the buds, 
 Swells in the breeze, and murmurs in the floods, 
 And when THE OLD, at last, grows dim and gray, 
 Shrinks from the sunshine and abhors the day, 
 His pulse grown feeble, and his glowing eye 
 Proclaims the edict, It is time to die ; 
 THE NEW, all radiant with her glorious life. 
 Wings her soft way to cheer the closing strife ; 
 Sits b} his pillow in the mournful hours, 
 With fragrant presence, and with bursting 
 
 flowers ; 
 
 Wipes from his brow the clammy dews of death ; 
 Steals with soft lips his last expiring breath ; 
 Lays the green sod upon his silent heart ; 
 Rears o er his sleep the sculptured tears of art ; 
 And on his grave, where loving memories cling, 
 Renews the blossoms of eternal Spring.
 
 214 
 
 LIFE S MISSION. 
 
 BEHIND the hills, his daily journe} 7 done, 
 Descends again the slowly setting Sun. 
 The clouds, at dawn that met his earliest smile, 
 Ere flamed his glance along the distant isle, 
 Flung their white banners round his burning way 
 When glowed the heavens with his meridian ra} , 
 Stirred by the Winds, whose wings their slumbers 
 
 fret, 
 
 Unveil their idol ere his glory set : 
 His flaming circle sinks bej ond the eye, 
 Though still his radiance lingers in the sky ; 
 As when at last creation s work was done, 
 And he along the glowing heavens had won 
 His first full journey, and the starry Night 
 Stole up the East to watch his parting light. 
 Note we, in this departure of the Sun, 
 No meaning save that he again has run 
 His daily passage ? Is there nothing more 
 Than that his smile is gone, and day is o er? 
 He left the hills upon his destined way, 
 As you may mark he leaves them every day, 
 And nothing new or strange to-night appears ; 
 The same his course as for six thousand years : 
 Along the valley and the distant shore 
 The shadows thicken, and the day is o er; 
 The hills against the sky stand like a wall.
 
 2 lf> 
 
 The stars again appear ; and is this all? 
 Ah, no ! beyond his setting in the skies 
 A deep significance, though silent, lies ; 
 He has fulfilled his mission, clear and bright 
 The clouds 3 ou saw retain his glowing light 
 With half of noon s magnificence, and throw 
 Their softened influence on the plain below, 
 Wreathed round his setting while the hi avens 
 
 were stilled, 
 To crown that mission faithfully fulfilled. 
 
 There are, if we will notice, men who dream 
 That what they note is onl} r what they seem ; 
 Who only mark the visible, the form, 
 The tree, the bud, the flower, the rain, the 
 
 storm , 
 
 The tokens merely, of the indwelling Power 
 That manifests itself in tree and flower ; 
 The mere development, and not the life 
 With which all these developments are rife. 
 The heavens above, the teeming earth below, 
 To these are but a grand and gorgeous show, 
 A splendid pageant and unmatched display, 
 Magnificent phenomena, they say. 
 In all the various forms of life they see 
 No other end or purpose than to be. 
 The death that blasts, the war that desolates, 
 The storm that rends, the strife that shatters 
 
 states, 
 
 Are accidents that mournfully befall, 
 Afllictions merety, incident to all.
 
 216 
 
 The}* are not wise who only this discern, 
 Who nothing deeper than results can learn. 
 
 The noisome thistle, growing by the road, 
 Whose drifting seed the wind each year has sowed ; 
 The lordly oak, whose proud and haughty form 
 Defies at night the fury of the storm ; 
 The breeze, that wakes the robin s sleep at morn, 
 And plays among the tassels of the corn ; 
 The cruel hail, that cuts the forest leaves, 
 Destro}*s the grain, and blasts the gathered 
 
 sheaves ; 
 
 The silent rain, that in the midnight hour 
 Distils its freshness on the meadow flower ; 
 The music of the wild bee s drows} hum, 
 When columbines and honeysuckles come ; 
 The bird, that hops and twitters on the snow, 
 When winds are cold and bitter tempests blow ; 
 The storm, that, rising, darkens all the hills, 
 And sounding seas with shuddering terror fills ; 
 The swelling waves, that hail and kiss the sky, 
 Or round the continents in slumber lie ; 
 The worm, along the sand that scarcely crawls, 
 On whose dull form the careless footstep falls, 
 Each has, obeying sweetest order still, 
 Its own peculiar mission to fulfil. 
 Through all the wide and far-extending range 
 Of these developments, however strange, 
 Are fixed and certain purposes that lie 
 Below the surface and beyond the eye. 
 There s not a flower, there s not a slender blade
 
 217 
 
 That lives beneath the locust s quiet shade, 
 The frailest, most unnoticeable leaf, 
 With use most doubtful, and with life most brief; 
 There s not a storm that blasts the summer grain ; 
 There s not a strife that gloats above its slain, 
 But has a meaning deeper than appears 
 Upon the surface of their narrow spheres, 
 A meaning deeper than the shocks that jar, 
 The frosts that blacken, and the deaths that mar. 
 Beside the road the traveller turns to taste 
 The bubbling spring that cheers the arid waste ; 
 The silent dews, the gentle summer rains, 
 Nurse the svvcet flowers that bless the barren 
 
 plains ; 
 The Breeze, at noon, from out the slumb rous 
 
 shade, 
 
 Where Labor faints upon the stifled glade, 
 Fans the scorched meadows with its cooling wings 
 Dipped in the spray of running brooks and 
 
 springs ; 
 
 And when the growing shadow of the hills 
 Spreads o er the plain arid all the valley fills, 
 The Zephyr wanders from the sea to play 
 Among the fragrant grass and ripened haj r , 
 Cools the hot cheek with burning fever dried, 
 Steals through the half-drawn curtain to the side 
 Of patient Sickness, to the cradle creeps 
 Where Childhood on its moistened pillow sleeps, 
 And through the open door- way to his chair, 
 To gladden Age and stir his frosty hair. 
 Mark how each season passes on ; how true
 
 218 
 
 Each to its mission, sunshine, cloud, and dew, 
 Frost, storms, and drifting tempests, in their 
 
 sphere, 
 
 Fulfil their cheerful task from year to } T ear. 
 Bleak Winter, when the gentle flowers are dead, 
 Throws his white mantle o er each fallen head, 
 Invigorates their strength, till sweeter dew 
 And kindly winds their fresher life renew : 
 And Spring, with beaming smile and genial 
 
 breath, 
 
 Dispels the shades and gloomy damps of death ; 
 In valleys green, beneath the maple shade, 
 Calls forth the blossom and the shooting blade : 
 Warm Summer brings the hot and blazing morn, 
 With blooming clover and with waving corn, 
 Rears the tall grass along the mowers glade, 
 And shields the traveller with the thickened 
 
 shade ; 
 
 And Autumn fills the store with ripened grain, 
 While sings the reaper on the fruitful plain ; 
 Heaps the ripe fruit where Labor s basket stands, 
 And fills with golden corn the husker s hands. 
 
 And man, too, has his mission : in the hall 
 Or hovel, whereso er his lot may fall, 
 Despised or courted, glorified or blamed, 
 With honor loaded or with hatred named, 
 In rags or linen, sorrow, fear, or joy, 
 In manual labor or in soft employ, 
 Life has a meaning deeper than appears 
 Upon the record of our threescore years.
 
 219 
 
 Below its surface, which the strong winds curl, 
 Where rocks divide and angry eddies whirl, 
 AVhat earthly intellect, what wisdom knows, 
 The purpose of the mighty stream that flows ? 
 From out the hollow of the Almighty s hand 
 It issues, and the boundary of its strand, 
 Sweeping beyond the age of burning spheres, 
 Fades in the circle of eternal years. 
 And being here to work, to live, to die, 
 Doth more than merely being signify ; 
 And man s existence, with its hopes and fears, 
 From 3 outh s fresh buds to age s hoary 3 r ears, 
 Should in itself to him be something more 
 Than idle pastime on an ocean s shore ; 
 Than blowing bubbles filled alone with air ; 
 Or chasing butterflies with childish care ; 
 Than moulding, throughout all his busy day, 
 Some image of himself in potter s clay ; 
 Than seeking, even from his mother s breast, 
 Of lauds and halls and dust to be possessed ; 
 Than following the vain and idle shows 
 That gilded power and worldly honor knows ; 
 Than yearning for the sounding names that grace 
 tb The pomp of circumstance, the pride of place ; " 
 Or seeking from the throngs that crowd the 
 
 way 
 
 The fickle tides and changes of the day, 
 The short-lived homage and the trustless power 
 That crown the idol of the passing hour. 
 These trifles, and the pageantry that decks 
 The conqueror s blood} triumphs, and the wrecks
 
 220 
 
 On which .Ambition builds his haughty throne 
 
 "With brazen monuments and chiselled stone ; 
 
 The gilded trappings, and the power that falls 
 
 To wealth and fashion and to marble halls, 
 
 Are but the husks that rattle round the ear 
 
 "When harvest-time has crowned the ripened }*ear. 
 
 Yes ! man for nobler things than these was lent ; 
 
 Of life the most complete development, 
 
 His being has a mission further still 
 
 Than the mere record of life s good or ill. 
 
 And he may learn from merely outward forms, 
 
 From faithful seasons and from fruitful storms, 
 
 From glowing sunsets and from changing year, 
 
 His dut} r to his mission in his sphere. 
 
 The storms, the rain, the floating clouds that bar 
 
 The heavens from his vision, even- star, 
 
 The spring-time with its promise, and the fall 
 
 With its fulfilment, these will each and all 
 
 Be teachers to him, and the earth and sky 
 
 Perpetual lessons to his inner eye. 
 
 Each has his mission, and no one can shirk 
 
 The duties of his own appropriate work. 
 
 In this, there falls to man nor golden mean, 
 
 Division neither, neither hope to lean 
 
 Upon his erring brother ; but each has his own 
 
 Peculiar sphere, in hovel or on throne ; 
 
 A work to do, a labor to fulfil ; 
 
 In its fulfilment lies his good or ill ! 
 
 And he who paves with stones the streets we 
 
 tread ; 
 Who frames the roof for shelter o er the head ;
 
 221 
 
 Who digs the earth, or earns from day to day 
 His coarse and scanty food, as best he may, 
 If faithful to his place, in all his ways, 
 To him, as much, in his own sphere, be praise 
 As to his brother who a world commands, 
 Or in the forum or the senate stands. 
 Yes ! he who nobly fills his destined place, 
 With patient labor and with quiet grace, 
 Who in his sphere works out his destined part 
 With genuine purpose and with lo} T al heart, 
 To him, and not to ribbons, white or blue, 
 The honor of a faithful man is due. 
 
 In all our life-work it were well to pause 
 And note how to the universal laws 
 By which all things are governed, in the round 
 Of never-ending struggle, each is found 
 Harmonious, submissive, laboring still 
 Its own peculiar duty to fulfil. 
 How faithful Summer in the quiet glade 
 Waits for the clover and the growing blade ! 
 And how to crown the fullj -ripened year, 
 Doth Autumn tarry for the yellow ear ! 
 And how his freezing breath doth Winter seem 
 To hold, till on the hillside by the stream 
 The little autumn flower has had its day, 
 Fulfilled its silent" work and passed away ! 
 Each has its own appropriate duty ! Dwells 
 The Summer in the coolness of the dells 
 To judge the Autumn? Doth the Autumn wail 
 To chide the Winter with a lagging gale ?
 
 222 
 
 And doth the Winter, with his hoary head, 
 Condemn the Spring because she doth not shed 
 Her flowers upon his snow-drifts? And doth she 
 Upbraid his stormy brow and boisterous glee, 
 Because, forsooth, he doth not choose to bear 
 Her buds and blossoms in his frosty hair ? 
 Flaunts the red Sun his fierce and haughty eye 
 Upon the pale Moon trembling in the sky? 
 Her gloiy full, and through the harvest night 
 Alone, she reigns the peerless queen of light ; 
 Bends she her brow in scorn, because the Star, 
 When her dim crescent crowned the hills afar, 
 That on his path the wear}* traveller cheers, 
 In her full gloiy pales and disappears? 
 In boist rous anger doth the great Sea rail 
 Against the Lake that in the narrow vale, 
 A handful of sweet waters, meekly lies 
 Among the lilies where the wild bird flies? 
 The monarch River struggling with the Shore, 
 That Cataract, with its eternal roar, 
 The one does not begrudge the Hill that creeps 
 Among the alder-roots, and softly sleeps 
 Through all the sultry summer days that pass, 
 Beneath the yellow weed and waving grass ! 
 Nor doth the other scorn the Brook that falls 
 From where a child may reach, and shouts and 
 
 calls 
 
 With prattling clamor all the woods to tell 
 How dizzy was the height it leaped so well ! 
 Who listens when the Night broods on the lake 
 Hears not the Primrose taunt the ragged Brake ;
 
 223 
 
 The Buttercup, the Thistle ; Lilies blown, 
 The dull and senseless Moss upon the stone : 
 And we who note these, truth from them may 
 
 read, 
 A lesson it were well for us to heed : 
 
 Judge not thy brother : there may be 
 More of the man in him than thou canst see. 
 Pray, is the wretched child at fault because 
 His birth had not the sanction of the laws? 
 Is he at fault because he was begot 
 By satined villain or by ragged sot? 
 He, if he could have willed his sire or birth, 
 Had not been beggar-boy upon the earth ; 
 He, if he could have governed this before, 
 Had not been begging crusts from door to door : 
 But some proud lord, with sounding name, had 
 
 smiled 
 
 Upon his cradle-place, and called him child. 
 Hast thou discovered all the various laws 
 Of thy humanit} T , and is the cause 
 And purpose of thy being made so plain 
 To thee, when others seek to know in vain, 
 That thou canst say to all life s motley throng, 
 AY ho worketh not as /work worketh wrong? 
 Who gave to thee the power to comprehend 
 The mission of thy brother, and the end 
 For which he labors? and how happen you 
 To have an eye that, penetrating through 
 The Almighty s secret plans, hath power to tell 
 Whether thy brother worketh ill or well?
 
 2-2 1 
 
 How this thing sounds to him, or that appears, 
 How canst thou tell without his 63*68 and ears? 
 The beggar-bo} and fatherless }-ou meet, 
 Half-starved and naked, wandering through the 
 
 street, 
 
 Whose birth was in a hovel, and who knows 
 No more of sin than of the wind that blows, 
 With sunburnt face, and bare and blistered feet, 
 The jeer of crowds, the laughter of the street, 
 He gnaws the broken offal, oh, beware, 
 How falls thy hand upon his matted hair ! 
 Sick, sad, and weary, how his pleading eye 
 Asks for the charity your hands den}- ! 
 While in the distance which you do not see, 
 Fame smiles to note your answer to his plea ; 
 Or sits the recording angel, turned to hear 
 And note thine answer, with a smile or tear. 
 
 Tis hard to tell, of all the throng we meet, 
 As day by day we pass along the street, 
 When future generations come to make 
 The record of the present, who will take 
 The crown of glory ; who, at last, have won 
 The laurel wreath for works most nobly done. 
 From out the gloom and night that lies beyond. 
 What says the Past? we wave the magic wand : 
 Before the C3 e, the clouds their darkness lift ; 
 And moving, see, they slowly upward drift! 
 What shapes are these? a strange and motley 
 band
 
 2-25 
 
 1*1-088 through the shades that shroud the silent 
 
 land. 
 
 Behold, and wondering smile to see who claim 
 The wreath of fame and boast a living name : 
 Now, one b} one, they re moving by, alas ! 
 See what strange shadows and what spectres pass ! 
 A sturdy butcher leads the awkward train ; 
 A ploughman, dripping with the autumn rain ; 
 A cobbler, bent with toil and worn with years ; 
 And there ! a tailor passes with his shears ; 
 A blacksmith there, still grim from forge and shop ; 
 And that ! a barber with his brush and strop ; 
 A weaver bears his shuttle through the throng ; 
 A tinker s son stalks silently along. 
 The shrinking scholar, whose unnoticed life 
 Casts not a shadow on the world of strife 
 While marshalled legions wheel along the morn, 
 In some cold cell with hope and study worn, 
 His name unknown, and scarce his home or clirne, 
 May sit the foremost man of all his time. 
 Day after day, with purpose strong and brave, 
 lie casts his thoughts abroad upon the wave ; 
 No resting-place for them in all the land, 
 The}- flutter back to nestle in his hand. 
 His hero-heart ! complaints nor murmurs rise ; 
 In patient faith he does his work and dies ; 
 The overseers lay his bones to rest 
 In rudest coffin and in coarsest vest, 
 And, turning on his grave their reverend backs, 
 Count so much less of annual pauper-tax ; 
 Yet when the future hastens to decide
 
 226 
 
 On our pretensions, our expectant pride, 
 Look upward ! higher ! on the roll of fame 
 The sun, at morn, strikes first upon his name. 
 Tis still remembered how a man was seen 
 Bending, at midnight, o er a strange machine, 
 Begrimed with dirt, oppressed with want and 
 
 scorn, 
 
 Judged by the old a crazy dreamer born ; 
 The shapeless model which his hands have 
 
 wrought 
 
 To realize a vast and might} thought, 
 On which to waste a life of want and care 
 More useless seems than bubbles of the air ; 
 And those who watched his patient toil and slow, 
 And heard at night his ever-restless blow. 
 Shook their wise heads in pity for his kind 
 Of feebled intellect and darkened mind. 
 Yet still he labored, still his trembling hand 
 Forged clasp and pivot, drew the iron band ; 
 And still at night, upon his sleepless bed, 
 Clung his loved idol to his aching head. 
 This idle dream, of sick delusion born, 
 B} r his own generation laughed to scorn, 
 Now whirls the car along the levelled sands, 
 Bears the broad commerce of the farthest lands, 
 And scorning winds, defying storm and breeze, 
 Breasts the blue billows of a thousand seas. 
 
 Time makes sad changes ; and, alas, how few 
 Their busy lives to after years renew ! 
 The men to whom the world has bent the knee,
 
 227 
 
 Whose flags have waved o er ever}?- land and sea, 
 
 With vast report of deeds from } ear to year 
 
 Have filled and stunned their generation s ear. 
 
 How smooth the waters o er their glories close ! 
 
 How dark the night that shrouds their dull repose ! 
 
 The lonely dweller in some narrow vale, 
 
 Far from the noise, who, fainting, sick, and pale, 
 
 Turns from his task his dim and weary eye 
 
 To mark the idol of his time go by, 
 
 Now raises in the distance, through the storm 
 
 And cloud and shadow of the past, his form ; 
 
 Towers like a mountain on a distant cape 
 
 By thunders rent and worn to human shape ! 
 
 Some who nor form nor power nor honor boast, 
 
 By after ages ma}* be honored most ; 
 
 Some whose ignoble brain seems warped and 
 
 numb, 
 Whose tongues are speechless, and whose lips are 
 
 dumb, 
 Their form at last, when they their crown have 
 
 won, 
 
 Fills all the heaven with gkny like the sun. 
 Who piled the pyramids with anxious aim 
 Upon the world to stamp a deathless name ? 
 None answer, even Rumor has grown dumb ; 
 While restless traveller and scholar come, 
 And more the glory now to him who reads 
 The doubtful record of forgotten deeds, 
 Than to the men whose vain ambition sent 
 To heaven the gray and towering monument. 
 Gigantic on the desert seas the} stand !
 
 228 
 
 They shade the camel and o erlook the sand ! 
 
 The builders from the world the doubt have won. 
 
 By whom completed or by whom begun. 
 
 The gaping wonder what would men beguile 
 
 To vex the future with the useless pile. 
 
 When from the North the rude barbarian rushed, 
 
 With conquest drunken and with victory flushed ; 
 
 When to oppose his wild and swarming train 
 
 One-half the world seems camped upon the plain, 
 
 The mighty Tartar led his furious clan, 
 
 Swung his red axe upon the reeling van, 
 
 And, overwhelmed, the opposing hosts have fled, 
 
 And left behind their pyramids of dead, 
 
 Who dreamed, as then the might} conqueror 
 
 stood , 
 
 His horse s fetlock deep in human blood, 
 A German bo}~ with printer s block would rear 
 A prouder glory than the Tartar s spear ? 
 How man} who have sat in grand estate, 
 Bepraised and lauded by their times as great, 
 Come down to us as living at the time 
 When some poor witling wrote his idle rhyme? 
 How many a king immortal fame has gained 
 From boors and barbers, christened when they 
 
 reigned ! 
 " She hardly thought the man who wrote her 
 
 plays, 
 
 From her proud name would steal the future gaze ! 
 That on the page, her fame would be the note, 
 She ruled the realm, while Master William 
 
 wrote ; "
 
 Tis hard to tell where Glory claims her own, 
 Whether they grace the hovel, hall, or throne. 
 But Time decides the right, it will be seen, 
 With an impartial hand decides between 
 Galileo s craz} dream and Charlemagne, 
 The types of Faust, the spear of Tamerlane. 
 
 The true man never fails ! his life may be 
 The weariest years of woe and poverty : 
 Though darkness hover o er his way, and doubt 
 And persecution hedge his path about ; 
 Though Bigotry s black auger, and the clogged 
 And blundering tongue of Ignorance, and dogged 
 Opinion s sullen eye ; the zealot s ire, 
 Oppression s rack, Fanaticism s fire, 
 Cast over him their shadows black and grim, 
 To paralyze his heart and rack his limb ; 
 Yet, let him labor on with honest zeal, 
 In poverty or wealth, in woe or weal : 
 He never fails ; for what beneath the sun 
 W r as set for him to do, is trul} done. 
 
 Man s being hath a mission that the grasp 
 Of world-wide empires, and the jewelled clasp 
 Of diadems about his brow, the toil 
 For far dominion, and the ill-gotten spoil 
 Of countless kingdoms, and the humbled pride 
 Of conquered nations bending by his side, 
 Will not accomplish : twill not do to heap 
 Ambitious thrones together, nor to steep 
 His spirit in debaucheries, and stain
 
 230 
 
 His heart with evil passions, in the vain 
 
 And foolish hope to smother in his soul 
 
 Its awful purpose. He cannot control 
 
 The subtle influences that everywhere 
 
 Remind him of his manhood : shall not dare 
 
 To disregard it ; shall not seek to hush 
 
 Its stern demands upon him, or to crush 
 
 Its solemn dictates. Gather round thy state 
 
 The cares and schemes and sorrows of the great ; 
 
 Turn to thy slumber on a regal bed, 
 
 When one more day of golden pomp has sped, 
 
 It will not answer : it is with thee still, 
 
 Thy work to do, thy mission to fulfil. 
 
 Forget thy manhood, squander but the time 
 
 Of one short day in folly and the crime 
 
 Of idleness, and let thy spirit rust 
 
 With luxury and sloth, and let the dust 
 
 Of rude and hot dissensions gather o er 
 
 Thy energies, the moth of passion score 
 
 Thy heart with seams, mark how the light will 
 
 frown, 
 
 And how the lustrous stars will glimmer down 
 In sorrow ; not a flower upon the glade 
 That does its mission that will not upbraid 
 Thy faithlessness ; the trees and flowers will seem 
 To look upon thee with reproach ; the stream 
 Will shape its murmurs into words of scorn, 
 That thou, a man, in God s own image born, 
 Of all his works the finish, should descend 
 To be most faithless to his beginning s end.
 
 231 
 
 Why, then, should we amid our labor stand 
 With folded arms, mere idlers in the land ? 
 Why say, because of little use appears 
 The noiseless movement of our silent years. 
 Our life is useless, and our work too low, 
 Our bound too narrow and our step too slow ? 
 Distils the dew, and doth the summer rain 
 Fall on the leaves and on the flowers in vain ? 
 The rill that creeps beside the travelled \va} r , 
 The grass is greener where its waters play ! 
 And doth the oak prove faithless to its end, 
 Because no blossoms from its branches bend ? 
 And doth the frailest little wood-flower fail 
 Because it shadows not one-half the vale ? 
 No, never ! bending grass and creeping vine, 
 The dullest worm, the feeblest stars that shine, 
 Fail not ; nor fails the man whose steps pursue 
 The path that lies along his earnest view, 
 However narrow, with the patient tread, 
 That always marks the faithful traveller, led 
 By all-enduring patience, and the zeal 
 That faith and hope and honest purpose feel. 
 Truth s stern apostles, in the old times fought 
 With ignorance and error, till they wrought, 
 With such made weapons as their hands could rind. 
 Great revolutions in an Age s mind. 
 No matter where they labored, where they worked. 
 Or in what den or in what desert lurked ; 
 No matter who approved or who said no, 
 Who bade them welcome or who bade them go. 
 They did their work, nor for a moment turned,
 
 Though edicts thundered and though faggots 
 
 burned. 
 
 And did they fail because the rusted lock, 
 The glittering axe, the cruel cross, the block, 
 Cramped their strong limbs and drank their 
 
 streaming gore. 
 
 Ere half the labor of their work was o er ? 
 Fail? now the world stands stoutly up to bless 
 Those brave old heroes, and the hardiness 
 And stern unyielding strength with which they 
 
 strove 
 
 To do their mission : and although they clove 
 With ponderous blows, but here and there a bar, 
 And opened but the bolted door ajar, 
 Through which the slightest thread of light stole 
 
 in ; 
 
 Yet nobly in their time did they begin 
 The conquest which the arm of after-strength 
 Pursued triumphant, till the door at length 
 Was thrown wide open, and the noonday sun 
 .Streamed in to finish what they had begun. 
 Then, see thou prove thyself a man, and seek 
 To do, from da} to day, from week to week, 
 The work that falleth to thy hands, aright. 
 Let the still evening and the morning light 
 Find thee about thy mission ; murmuring not 
 With childish humor at thy brother s lot, 
 Nor wondering why thy duty was not shown 
 To do some other mission than thine own ; 
 Not doubting if thy labor or thine art 
 With its dull toil be not thy neighbor s part ;
 
 233 
 
 Nor questioning wiry thou with want art pressed. 
 
 While sits thy neighbor in his linen dressed ; 
 
 Nor shirking off thy task with cunning skill ; 
 
 Nor shrinking from its toil with coward will. 
 
 But bravely working on as best thou can, 
 
 And standing to thy duty like a man, 
 
 Whether thy mission here shall prove to be 
 
 To dig, from morn till night, in penury, 
 
 With sunburnt hands and never-ceasing toil, 
 
 Thy scanty living from the torpid soil ; 
 
 To do thy work with spite the scorn of fools 
 
 The stout mechanic s honorable tools ; 
 
 To move with mammon in the bustling mart ; 
 
 To pi}* the chisel or the brush of art ; 
 
 To travel in the scholar s quiet ways ; 
 
 To feel thy being quicken in the ra}-s 
 
 Of eagle-visioned science, manfully 
 
 Fulfil that mission, though thou canst not see 
 
 Its import, or divine the use or end 
 
 To which its strange and various changes tend. 
 
 And when, at length, upon thy work all done, 
 
 Gleams the last radiance of life s setting sun, 
 
 As slowly down, with bright unclouded face. 
 
 Behind the glowing hills he sinks apace, 
 
 The glory of a life well spent shall shed 
 
 Its softened influence on thy honored head, 
 
 Wreathe round th}- pillow while the heavens are 
 
 stilled, 
 And crown thy mission faithfully fulfilled.
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 CAYLORD 
 
 PRINTED IN U 9