And the proud man sighed with a secret pain,'Ah, that I were free again!

Free as when I rode that day

Where the barefoot maiden raked the hay."

She wedded a man unlearned and poor,
And many children played round her door.
But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain,
Left their traces on heart and brain.
And oft, when the summer's sun shone hot
On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot,
And she heard the little spring-brook fall
Over the roadside, through the wall,

In the shade of the apple-tree again
She saw a rider draw his rein,

And, gazing down with timid grace,
She felt his pleased eyes read her face.
Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls
Stretched away into stately halls:

The weary wheel to a spinet turned,
The tallow candle an astral burned;

And for him who sat by the chimney lug,
Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug,

A manly form at her side she saw,
And joy was duty, and love was law.
Then she took up her burden of life again,
Saying only, "It might have been."

Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge!

God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,

The saddest are these: "IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN!"

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Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies
Deeply buried from human eyes;

And in the hereafter angels may
Roll the stone from its grave away.

ΓΙΟ

III.-SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE.

1. Of all the rides, since the birth of time,
Told in story or sung in rhyme—
On Apuleius's Golden Ass,

Or one-eyed Calendar's horse of brass,
Witch astride of a human hack,
Islam's prophet on Al-Borak-

The strangest ride that ever was sped
Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead !

Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead!

2. Body of turkey, head of owl,

Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl,
Feathered and ruffled in every part,
Skipper Ireson stood in the cart.
Scores of women, old and young,
Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue,
Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane,
Shouting and singing the shrill refrain:

"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead!"

NOTES.

3. Apuleius's Golden Ass.

Apule'ius, a Roman philoso

Calendar, in the Arabian Nights'
Entertainments.

pher, born in the second century 6. Al-Borak, a wondrous imaginary ani

of the Christian era. The most
celebrated of his works is the
Metamorphosis, or Golden Ass.

4 one-eyed Calendar's horse of brass.
See the story of Agib, the third

mal, on which Mohammed pretended to have made a night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem and thence to the seventh heaven.

10

15

20

3. Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips,
Girls in bloom of cheek and lips,
Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase
Bacchus round some antique vase,
Brief of skirt, with ankles bare,
Loose of kerchief and loose of hair,

With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns' twang,

Over and over the Mænads sang:

"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,

Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead!"

4. Small pity for him!-he sailed away
From a leaking ship in Chaleur Bay—
Sailed away from a sinking wreck,
With his own towns-people on her deck!
"Lay by lay by !" they called to him;
Back he answered, "Sink or swim!

Brag of your catch of fish again !"

And off he sailed through the fog and rain!

Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,

Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead!

25

30

35

40

5. Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur
That wreck shall lie for evermore.
Mother and sister, wife and maid,
Looked from the rocks of Marblehead
Over the moaning and rainy sea-
Looked for the coming that might not be!
What did the winds and the sea-birds say
Of the cruel captain who sailed away?-

45

50

26. Bacchus. See page 50, note 16.
30. Mænads sang. The Manades were
the Bacchantes, or priestesses 35.
of Bacchus the name was

given in allusion to their frenzied movements.

Chaleur Bay, an inlet in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,

Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead !

6. Through the street, on either side,
Up flew windows, doors swung wide,
Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives gray,
Treble lent the fish-horn's bray.
Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound,
Hulks of old sailors run aground,
Shook head and fist and hat and cane,

And cracked with curses the hoarse refrain:

7. Sweetly along the Salem road

Bloom of orchard and lilac showed.

Little the wicked skipper knew

Of the fields so green and the sky so blue.
Riding there in his sorry trim,

Like an Indian idol glum and grim,
Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear
Of voices shouting far and near:

8.

66

"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt,
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt
By the women o' Morble'ead!"

Hear me, neighbors!" at last he cried-
"What to me is this noisy ride?
What is the shame that clothes the skin
To the nameless horror that lives within?
Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck,
And hear a cry from a reeling deck!
Hate me and curse me-I only dread

The hand of God and the face of the dead!"
Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart

By the women of Marblehead!

80

85

9. Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea
Said, "God has touched him!—why should we?”
Said an old wife mourning her only son,
"Cut the rogue's tether, and let him run !"
So with soft relentings and rude excuse,
Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose,
And gave him a cloak to hide him in,
And left him alone with his shame and sin.
Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart

By the women of Marblehead !

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95