225

gin-out!

Fust come the blackbirds clatt'rin' in tall trees,

An' settlin' things in windy Congresses, Queer politicians, though, for I'll be skinned

Ef all on 'em don't head against the wind. 'Fore long the trees begin to show belief, The maple crimsons to a coral-reef, Then saffron swarms swing off from all the willers,

So plump they look like yaller caterpillars, Then gray hosschesnuts leetle hands unfold

Softer 'n a baby's be a' three days old: Thet 's robin-redbreast's almanick; he knows

Thet arter this ther' 's only blossom

clings,

slings;

All down the loose-walled lanes in archin' bowers

The barb'ry droops its strings o' golden flowers,

Whose shrinkin' hearts the school-gals love to try

With pins they'll worry yourn so, boys, bimeby! But I don't love your cat'logue style, do you?

Ez ef to sell off Natur' by vendoo; One word with blood in 't 's twice ez good ez two:

Nuff sed, June 's bridesman, poet of the year,

Gladness on wings, the bobolink, is here; Half hid in tip-top apple-blooms he swings,

Or climbs aginst the breeze with quiverin' wings,

Or, givin' way to 't in a mock despair, Runs down, a brook o' laughter, thru the air.

THE COURTIN'.

GOD makes sech nights, all white an' still
Fur 'z you can look or listen,
Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill,
All silence an' all glisten.

Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown

An' peeked in thru the winder, An' there sot Huldy all alone,

'Ith no one nigh to hender.

A fireplace filled the room's one side
With half a cord o' wood in

There warnt no stoves (tell comfort died)
To bake ye to a puddin'.

The wa'nut logs shot sparkles out

Towards the pootiest, bless her,
An' leetle flames danced all about
The chiny on the dresser.

Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung,
An' in amongst 'em rusted
The ole queen's-arm thet gran'ther Young
Fetched back from Concord busted.

The very room, coz she was in,

Seemed warm from floor to ceilin',

An' she looked full ez rosy agin
Ez the apples she was peelin'.

'T was kin' o' kingdom-come to look
On sech a blessed cretur,
A dogrose blushin' to a brook
Ain't modester nor sweeter.

He was six foot o' man, A 1,

Clean grit an' human natur'; None could n't quicker pitch a ton Nor dror a furrer straighter.

He'd sparked it with full twenty gals, Hed squired 'em, danced 'em, druv 'em, Fust this one, an' then thet, by spells All is, he could n't love 'em.

But long o' her his veins 'ould run

All crinkly like curled maple,
The side she breshed felt full o' sun
Ez a south slope in Ap'il.

She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing
Ez his in the choir;

My! when he made Ole Hunderd ring,
She knowed the Lord was nigher.

An' she'd blush scarlit, right in prayer,
When her new meetin'-bunnet
Felt somehow thru its crown a pair
O' blue eyes sot upon it.

Thet night, I tell ye, she looked some!
She seemed to 've gut a new soul,
For she felt sartin-sure he'd come,

Down to her very shoe-sole.

She heered a foot, an' knowed it tu,
A-raspin' on the scraper,
All ways to once her feelins flew

Like sparks in burnt-up paper.

He kin' o' l'itered on the mat,
Some doubtfle o' the sekle,
His heart kep' goin' pity-pat,

But hern went pity Zekle.

An' yit she gin her cheer a jerk
Ez though she wished him furder,
An' on her apples kep' to work,
Parin' away like murder.

"You want to see my Pa, I s'pose?"

"Wal.

signin'

no

I come da

To say why gals act so or so,

Or don't, 'ould be presumin';
Mebby to mean yes an' say no
Comes nateral to women.

He stood a spell on one foot fust,
Then stood a spell on t' other,
An' on which one he felt the wust
He could n't ha' told ye nuther.

Says he, “I'd better call agin";

Says she, "Think likely, Mister"; Thet last word pricked him like a pin, An'. ... Wal, he up an' kist her. When Ma bimeby upon 'em slips, Huldy sot pale ez ashes, All kin' o' smily roun' the lips

An' teary roun' the lashes.

For she was jes' the quiet kind
Whose naturs never vary,
Like streams that keep a summer mind
Snowhid in Jenooary.

The blood clost roun' her heart felt glued
Too tight for all expressin',
Tell mother see how metters stood,
An' gin 'em both her blessin'.

Then her red come back like the tide
Down to the Bay o' Fundy,
An' all I know is they was cried
In meetin' come nex' Sunday.

Meted the light to the need of his eve

And knew, by a sure and inward sign, That the work of his fingers was divine. Then Ambrose said, "All those shall die The eternal death who believe not as I"; And some were boiled, some burned in fire, Some sawn in twain, that his heart's desire,

For the good of men's souls, might be satisfied,

By the drawing of all to the righteous

side.

One day, as Ambrose was seeking the truth
In his lonely walk, he saw a youth
Resting himself in the shade of a tree;
It had never been given him to see
So shining a face, and the good man
thought

"T were pity he should not believe as he ought.

So he set himself by the young man's side, And the state of his soul with questions tried;

But the heart of the stranger was hardened indeed,

Nor received the stamp of the one true creed,

And the spirit of Ambrose waxed sore to find

Such face the porch of so narrow a mind.

"As each beholds in cloud and fire The shape that answers his own desire, So each," said the youth, "in the Law shall find

The figure and features of his mind; And to each in his mercy hath God allowed

His several pillar of fire and cloud."

The soul of Ambrose burned with zeal And holy wrath for the young man's weal: "Believest thou then, most wretched youth,"

Cried he, "a dividual essence in Truth? I fear me thy heart is too cramped with sin

To take the Lord in his glory in."

Now there bubbled beside them where

227

And when over breakers to leeward
The tattered surges are hurled,
It may keep our head to the tempest,
With its grip on the base of the world.

But, after the shipwreck, tell me
What help in its iron thews,
Still true to the broken hawser,
Deep down among sea-weed and ooze?
In the breaking gulfs of sorrow,
When the helpless feet stretch out
And find in the deeps of darkness
No footing so solid as doubt,

Then better one spar of Memory,
One broken plank of the Past,
That our human heart may cling to,
Though hopeless of shore at last!

To the spirit its splendid conjectures,
To the flesh its sweet despair,
Its tears o'er the thin-worn locket
With its anguish of deathless hair!

Immortal? I feel it and know it,
Who doubts it of such as she?
But that is the pang's very secret,-
Immortal away from me.

turn

Your logic, my friend, is perfect,
Your morals most drearily true;

But, since the earth clashed on her coffin,
I keep hearing that, and not you.

Console if you will, I can bear it;
'T is a well-meant alms of breath;
But not all the preaching since Adam
Has made Death other than Death.

It is pagan; but wait till you feel it, —
That jar of our earth, that dull shock
When the ploughshare of deeper passion
Tears down to our primitive rock.

Communion in spirit! Forgive me,
But I, who am earthy and weak,
Would give all my incomes from dream-
land

For a touch of her hand on my cheek.

That little shoe in the corner,
So worn and wrinkled and brown,
With its emptiness confutes you,
And argues your wisdom down.

COMMEMORATION ODE.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY, JULY 21, 1865.

LIFE may be given in many ways,
And loyalty to Truth be sealed
As bravely in the closet as the field,
So generous is Fate;

But then to stand beside her,
When craven churls deride her,
To front a lie in arms, and not to yield, -
This shows, methinks, God's plan
And measure of a stalwart man,
Limbed like the old heroic breeds,
Who stand self-poised on manhood's
solid earth,

Not forced to frame excuses for his birth,

Fed from within with all the strength he needs.

Such was he, our Martyr-Chief,

Whom late the Nation he had led,
With ashes on her head,

Wept with the passion of an angry grief:

To speak what in my heart will beat and

burn,

And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn.

Nature, they say, doth dote,

And cannot make a man
Save on some worn-out plan,
Repeating us by rote:

For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw,

And, choosing sweet clay from the breast

Of the unexhausted West, With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true.

How beautiful to see Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead;

One whose meek flock the people joyed to be,

Not lured by any cheat of birth, But by his clear-grained human worth,

And brave old wisdom of sincerity! They knew that outward grace is

dust;

They could not choose but trust In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill,

And supple-tempered will

That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust.

His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind,

Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars,

A seamark now, now lost in vapors blind;

Broad prairie rather, genial, levellined,

Fruitful and friendly for all human

kind,

Yet also nigh to Heaven and loved of loftiest stars.

Nothing of Europe here, Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still,

Ere any names of Serf and Peer
Could Nature's equal scheme deface;
Here was a type of the true elder

race,

And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.

I praise him not; it were too late; And some innative weakness there must be

In him who condescends to victory Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait,

Safe in himself as in a fate.
So always firmly he:
He knew to bide his time,
And can his fame abide,
Still patient in his simple faith sublime,
Till the wise years decide.
Great captains, with their guns and
drums,

Disturb our judgment for the hour,
But at last silence comes:

These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,

Our children shall behold his fame,
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing

man,

Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,

New birth of our new soil, the first American.

We sit here in the Promised Land That flows with Freedom's honey and milk:

But 't was they won it, sword in hand, Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk.

We welcome back our bravest and our

best;Ah, me not all! some come not with the rest,

Who went forth brave and bright as any here!

I strive to mix some gladness with my strain,

But the sad strings complain,
And will not please the ear;

I sweep them for a pan, but they wane
Again and yet again

Into a dirge, and die away in pain.
In these brave ranks I only see the gaps,
Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb
turf wraps,

Dark to the triumph which they died to gain:

Fitlier may others greet the living,
For me the past is unforgiving;
I with uncovered head
Salute the sacred dead,

Who went, and who return not.
Say not so!

229

grave;

No bar of endless night exiles the brave; And to the saner mind

We rather seem the dead that stayed behind.

Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow! For never shall their aureoled presence lack:

I see them muster in a gleaming row, With ever-youthful brows that nobler show;

We find in our dull road their shining track;

In every nobler mood
We feel the orient of their spirit glow,
Part of our life's unalterable good,
Of all our saintlier aspiration;

They come transfigured back, Secure from change in their high-hearted ways,

Beautiful evermore, and with the rays Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation!

MARIA WHITE LOWELL.

[U. S. A., 1821-1853.] THE ALPINE SHEEP.

WHEN on my ear your loss was knelled, And tender sympathy upburst,

A little spring from memory welled, Which once had quenched my bitter thirst.

And I was fain to bear to you

A portion of its mild relief, That it might be as healing dew,

To steal some fever from your grief.

After our child's untroubled breath
Up to the Father took its way,
And on our home the shade of Death
Like a long twilight haunting lay,

And friends came round, with us to weep
Her little spirit's swift remove,

The story of the Alpine sheep
Was told to us by one we love.