Thus passed his manhood; then to other lands
He strayed, a stainless figure among courts
Beside the Manzanares and the Thames.
Whence, after too long exile, he returned
With fresher laurel, but sedater step

And eye more serious, fain to breathe the air

Where through the Cambridge marshes the blue Charles
Uncoils its length and stretches to the sea:
Stream dear to him, at every curve a shrine
For pilgrim Memory. Again he watched
His loved syringa whitening by the door,
And knew the catbird's welcome; in his walks
Smiled on his tawny kinsmen of the elms
Stealing his nuts; and in the ruined year
Sat at his widowed hearthside with bent brows
Leonine, frosty with the breath of time,
And listened to the crooning of the wind
In the wide Elmwood chimneys, as of old.
And then and then..

The afterglow has faded from the elms,
And in the denser darkness of the boughs
From time to time the firefly's tiny lamp
Sparkles. How often in still summer dusks
He paused to note that transient phantom spark
Flash on the air — a light that outlasts him!

The night grows chill, as if it felt a breath
Blown from that frozen city where he lies.

All things turn strange. The leaf that rustles here
Has more than autumn's mournfulness. The place
Is heavy with his absence. Like fixed eyes
Whence the dear light of sense and thought has fled.
The vacant windows stare across the lawn.
The wise sweet spirit that informed it all
Is otherwhere. The house itself is dead.

O autumn wind among the somber pines, Breathe you his dirge, but be it sweet and low,

With deep refrains and murmurs of the sea,
Like to his verse the art is yours alone.

His once you taught him. Now no voice but yours.
Tender and low, O wind among the pines!

OUTWARD BOUND

I LEAVE behind me the elm-shadowed square
And carven portals of the silent street,
And wander on with listless, vagrant feet
Through seaward-leading alleys, till the air
Smells of the sea, and straightway then the care
Slips from my heart, and life once more is sweet.
At the lane's ending lie the white-winged fleet.
O restless Fancy, whither wouldst thou fare?
Here are brave pinions that shall take thee far
Gaunt hulks of Norway; ships of red Ceylon:
Slim-masted lovers of the blue Azores !
'Tis but an instant hence to Zanzibar,
Or to the regions of the Midnight Sun;
Ionian isles are thine, and all the fairy shores!

REMINISCENCE

THOUGH I am native to this frozen zone
That half the twelvemonth torpid lies, or dead;
Though the cold azure arching overhead
And the Atlantic's never-ending moan
Are mine by heritage, I must have known
Life otherwhere in epochs long since fled;
For in my veins some Orient blood is red,
And through my thought are lotus blossoms blown.
I do remember . . . it was just at dusk,
Near a walled garden at the river's turn
(A thousand summers seem but yesterday!),

A Nubian girl, more sweet than Khoorja musk,
Came to the water-tank to fill her urn,

And, with the urn, she bore my heart away!

MRS. ALEXANDER

MRS. CECIL FRANCES (HUMPHREY) ALEXANDER, an Irish poetess of distinction. Born at Strabane, near Dublin, Ireland, about 1830; died at Londonderry, October 12, 1895. Author of seven volumes of hymns and poems.

THE BURIAL OF MOSES

By Nebo's lonely mountain,
On this side Jordan's wave,
In a vale in the land of Moab
There lies a lonely grave.

And no man knows that sepulcher,
And no man saw it e'er,

For the angels of God upturned the sod,
And laid the dead man there.

That was the grandest funeral

That ever passed on earth;
But no man heard the trampling,
Or saw the train go forth
Noiselessly as the daylight

Comes back when night is done,
And the crimson streak on ocean's cheek
Grows into the great sun.

Noiselessly as the springtime

Her crown of verdure weaves,
And all the trees on all the hills
Open their thousand leaves;

So without sound of music,

Or voice of them that wept,

Silently down from the mountain's crown,
The great procession swept.

Perchance the bald old eagle,

On gray Beth-Peor's height,
Out of his lonely eyrie,

Looked on the wondrous sight;

Perchance the lion stalking,

Still shuns that hallowed spot,

For beast and bird have seen and heard
That which man knoweth not.

But when the warrior dieth,

His comrades in the war,

With arms reversed and muffled drum,

Follow his funeral car;

They show the banners taken,

They tell his battles won,

And after him lead his masterless steed,
While peals the minute gun.

Amid the noblest of the land
We lay the sage to rest,

And give the bard an honored place,

With costly marble drest,

In the great minster transept

Where lights like glories fall,

And the organ rings, and the sweet choir sings Along the emblazoned wall.

This was the truest warrior
That ever buckled sword,

This the most gifted poet

That ever breathed a word;
And never earth's philosopher
Traced with his golden pen,

On the deathless page, truths half so sage
As he wrote down for men.

And had he not high honor, —

The hillside for a pall,

To lie in state while angels wait

With stars for tapers tall,

And the dark rock-pines like tossing plumes,

Over his bier to wave,

And God's own hand, in that lonely land,

To lay him in the grave?

In that strange grave without a name,
Whence his uncoffined clay

Shall break again, O wondrous thought!
Before the judgment day,

And stand with glory wrapt around
On the hills he never trod,

And speak of the strife that won our life,
With the Incarnate Son of God.

O lonely grave in Moab's land!
O dark Beth-Peor's hill!
Speak to these curious hearts of ours,

And teach them to be still.

God hath His mysteries of grace,

Ways that we cannot tell;

He hides them deep, like the hidden sleep
Of him He loved so well.

HENRY ALFORD

HENRY ALFORD, Dean of Canterbury. Born in London, October 10, 1810; died at Canterbury, January 12, 1871. Educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, he became an eminent biblical student and achieved distinction as a poet and man of letters. He was accomplished also in painting and music, and excelled as an orator. His most popular poetical work is entitled "The School of the Heart and other Poems." His edition of the Greek New Testament secured for him a high reputation as a critical scholar.

HYMN TO THE SEA

THOU and the earth, twin sisters, as they say,
In the old prime were fashioned in one day;
And therefore thou delightest evermore
With her to lie and play

The summer hours away,

Curling thy lovely ripples up her quiet shore.