There the old shapes crowd thick round the pine-shadowed camp, Which shun the keen gleam of the scholarly lamp,

And the seed of the legend finds true Norland ground,

While the border-tale 's told and the canteen flits round.

A CONTRAST.

THY love thou sentest oft to me,

And still as oft I thrust it back;
Thy messengers I could not see

In those who everything did lack,
The poor, the outcast, and the black.

Pride held his hand before mine eyes,
The world with flattery stuffed mine

ears;

I looked to see a monarch's guise, Nor dreamed thy love would knock for years,

Poor, naked, fettered, full of tears.

Yet, when I sent my love to thee,

Thou with a smile didst take it in, And entertain'dst it royally, Though grimed with earth, with hunger thin,

And leprous with the taint of sin.

Now every day thy love I meet,

As o'er the earth it wanders wide, With weary step and bleeding feet,

Still knocking at the heart of pride And offering grace, though still denied.

But look! whose shadows block the door?

Who are those two that stand aloof? See on my hands this freshening gore Writes o'er again its crimson proof! My looked-for death-bed guests are met;

There my dead Youth doth wring its hands,

And there, with eyes that goad me yet,
The ghost of my Ideal stands!

God bends from out the deep and says,
"I gave thee the great gift of life;
Wast thou not called in many ways?
Are not my earth and heaven at strife?
I gave thee of my seed to sow,

Bringest thou me my hundred-fold?" Can I look up with face aglow,

And answer, "Father, here is gold”?

I have been innocent; God knows
When first this wasted life began,
Not

grape with grape more kindly grows, Than I with every brother-man : Now here I gasp; what lose my kind, When this fast ebbing breath shall part?

What bands of love and service bind

This being to the world's sad heart?

Christ still was wandering o'er the earth
Without a place to lay his head;
He found free welcome at my hearth,
He shared my cup and broke my
bread :

Now, when I hear those steps sublime,

That bring the other world to this, My snake-turned nature, sunk in slime, Starts sideway with defiant hiss.

Upon the hour when I was born,

God said, "Another man shall be," And the great Maker did not scorn Out of himself to fashion me; He sunned me with his ripening looks, And Heaven's rich instincts in me

grew,

tendants both;

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 granted 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."