To be the guest of haystack or of hedge, Nobly superior to the household gear That forfeits us our privilege of nature. I bait him with my match-box and my pouch,

Nor grudge the uncostly sympathy of smoke,

His equal now, divinely unemployed. Some smack of Robin Hood is in the

seats,

Making an o'erturned box their table.

Oft

The shrilling girls sit here between school hours,

And play at What's my thought like? while the boys,

With whom the age chivalric ever bides, Pricked on by knightly spur of female

eyes,

Climb high to swing and shout on perilous boughs,

Or, from the willow's armory equipped With musket dumb, green banner, edgeless sword,

Make good the rampart of their treeredoubt

'Gainst eager British storming from below,

And keep alive the tale of Bunker's Hill.

Here, too, the men that mend our village ways,

Vexing McAdam's ghost with pounded slate,

Their nooning take; much noisy talk they spend

On horses and their ills; and, as John Bull

Tells of Lord This or That, who was his friend,

So these make boast of intimacies long With famous teams, and add large estimates,

By competition swelled from mouth to mouth,

Of how much they could draw, till one, ill pleased

To have his legend overbid, retorts: "You take and stretch truck-horses in a string

From here to Long Wharf end, one thing I know,

Not heavy neither, they could never draw,

Ensign's long bow!" Then laughter loud and long.

So they in their leaf-shadowed micro

cosm

I love to enter pleasure by a postern, Not the broad popular gate that gulps the mob;

To find my theatres in roadside nooks, Where men are actors, and suspect it not;

Where Nature all unconscious works her will,

And every passion moves with human gait,

Unhampered by the buskin or the train. Hating the crowd, where we gregarious

mien

Lead lonely lives, I love society, Nor seldom find the best with simple souls

Unswerved by culture from their native bent,

The ground we meet on being primal

man

And nearer the deep bases of our lives.

But O, half heavenly, earthly half, my soul,

Canst thou from those late ecstasies descend,

Thy lips still wet with the miraculous

wine

That transubstantiates all thy baser stuff To such divinity that soul and sense, Once more commingled in their source, are lost,

Canst thou descend to quench a vulgar thirst

With the mere dregs and rinsings of the world?

Well, if my nature find her pleasure

So,

I am content, nor need to blush; I take

My little gift of being clean from God,
Not haggling for a better, holding it
Good as was ever any in the world,
My days as good and full of miracle.
I pluck my nutriment from any bush,
Finding out poison as the first men
did

By tasting and then suffering, if I must. Sometimes my bush burns, and sometimes it is

A leafless wilding shivering by the wall; But I have known when winter barberries

|O, benediction of the higher mood And human-kindness of the lower! for both

I will be grateful while I live, nor ques

tion

The wisdom that hath made us what we are,

With such large range as from the alehouse bench

Can reach the stars and be with both at home.

They tell us we have fallen on prosy days,

Condemned to glean the leavings of earth's feast

Where gods and heroes took delight of old;

But though our lives, moving in one dull round

Of repetition infinite, become Stale as a newspaper once read, and though

History herself, seen in her workshop,

seem

To have lost the art that dyed those glorious panes,

Rich with memorial shapes of saint and

sage,

That pave with splendor the Past's dusky aisles,

Panes that enchant the light of common day

With colors costly as the blood of kings,

Till with ideal hues it edge our thought,

Yet while the world is left, while nature lasts,

And man the best of nature, there shall be

Somewhere contentment for these human hearts,

Some freshness, some unused material For wonder and for song. I lose myself In other ways where solemn guide-posts say,

This way to Knowledge, This way to Repose,

But here, here only, I am ne'er betrayed,

For every by-path leads me to my love.

God's passionless reformers, influences,

prise

Shall man say whence your virtue is, or

divim.

) le make inedicman the wayside weed?

So mused I once within my willow-tent One brave June morning, when the bluff northwest,

Thrusting aside a dank and snuffling day

That made us bitter at our neighbors' sins,

bridge

Thundered, and then was silent; on the roofs

The sun-warped shingles rippled with the heat;

Summer on field and hill, in heart and brain,

All life washed clean in this high tide of June.

sparkling cheer

And roared a lusty stave; the sliding Charles,

Blue toward the west, and bluer and

more blue,

Living and lustrous as a woman's eyes

wise

Endued the realm with brain and hands and eyes,

He sought on every side men brave and just;

And having heard our mountain shepherd's praise,

ward curve

Ran crinkling sunniness, like Helen's

hair

Glimpsed in Elysium, insubstantial gold;

From blossom-clouded orchards, far

To Dara gave a satrapy in trust.

So Dara shepherded a province wide, Nor in his viceroy's sceptre took more pride but envy

Than in his crook before; finds

More food in cities than on mountains bare;

And the frank sun of natures clear and

rare

Breeds poisonous fog in low and narish minds.

"WHAT fairings will ye that I bring?" Said the King to his daughters three; "For I to Vanity Fair am boun,

Now say what shall they be?"

Then up and spake the eldest daughter,
That lady tall and grand :
"O, bring me pearls and diamonds great,
And gold rings for my hand."

Thereafter spake the second daughter,
That was both white and red:
"For me bring silks that will stand
alone,

And a gold comb for my head."

Then came the turn of the least daughter,

That was whiter than thistle-down, And among the gold of her blithesome hair

Dim shone the golden crown.

"There came a bird this morning, And sang 'neath my bower eaves, Till I dreamed, as his music made me, 'Ask thou for the Singing Leaves."" Then the brow of the King swelled crimson

With a flush of angry scorn : "Well have ye spoken, my two eldest,

And chosen as ye were born;

"But she, like a thing of peasant race, That is happy binding the sheaves' Then he saw her dead mother in her face,

|

II.

He mounted and rode three days and nights

Till he came to Vanity Fair, And 't was easy to buy the gems and the silk,

But no Singing Leaves were there.

Then deep in the greenwood rode he,
And asked of every tree,
"O, if you have ever a Singing Leaf,
I pray you give it me !"

But the trees all kept their counsel,
And never a word said they,
Only there sighed from the pine-tops
A music of seas far away.

Only the pattering aspen

Made a sound of growing rain, That fell ever faster and faster,

Then faltered to silence again.

“O, where shall I find a little foot-page That would win both hose and shoon, And will bring to me the Singing Leaves If they grow under the moon?"

Then lightly turned him Walter the page,

By the stirrup as he ran : "Now pledge you me the truesome word Of a king and gentleman,

"That you will give me the first, first thing

You meet at your castle-gate, And the Princess shall get the Singing Leaves,

Or mine be a traitor's fate."

The King's head dropt upon his breast A moment, as it might be ; 'T will be my dog, he thought, and said, "My faith I plight to thee."

Then Walter took from next his heart
A packet small and thin,
"Now give you this to the Princess
Anne,

The Singing Leaves are therein."

III.

leaves."

A maiden to meet him ran,