And, after many moons, the longli- Then Selfishness creeps in the last of all, ness Wearied the elder brother, and he Warming her lean hands at the said, 'Why should I dwell here far from And crouching o'er the embers, to lonely hearth, shut out are left, beside. From the free, natural joys that Whatever paltry warmth and light men, shut out fit my age? 50 Lo, I am tall and strong, well With avaricious greed, from all skilled to hunt, Patient of toil and hunger, and So, for long months, the sister hunted wide, not yet Have seen the danger which I And cared for little Sheemah tenderly; dared not look Full in the face; what hinders me But, daily more and more, the to be loneliness A mighty Brave and Chief among Grew wearisome, and to herself my kin?' 30 So, taking up his arrows and his bow, she sighed, 'Am I not fair? at least the glassy pool, As if to hunt, he journeyed swiftly | That hath no cause to flatter, tells me so; on, Until he gained the wigwams of But, oh, how flat and meaningless his tribe, the tale, Where, choosing out a bride, he Unless it tremble on a lover's soon forgot, tongue! In all the fret and bustle of new Beauty hath no true glass, except life, it be 60 The little Sheemah and his fa- In the sweet privacy of loving But Sheemah, left alone within the lodge, Late in the Spring, when all the ice was gone, Waited and waited, with a shrink- The elder brother, fishing in the Thinking each rustle was his sis- Upon whose edge his father's wig The squirrel's chirrup, and the jay's harsh scream, That said, 'It is thy brother Sheemah's voice.' Autumn's sad remnants of blithe So, paddling swiftly to the bank, Summer's cheer, but to make he saw, Heard at long intervals, seemed Within a little thicket close at The dreadful void of silence si- A child that seemed fast clinging lenter. to a wolf, Soon what small store his sister From the neck downward, gray with shaggy hair, left was gone, And, through the Autumn, he That still crept on and upward as made shift to live he looked. On roots and berries, gathered in The face was turned away, but much fear well he knew Of wolves, whose ghastly howl he That it was Sheemah's, even his Thick-heaped for gleaming leagues The first look of his brother's eyes, (More sick at heart than Ruth, Come to me, little Sheemah, thou and all alone) After the harvest of the merciless wolf, shalt dwell With me henceforth, and know no care or want!' Grim Boaz, who, sharp-ribbed and Sheemah was silent for a space, as if A thing more wild and starving 'T were hard to summon up a human voice, Till, by degrees, the wolf and he And, when he spake, the voice was gaunt, yet feared than himself; grew friends, through. And shared together all the winter I know thee not, nor art thou what thou say'st; I have none other brethren than They are slaves who fear to speak 'Alas! my heart is changed right They are slaves who dare not be bitterly; 'Tis shrunk and parched within In the right with two or three. me even now!' COLUMBUS THE Cordage creaks and rattles in the wind, With whims of sudden hush; the reeling sea Now thumps like solid rock beneath the stern, Now leaps with clumsy wrath, strikes short, and, falling Crumbled to whispery foam, slips rustling down The broad backs of the waves, which jostle and crowd To fling themselves upon that unknown shore, Their used familiar since the dawn of time, Whither this foredoomed life is guided on ΙΟ To sway on triumph's hushed, aspiring poise One glittering moment, then to break fulfilled. How lonely is the sea's perpetual swing, The melancholy wash of endless waves, The sigh of some grim monster undescried, Fear-painted on the canvas of the dark, Shifting on his uneasy pillow of brine! Yet night brings more companions than the day The rack or fagot, shudder like a leaf To this drear waste; new constellations burn, And fairer stars, with whose calm Wrinkled with frost, and loose upon its stem. height my soul Finds nearer sympathy than with The wicked and the weak, by some my herd dark law, Of earthen souls, whose vision's Have a strange power to shut and scanty ring rivet down 20 Makes me its prisoner to beat my Their own horizon round us, to O God! this world, so crammed Far seen across the brine of thank ven beyond. with eager life, less years. 50 That comes and goes and wanders If the chosen soul could never be back to silence alone Like the idle wind, which yet In deep mid-silence, open-doored Which, every hour, throws life The nurse of full-grown souls is Which sucks not from its limbs But sends it flood-tide and creates O'er his own selfish hoard at bay; I might turn back to other destino state, nies, tune's doors; Knit strongly with eternal fibres For one sincere key opes all For up Of all men's separate and united But whoso answers not God's earliest call weals, Self-poised and sole as stars, yet Forfeits or dulls that faculty suone as light, preme Holds up a shape of large Hu- Of lying open to his genius manity To which by natural instinct every man 100 Which makes the wise heart certain of its ends. Pays loyalty exulting, by which Here am I; for what end God all Mould their own lives, and feel their pulses filled knows, not I; Westward still points the inexorable soul: With the red, fiery blood of the Here am I, with no friend but the Conquering that manhood which This have I mused on, since mine should them subdue. eye could first And what gift bring I to this un- Among the stars distinguish and Shall the same tragedy be played Rest on that God-fed Pharos of anew, the north, And the same lurid curtain drop On some blue promontory of hea at last ven lighted On one dread desolation, one fierce That juts far out into the upper crash sea; Of that recoil which on its makers To this one hope my heart hath God Lets Ignorance and Sin and Hun ger make, clung for years, As would a foundling to the talis man Early or late? Or shall that com- Hung round his neck by hands he monwealth Whose potent unity and concen tric force 90 knew not whose; A poor, vile thing and dross to all beside, Can draw these scattered joints Yet he therein can feel a virtue Into a whole ideal man once By the sad pressure of a mother's |