How shaped it matters not, upon my walls

Paints discs as perfect-rounded as its

source,

And, like its antitype, the ray divine, However finding entrance, perfect still, Repeats the image unimpaired of God.

We, who by shipwreck only find the shores

Of divine wisdom, can but kneel at

first;

Can but exult to feel beneath our feet, That long stretched vainly down the yielding deeps,

The shock and sustenance of solid earth; Inland afar we see what temples gleam Through immemorial stems of sacred groves,

And we conjecture shining shapes therein;

Yet for a space we love to wonder here Among the shells and sea-weed of the beach.

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

hair

"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.

66

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,