That thither many times the Paint

er came;

One elm yet bears his name, a feathery tree and tall.

Swiftly the present fades in memory's glow,

Our only sure possession is the past; The village blacksmith died a month ago,

And dim to me the forge's roaring blast;

Soon fire-new medievals we shall

see

Oust the black smithy from its chestnut-tree,

And that hewn down, perhaps, the beehive green and vast.

How many times, prouder than king on throne,

Loosed from the village schooldame's A's and B's,

Panting have I the creaking bellows blown,

And watched the pent volcano's red increase,

Then paused to see the ponderous sledge, brought down

By that hard arm voluminous and brown,

From the white iron swarm its golden vanishing bees.

Dear native town! whose choking elms each year

With eddying dust before their time turn gray,

Pining for rain, -to me thy dust is

dear;

It glorifies the eve of summer day, And when the westering sun half sunken burns,

The mote-thick air to deepest orange turns,

The westward horseman rides through clouds of gold away,

So palpable, I've seen those unshorn few,

The six old willows at the causey's end

As if they would tear up earth's heart in their grasp

Ere the storm should uproot them or make them unclasp;

Its cloudy boughs singing, as suiteth the pine,

To shrunk snow-bearded sea-kings old songs of the brine,

Till they straightened and let their staves fall to the floor, Hearing waves moan again on the perilous shore

Of Vinland, perhaps, while their prow groped its way

'Twixt the frothy gnashed tusks of some ship-crunching bay.

So, pine-like, the legend grew, stronglimbed and tall,

As the Gypsy child grows that eats crusts in the hall;

It sucked the whole strength of the earth and the sky, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, all brought it supply;

'Twas a natural growth, and stood fear

lessly there,

A true part of the landscape as sea, land, and air;

For it grew in good times, ere the fashion it was

To force up these wild births of the woods under glass,

And so, if 't is told as it should be told, Though 't were sung under Venice's moonlight of gold,

You would hear the old voice of its mother, the pine,

Murmur sealike and northern through every line,

And the verses should hang, self-sustained and free,

Round the vibrating stem of the melody, Like the lithe sun-steeped limbs of the parent tree.

Through the right-angled streets of the brisk, whitewashed town,

But skulk in the depths of the measureless wood

'Mid the Dark's creeping whispers that curdle the blood,

When the eye, glanced in dread o'er the shoulder, may dream, Ere it shrinks to the camp-fire's companioning gleam,

That it saw the fierce ghost of the Red Man crouch back

To the shroud of the tree-trunk's invincible black;

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 offeringgrace, though still denied.

EXTREME UNCTION.

Go! leave me, Priest; my soul would be

Alone with the consoler, Death; Far sadder eves than thine will see This crumbling clay yield up its breath;

These shrivelled hands have deeper stains

Than holy oil can cleanse away, — Hands that have plucked the world's coarse gains

As erst they plucked the flowers of May.

Call, if thou canst, to those gray eyes Some faith from youth's traditions

wrung;

This fruitless husk which dustward dries

Has been a heart once, has been

young;

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,

As effortless as woodland nooks

Send violets up and paint them blue.

Yes, I who now, with angry tears,

Am exiled back to brutish clod, Have borne unquenched for fourscore years

A spark of the eternal God; And to what end? How yield I back The trust for such high uses given? Heaven's light hath but revealed a track Whereby to crawl away from heaven.

Men think it is an awful sight

To see a soul just set adrift On that drear voyage from whose night The ominous shadows never lift; But 't is more awful to behold A helpless infant newly born, Whose little hands unconscious hold

The keys of darkness and of morn. Mine held them once; I flung away

Those keys that might have open set The golden sluices of the day,

But clutch the keys of darkness yet ;I hear the reapers singing go

Into God's harvest; I, that might With them have chosen, here below Grope shuddering at the gates of night.

O glorious Youth, that once wast mine! Ö high Ideal! all in vain

Ye enter at this ruined shrine Whence worship ne'er shall rise again;

The bat and owl inhabit here,

The snake nests in the altar-stone, The sacred vessels moulder near, The image of the God is gone.

THE OAK.

WHAT gnarled stretch, what depth of shade, is his !

There needs no crown to mark the forest's king;

How in his leaves outshines full summer's bliss!