Our social monotone of level days, Might make our best seem banishment;

But it was nothing so; Haply his instinct might divine, Beneath our drift of puritanic snow, The marvel sensitive and fine Of sanguinaria over-rash to blow And trust its shyness to an air malign;

Well might he prize truth's warranty and pledge

in the grim outcrop of our granite edge,

Or Hebrew fervor flashing forth at need

In the gaunt sons of Calvin's iron breed,

As prompt to give as skilled to wir and keep;

But, though such intuitions might not cheer,

Yet life was good to him, and, there or here,

With that sufficing joy, the day was never cheap;

Thereto his mind was its own ample sphere,

And, like those buildings great that

through the year

Carry one temperature, his nature large Made its own climate, nor could any marge

Traced by convention stay him from his bent:

He had a habitude of mountain air; He brought wide outlook where he went,

And could on sunny uplands dwell Of prospect sweeter than the pastures fair

High-hung of viny Neufchâtel; Nor, surely, did he miss Some pale, imaginary bliss Of earlier sights whose inner landscape still was Swiss.

V. 1.

I cannot think he wished so soon to die

With all his senses full of eager heat, And rosy years that stood expectant by To buckle the winged sandals on their feet,

He that was friends with earth, and all her sweet

Took with both hands unsparingly: Truly this life is precious to the root, And good the feel of grass beneath the foot;

To lie in buttercups and clover-bloom, Tenants in common with the bees, And watch the white clouds drift through gulfs of trees,

Is better than long waiting in the tomb;

Only once more to feel the coming spring

As the birds feel it when it bids them sing,

Only once more to see the moon Through leaf-fringed abbey-arches of the elms

Curve her mild sickle in the West Sweet with the breath of hay-cocks, were a boon

Worth any promise of soothsayer realms

Or casual hope of being elsewhere blest;

To take December by the beard And crush the creaking snow with springy foot,

While overhead the North's dumb streamers shoot,

Till Winter fawn upon the check en deared,

Then the long evening-ends Lingered by cosy chimney-nooks, With high companionship of books Or slippered talk of friends

And sweet habitual looks,

Is better than to stop the ears with dust:

Too soon the spectre comes to say, "Thou must!

2.

When toil - crooked hands are crost upon the breast,

They comfort us with sense of rest; They must be glad to lie forever still; Their work is ended with their

day; Another fills their room; 't is the World's ancient way,

Whether for good or ill;

But the deft spinners of the brain, Who love each added day and find it gain,

Them overtakes the doom

What has the Calendar to do

With poets? What Time's fruitless tooth

With gay immortals such as you

Whose years but emphasize your youth?

One air gave both their lease of breath; The same paths lured our boyish feet; One earth will hold us safe in death,

With dust of saints and scholars sweet.

You snub me with a pitying " Where Were you in the September Gale?" Both stared entranced at Lafayette, Saw Jackson dubbed with LL. D. What Cambridge saw not strikes us yet As scarcely worth one's while to see.

Ten years my senior, when my name

In Harvard's entrance-book was writ, Her halls still echoed with the fame Of you, her poet and her wit.

"T is fifty years from then to now:

But your Last Leaf renews its green, Though, for the laurels on your brow (So thick they crowd), 't is hardly

seen.

The oriole's fledglings fifty times

Have flown from our familiar elms; As many poets with their rhymes Oblivion's darkling dust o'erwhelms.

The birds are hushed, the poets gone Where no harsh critic's lash can reach,

And still your winged brood sing on
To all who love our English speech.

Nay, let the foolish records be

That make believe you 're seventyfive;

You're the old Wendell still to me,

And that's the youngest man alive.

The gray-blue eyes, I see them still, The gallant front with brown o'erhung,

The shape alert, the wit at will,

The phrase that stuck, but never

stung.

drawn,

I scarce distinguish yours from mine, And don't we make the Gentiles yawn With "You remembers?" o'er our wine!

If I, with too senescent air,

Invade your elder memory's pale,

Yes, 't is true, But in no sadly literal sense, With elders and coevals too, Whose verb admits no preterite tense

Master alike in speech and song

Of fame's great antiseptic-Style, You with the classic few belong Who tempered wisdom with a smile.

The moral? Where Doubt's eddies toss and twirl

Faith's slender shallop till her footing reel,

Plunge: if you find not peace beneath the whirl,

Groping, you may like Omar grasp a pearl.

ON RECEIVING A COPY OF MR. AUSTIN DOBSON'S "OLD WORLD IDYLLS."

I.

Ar length arrived, your book I take
To read in for the author's sake;
Too gray for new sensations grown,
Can charm to Art or Nature known
This torpor from my senses shake?

Hush! my parched ears what runnels slake?

Is a thrush gurgling from the brake?
Has Spring, on all the breezes blown,
At length arrived?

Long may you live such songs to make,
And I to listen while you wake,
With skill of late disused, each tone
Of the Lesboum barbiton,

At mastery, through long finger-ache, At length arrived.

IL.

As I read on, what changes steal O'er me and through, from head to heel?

A rapier thrusts coat-skirt aside, My rough Tweeds bloom to silken pride,

Who was it laughed? Your hand, Dick Steele !

Down vistas long of clipt charmille Watteau as Pierrot leads the reel; Tabor and pipe the dancers guide As I read on.

While in and out the verses wheel
The wind-caught robes trim feet reveal,
Lithe ankles that to music glide,
But chastely and by chance descried;
Art? Nature? Which do I most feel
As I read on?

TO C. F. BRADFORD

ON THE GIFT OF A MEERSCHAUM PIPE.
THE pipe came safe, and welcome too,
As anything must be from you;
A meerschaum pure, 't would float as
light

As she the girls call Amphitrite.
Mixture divine of foam and clay,
From both it stole the best away:
Its foam is such as crowns the glow
Of beakers brimmed by Veuve Clicquot;
Its clay is but congested lymph
Jove chose to make some choicer nymph;
And here combined, why, this must
be

The birth of some enchanted sea,
Shaped to immortal form, the type
And very Venus of a pipe.