To bring us news, and she never came back.
Oh, 't is twenty long years and more

Since that old ship went out of the bay

With my great-hearted brother on her deck; I watched him till he shrank to a speck, And his face was toward me all the way. Bright his hair was, a golden brown, The time we stood at our mother's knee; That beauteous head, if it did go down, Carried sunshine into the sea.

Out in the fields one summer night
We were together, half afraid

Of the corn-leaves rustling, and of the shade
Of the huge hills, stretching so still and far,
Loitering till after the low little light

Of the candle shone through the open door,
And over the haystack's pointed top,
All of a tremble and ready to drop,

The first half hour, the great yellow star
That we with staring, ignorant eyes,
Had often and often watched to see
Propped and held in its place in the skies

By the fork of a tall red mulberry-tree,

Which close to the edge of our flax field grew
Dead at the top, — just one branch full of leaves,
Notched round and lined with wool

From which it tenderly shook the dew
Over our heads when we came to play

In its hand-breadth of shadow day after day.
Afraid to go home, sir; for one of us bore
A nest full of speckled and thin-shelled eggs;
The other, a bird held fast by the legs,
Not so big as a straw of wheat.

The berries we gave her she would n't eat,
But cried and cried till we held her bill,

So slim and shining, to keep her still.
At last we stood at our mother's knee,

AS THROUGH THE LAND AT EVE. 273

Do you think, sir, if you try,

You can paint the look of a lie?
If you can, pray have the grace
To put it solely in the face

Of the urchin that's likest me.

I think 't was solely mine indeed,

But that's no matter,— paint it so ;

The eyes of our mother (take good heed)
Looking not on the nest-full of eggs,

Nor the fluttering bird, held fast by the legs,
But straight through our faces down to our lies,
And oh! with such injured, reproachful surprise,

I felt my heart bleed where the glance went, as though
A sharp blade struck through it. You, sir, know,
That you on the canvas are to repeat

Things that are fairest, things most sweet,

The mother,

the lads with their bird at her knee;
Woods and cornfields and mulberry tree, ·
But oh, that look of reproachful woe!
High as the heavens your name I'll shout,
If you paint the picture and leave that out!

ALICE CARY.

As through the Land at Eve we went.

As

S through the land at eve we went,

And plucked the ripened ears,

We fell out, my wife and I,

Oh, we fell out I know not why,

And kissed again with tears.

For when we came where lies the child
We lost in other years,

There above the little grave,

Oh, there above the little grave,

We kissed again with tears.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

Ο

In the Shadow.

UR brightest fancies serve as rays
That many a dusty mote disclose,
Or play as summer lightning plays
And gathering darkness darker shows.

As mists from smoothest waters rise,
As reddening leaves must soonest fall,
So tears will stream from calmest eyes,
So Misery comes at Pleasure's pall.

Our sky shows darkest through the rifts;
Our spirits breathe infected air;

The dust we are about us lifts,

And rises with our purest prayer.

JACOB A. HOEKSTRA.

I

My Babes in the Wood.

KNOW a story, fairer, dimmer, sadder,

Than any story printed in your books.

You are so glad? It will not make you gladder;
Yet listen, with your pretty restless looks.

"Is it a fairy story?" Well, half fairy —
At least it dates far back as fairies do,
And seems to me as beautiful and airy;
Yet half, perhaps the fairy half, is true.

You had a baby sister and a brother,
Two very dainty people, rosy white,

Sweeter than all things else except each other

Older yet younger - gone from human sight!

A GOOD TIME GOING.

And I, who loved them, and shall love them ever,

And think with yearning tears how each light hand
Crept toward bright bloom and berries I shall never
Know how I lost them. Do you understand?

Poor slightly golden heads! I think I missed them
First in some dreamy, piteous, doubtful way;
But when and where with lingering lips I kissed them,
My gradual parting, I can never say.

Sometimes I fancy that they may have perished
In shadowy quiet of wet rocks and moss,
Near paths whose very pebbles I have cherished,
For their small sakes, since my most bitter loss.

I fancy, too, that they were softly covered
By robins out of apple trees they knew,

Whose nursling wings in far home sunshine hovered,
Before the timid world had dropped the dew.

275

Their names were what yours are. At this you wonder, Their pictures are your own, as you have seen;

And my bird-buried darlings, hidden under

Lost leaves - why, it is your dead selves I mean!

MRS. S. M. B. PIATT.

A Good Time going!

RAVE singer of the coming time,

Sweet minstrel of the joyous present,
Crowned with the noblest wreath of rhyme,
The holly-leaf of Ayrshire's peasant,
Good by! Good by! - Our hearts and hands,
Our lips in honest Saxon phrases,

Cry, God be with him, till he stands

His feet among the English daisies!

'Tis here we part;

- for other eyes

The busy deck, the fluttering streamer,
The dripping arms that plunge and rise,
The waves in foam, the ship in tremor,
The kerchiefs waving from the pier,
The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him,

The deep blue desert, lone and drear,
With heaven above and home before him!

His home! the Western giant smiles,

And twirls the spotty globe to find it ; This little speck the British Isles?

'Tis but a freckle,

never mind it!

He laughs, and all his prairies roll,

Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles,

And ridges stretched from pole to pole

Heave till they crack their iron knuckles!

But Memory blushes at the sneer,

And Honor turns with frown defiant, And Freedom, leaning on her spear,

Laughs louder than the laughing giant :

"An islet is a world," she said,

"When glory with its dust has blended,

And Britain keeps her noble dead

Till earth and seas and skies are rended!"

Beneath each swinging forest-bough

Some arm as stout in death reposes,

From wave-washed foot to heaven-kissed brow Her valor's life-blood runs in roses;

Nay, let our brothers of the West

Write smiling in their florid pages,

One half her soil has walked the rest
In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages!

Hugged in the clinging billow's clasp,

From sea-weed fringe to mountain heather,