Puslapio vaizdai
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Even fetters for the body

Were but bands of sand, and vain
While the spirit thus can wander,
Singing through its own domain.

In the long still hours of darkness,
Stretched from weary chime to chime;
Thus beside my own Castalia

I can gather flowers of rhyme

And with all their fresh dew freighted,
Fling them on the stream of time!

T. B. READ.

THE SINGERS.

CHERRY-BLOSSOM nested
Sweet the thrushes sing;
Thrushes freckle-breasted

Lifting heart and wing;
For joy of cherry-blossoms evermore they sing.

Comes the time of berries,

They will sing no more ;
Hiding among cherries,

Happy in their store;

In the time of cherries thrushes sing no more.

WM. SAWYER.

SEEKING THE MAY-FLOWER.

61

SEEKING THE MAY-FLOWER.

THE sweetest sound our whole year round-
"Tis the first robin of the Spring!

The song of the full orchard choir
Is not so fine a thing.

Glad sights are common nature draws
Her random pictures through the year,
But oft her music bids us long
Remember those most dear.

To me, when in the sudden Spring
I hear the earliest robin's lay,
With the first trill there comes again
One picture of the May.

The veil is parted wide, and lo,

A moment, though my eyelids close, Once more I see that wooded hill Where the arbutus grows.

I see the village Dryad kneel,
Trailing her slender fingers through
The knotted tendrils, as she lifts
Their pink, pale flowers to view.

Fresh blows the breeze through hemlock-trees,
The fields are edged with green below;
And naught but youth and hope and love
We know or care to know!

Hark, from the moss-clung apple-bough,
Beyond the tumbled wall, there broke
That gurgling music of the May,—
'Twas the first robin spoke!

I heard it, ay, and heard it not,—
For little then my glad heart wist
What toil and time should come to pass,
And what delight be missed.

Nor thought thereafter, year by year,
Hearing that fresh yet olden song,
To yearn for unreturning joys

That with its joy belong.

E. C. STEDMAN.

OLD AND NEW.

I WATCHED a storm-hued ocean flash and change;
I watched in gold and pearl a sunset die :
Far on their pilgrimages, drear and strange
The mighty blasts went by.

It was the farewell twilight of the year,
And, looking sadly oceanward, there came
A vision to mine eyes, distant yet clear—
Two spirits vast of frame.

Lo, on the dark waves as on stone they trod !

A massive helmet gleamed from either head, And either was in stature like a god,

Either a shape to dread.

63

THE BEST.

And both were clad in warrior-mail, and bore
Blades that are brandished but by giant thews;
And both a mien of stubborn conflict wore,
Grandly to win or lose.

One spirit's face was as the face of Him

Who knows the world's full depths of woe and crime:
Care had not made his eager look more dim,
Though blanched his locks with time.

The other's face was youthful as the morn,

And radiant with divinest hope.

Then past

A wrack of gloomier cloud my dream was borne,
Oceanward on the blast.

But later, just at midnight, when the clocks
Were sounding twelve, I, seated all alone,

Heard-was it the dull boom from shore-land rocks,
Or the Old Year's death groan.

EDGAR FAWCETT.

THE BEST.

BETTER to dwell with lowly things,
And with their growth to grow;
To feel within those secret springs,
That gather cool and slow.

Born of such stillness, wells the brook,

In leafy closet dim ;'

Till the full silence of the nook

O'erflows into a hymn.

The little singer trips along,
In musical content;

But ever gains a fuller song,
And learns its own intent.

Gladly it spends its tuneful grace
In hidden minstrelsy;

Nor asks, as yet, a wider space,
But just to sing and be.

In simple silence thrives its heart :—
It waters flowerets shy,

It feels the spotted fishes dart,
It mirrors bits of sky;

Till slipping down by hillside farms,
Its ministries enlarge;

And in the meadow's circling arms,
It wins a broader marge.

White lilies anchor on its breast,
A boat glides softly through,
And ever deeper grows its rest
The more it has to do.

For in its tasks it knows no haste,
Nor lets the music cease,-
Too free to keep, too calm to waste,
The largesse of its peace;

But bears it on to out-stretched lands,
Where thirsty cities wait;

And then, at length, it understands
The fulness of its fate.

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