THE STONE-CUTTER'S SIX WISHES.
Then the rich man murmured :
"Mine is but useless treasure
If I've no right to ride abroad
In all this pomp and pleasure,
With glittering courtiers all around—
With the gold badge of empire crown'd."
Again the murmur mounted,
Again the angel heard :
"Thou shalt be Emperor !" he said.
Soon had he kept his word,
Now the poor Stone-cutter elate,
Rode forth in his imperial state.
Runners ran before him,
And his titles cried ;
Splendid horsemen rode behind,
More splendid at his side;
While one above his head did hold
The great umbrella all of gold.
But fiercely beat the sunbeams;
And all the land was parched;
The road was white and dusty
Where the grand procession marched ;
The Emperor cursed the blinding ray
And almost fainted by the way.
"A fine thing to be Emperor"
He murmured, "when the heat
Pays no regard to all my power,
And these fierce sunbeams beat
On
me, like any common one;
"Tis plain that I must be the Sun!"
"Lo!" spake the guardian angel : "Now surely thou'rt content?" For now he had become the Sun, And forth his arrow sent, Below, above, to right, to left,
Till all the earth was parched and cleft ;
Till all the green things withered ;
Till all the brooks were dried;
Till all the princes of the world
Against the sunbeams cried.
Then a soft cool Cloud stole in below,
And bade the beam no farther go.
"The Cloud alone is mighty!
The Cloud alone is great!
The Cloud can dare defy my power,
And my burning wrath abate.
To be the Sun no more I'm proud;
I only want to be the Cloud!"
Again the guardian angel heard,
Again the prayer was granted;
Right in between the sun and earth
Lay the soft cool Cloud undaunted:
The half-dead earth took heart again,
And listened, longing, for the rain.
First in stealthy dews and drops,
Then in whispering showers,
Then in mad-roaring waterspouts-
The wrathful watery Powers---
Till every river overflowed,
And wasted all the land abroad.
THE STONE-CUTTER'S SIX WISHES.
Trees and men, and cattle
Whirled pell-mell down the flood;
Castle and cot in ruin crashed;
Only the Rock withstood,
And smiled to feel the paltry beat
Of fuming billows round his feet.
"I'm master, I!" cried the baffled Cloud;
"I fain would be the Rock!"
The angel heard, the change was wrought
Ere he the words well spoke ;
His foot deep-planted in the ground,
His rugged head with sunshine crown'd.
No man could climb his pinnacle,
No storm could shake his root;
In vain the Cloud might spend its spite,
The sun its arrows shoot.
The floods their wildest passion proved—
He stood immovable, unmoved.
Then a poor Stone-cutter
That in the quarries wrought, Came boldly to the Rock's huge feet, And pick and hammer brought;
Steadily, surely day by day,
He hewed the Rock's huge bulk away.
"How then! and hath a mortal
A power beyond my own,
To carve these mighty blocks away
From out my breast of stone?"
He needs must end where he began,
He prayed to be that Quarry-man.
It was a pining captive bird, a piteous sight to see,
And, with her blue eyes full of tears, our Mary set it free:
Our little Mary,-she of whom somebody said in play,
She looked as if she wanted wings to let her fly away!
The little bird it fluttered out, then paused upon a tree,
As if it had one other song for Mary and for me:
"It never sang so sweet before," said Mary with a sigh,
"It never sang so sweet before as now it sings Good-bye!
"I think it sings of the trim nest it has not quite forgot-
The nest among the secret leaves, where noon is never hot;
Poor little bird! that was last year, and winter came between,
I do not think you'll find your nest among the new-born green.
"But you can build another nest,—a refuge of your own, With other singers wake the trees,-you need not build alone: -Yet once I saw a woful sight among the harvest sheaves,
A lark that watched her murdered mate upon the faded leaves.
"Still it is singing, singing on; it says the world is fair,
The sky is bright, the trees are cool, and beauty everywhere:
Now it is singing something else I scarcely understand-
That winds may come and rains may fall, but freedom is at hand."
ISABELLA FYVIE MAYO.
THE Pilgrim Fathers-where are they?
The waves that brought them o'er
Still roll in the bay and throw their spray
As they break along the shore:
Still roll in the bay, as they roll'd that day,
When the Mayflower moored below,
When the sea around was black with storms,
And white the shore with snow.
The mists that wrapped the Pilgrim's sleep,
Still brood upon the tide ;
And his rocks yet keep their watch by the deep,
To stay its waves of pride.
But the snow-white sail, that he gave to the gale
When the heavens look'd dark, is gone ;—
As an angel's wing, through an opening cloud,
Is seen, and then withdrawn.
* The Pilgrim Fathers were Puritans of England who, because of persecution for their religious belief, first escaped to Holland, and afterwards went in the Mayflower to America, and founded the United States.
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