One side I see the summer fields
Not yet disrobed of all their green,
While westerly, along the hills,

Flame the first tints of frosty sheen.

Ah, middle-point, where cloud and storm
Make battle-ground of this my life!
Where, even-matched, the Night and Day
Wage round me their September strife!

I bow me to the threatening gale:
I know, when that is overpast,
Among the peaceful harvest-days,

An Indian-summer comes at last!

"UNDER THE CLOUD AND THROUGH THE

SEA."

So moved they, when false Pharaoh's legion pressed,
Chariots and horsemen following furiously,-

Sons of old Israel, at their God's behest,

Under the cloud and through the swelling sea.

So passed they, fearless, where the parted wave,
With cloven crest uprearing from the sand,-
A solemn aisle before,-behind, a grave,—
Rolled to the beckoning of Jehovah's hand.

So led He them, in desert marches grand,
By toils sublime, with test of long delay,
On to the borders of that Promised Land
Wherein their heritage of glory lay.

And Jordan raged along his rocky bed,

And Amorite spears flashed keen and fearfully:

Still the same pathway must their footsteps tread,Under the cloud and through the threatening sea.

God works no otherwise. No mighty birth
But comes by throes of mortal agony;
No man-child among nations of the earth
But findeth baptism in a stormy sea.

Sons of the Saints who faced their Jordan-flood
In fierce Atlantic's unretreating wave,—
Who by the Red Sea of their glorious blood
Reached to the Freedom that your blood shall save!

O countrymen! God's day is not yet done!
He leaveth not His people utterly!

Count it a covenant, that He leads us on

Beneath the Cloud and through the crimson Sea!

BEHIND THE MASK.

It was an old, distorted face,

An uncouth visage, rough and wild,—
Yet, from behind with laughing grace,
Peeped the fresh beauty of a child.

And so, contrasting strange to-day,
My heart of youth doth inly ask
If half earth's wrinkled grimness may
Be but the baby in the mask.

Behind gray hairs and furrowed brow
And withered look that life puts on,
Each as he wears it comes to know

How the child hides, and is not gone.

For while the inexorable years

To saddened features fit their mould,
Beneath the work of time and tears

Waits something that will not grow old!

The rifted pine upon the hill,

Scarred by the lightning and the wind,
Through bolt and blight doth nurture still
Young fibres underneath the rind;

And many a storm-blast, fiercely sent,
And wasted hope, and sinful stain,
Roughen the strange integument

The struggling soul must wear in pain;

Yet when she comes to claim her own,
Heaven's angels, happy, shall not ask
For that last look the world hath known,
But for the face behind the mask!

SPARROWS.

Little birds sit on the telegraph-wires,

And chitter, and flitter, and fold their wings;

Maybe they think that for them and their sires

Stretched always, on purpose, those wonderful strings:

And perhaps the Thought that the world inspires,
Did plan for the birds, among other things.

Little birds sit on the slender lines,

And the news of the world runs under their feet:

How value rises, and how declines,

How kings with their armies in battle meet;

And all the while, 'mid the soundless signs,

They chirp their small gossipings, foolish-sweet.

Little things light on the lines of our lives,—

Hopes, and joys, and acts of to-day;

And we think that for these the Lord contrives,
Nor catch what the hidden lightnings say.

Yet from end to end his meaning arrives,

And his word runs underneath all the way.

Is life only wires and lightnings then,

Apart from that which about it clings?

Are the thoughts, and the works, and the prayers of men Only sparrows that light on God's telegraph-strings, Holding a moment, and gone again?

Nay; He planned for the birds, with the larger things.

"I WILL ABIDE IN THINE HOUSE."

Among so many, can He care?
Can special love be everywhere?
A myriad homes,—a myriad ways,—
And God's eye over every place.

Over; but in? The world is full;
A grand omnipotence must rule;
But is there life that doth abide
With mine own loving, side by side?

So many, and so wide abroad;
Can any heart have all of God?

From the great spaces, vague and dim,
May one small household gather Him?

I asked my soul bethought of this:

In just that very place of his
Where He, hath put and keepeth you,
God hath no other thing to do.

John Ghillier

THE PAGEANT.

A sound as if from bells of silver,
Or elfin cymbals smitten clear,
Through the frost-pictured panes I hear.

A brightness which outshines the morning,
A splendor brooking no delay,
Beckons and tempts my feet away.

I leave the trodden village highway

For virgin snow-paths glimmering through
A jeweled elm-tree avenue;

Where, keen against the walls of sapphire,
The gleaming tree-bolls, ice-embossed,
Hold up their chandeliers of frost.

I tread in Orient halls enchanted,

I dream the Saga's dream of caves
Gem-lit beneath the North Sea waves!

I walk the land of Eldorado,

I touch its mimic garden bowers,

Its silver leaves and diamond flowers!