THE RHONE CRADLE.

(A VIGNETTE OF TRAVEL.)

HIS is the fair bed of the infant Rhone,

THIS

A cradle broad with fruits and sunshine strown,

A dreamy valley guarded by tall shapes

They call the Alps; where miles of clustering grapes,

Purple of eye, in leafy garments green

Load down the hills, that near and nearer lean

To watch the rushing river and the small
Traffic of men close under that scarred wall
Of some free-booting baron's ancient tower.
Gone are the baron and his murderous power,
And like some uncouth beast of earliest time
The gray bones of the ruined castle climb
The steep, yet utterly inert remain, —
A fossil record, which the years disdain

To wipe away.

Here once the Cæsar bore

His Roman eagle above the icy roar

Of mountain-torrents.

Many centuries passed;

But Gaul sent forth her eagle, at the last :

Napoleon's iron hand cut out a path

Across the rocky Simplon; poured his wrath

From out the clouds; and where the deep gorge breaks Through caverned gloom, to reach the Lombard lakes, His legions swept to Italy, to Rome, —

The conqueror's goal, the world-subduer's home.

Lo, whatsoe'er befall or tribe or town,

The growing river still flows broadening down,

Not otherwise than when it first began ;

Still young, still wild, though many a white-hair'd man Hath laid him down beside its foamy bank,

Nor ever risen again from where he sank.

Child Rhone, thy course is marked by death and woe:

Wilt thou thus swift and laughing always go?

JOHN CARMAN.

OHN Carman of Carmantown

JOHN

Worked hard through the longest day;

He drove his awl and he snapped his thread,

And he had but little to say.

He had but little to say

Except to a neighbor's child:

Three summers old she was, and her eyes
Had a look that was deep and wild.

Her hair was heavy and brown,

Like clouds in a starry night.

She came and sat by the cobbler's bench,
And his soul was filled with delight.

No kith nor kin had he,

And he never went gadding about; A strange, shy man, the people said, And they could not make him out.

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And some of them shook their heads,

And wouldn't tell what they'd heard.
But he drove his awl and snapped his thread, -
And he always kept his word.

And the little child that knew him

Better than all the rest,

She threw her arms around his neck
And went to sleep on his breast.

One day in that dreadful summer

When children died by the score,

John Carman glanced from his work and saw
Her mother there at the door.

He knew by the look in her face,

And his own on a sudden turned white.

He rose from his bench and followed her out,
And watched by the child that night.

He tended her day and night;

He watched by her night and day: He saw the cruel pain in her eyes ; He saw her lips turn gray.

*

The day that the child was buried,

John Carman went back to his last;

And the neighbors said that for weeks and weeks Not a word his clenched lips passed.

"He takes it hard," they gossiped.

“Poor man, he's lacking in wit." "I'll drop in, to-day," said Deacon Gray, "And comfort him up a bit."

So Deacon Gray dropped in

With a kind and neighborly air ;

And before he left, he kneeled on the floor,
And wrestled with God in prayer.

And he said: "O Lord, thou hast stricken
This child in its babyhood:

In Thy own way, we beseech and pray,
Bring forth from evil good."

That night the fire-bells rang,

And the flames shot up to the sky, And into the street, as pale as a sheet, The town-folk flock and cry.