Her fingers shame the ivory keys
     They dance so light along;
     The bloom upon her parted lips
     Is sweeter than the song.

     O perfumed suitor, spare thy smiles!
     Her thoughts are not of thee;
     She better loves the salted wind,
     The voices of the sea.

     Her heart is like an outbound ship
     That at its anchor swings;
     The murmur of the stranded shell
     Is in the song she sings.

     She sings, and, smiling, hears her praise,
     But dreams the while of one
     Who watches from his sea-blown deck
     The icebergs in the sun.

     She questions all the winds that blow,
     And every fog-wreath dim,
     And bids the sea-birds flying north
     Bear messages to him.

     She speeds them with the thanks of men
     He perilled life to save,
     And grateful prayers like holy oil
     To smooth for him the wave.

     Brown Viking of the fishing-smack!
     Fair toast of all the town!—
     The skipper's jerkin ill beseems
     The lady's silken gown!

     But ne'er shall Amy Wentworth wear
     For him the blush of shame
     Who dares to set his manly gifts
     Against her ancient name.

     The stream is brightest at its spring,
     And blood is not like wine;
     Nor honored less than he who heirs
     Is he who founds a line.

     Full lightly shall the prize be won,
     If love be Fortune's spur;
     And never maiden stoops to him
     Who lifts himself to her.

     Her home is brave in Jaffrey Street,
     With stately stairways worn
     By feet of old Colonial knights
     And ladies gentle-born.

     Still green about its ample porch
     The English ivy twines,
     Trained back to show in English oak
     The herald's carven signs.

     And on her, from the wainscot old,
     Ancestral faces frown,—
     And this has worn the soldier's sword,
     And that the judge's gown.

     But, strong of will and proud as they,
     She walks the gallery floor
     As if she trod her sailor's deck
     By stormy Labrador.

     The sweetbrier blooms on Kittery-side,
     And green are Elliot's bowers;
     Her garden is the pebbled beach,
     The mosses are her flowers.

     She looks across the harbor-bar
     To see the white gulls fly;
     His greeting from the Northern sea
     Is in their clanging cry.

     She hums a song, and dreams that he,
     As in its romance old,
     Shall homeward ride with silken sails
     And masts of beaten gold!

     Oh, rank is good, and gold is fair,
     And high and low mate ill;
     But love has never known a law
     Beyond its own sweet will!

     1862.

     I KNOW not, Time and Space so intervene,
     Whether, still waiting with a trust serene,
     Thou bearest up thy fourscore years and ten,
     Or, called at last, art now Heaven's citizen;
     But, here or there, a pleasant thought of thee,
     Like an old friend, all day has been with me.
     The shy, still boy, for whom thy kindly hand
     Smoothed his hard pathway to the wonder-land
     Of thought and fancy, in gray manhood yet
     Keeps green the memory of his early debt.
     To-day, when truth and falsehood speak their words
     Through hot-lipped cannon and the teeth of swords,
     Listening with quickened heart and ear intent
     To each sharp clause of that stern argument,
     I still can hear at times a softer note
     Of the old pastoral music round me float,
     While through the hot gleam of our civil strife
     Looms the green mirage of a simpler life.
     As, at his alien post, the sentinel
     Drops the old bucket in the homestead well,
     And hears old voices in the winds that toss
     Above his head the live-oak's beard of moss,
     So, in our trial-time, and under skies
     Shadowed by swords like Islam's paradise,
     I wait and watch, and let my fancy stray
     To milder scenes and youth's Arcadian day;
     And howsoe'er the pencil dipped in dreams
     Shades the brown woods or tints the sunset streams,
     The country doctor in the foreground seems,
     Whose ancient sulky down the village lanes
     Dragged, like a war-car, captive ills and pains.
     I could not paint the scenery of my song,
     Mindless of one who looked thereon so long;
     Who, night and day, on duty's lonely round,
     Made friends o' the woods and rocks, and knew the sound
     Of each small brook, and what the hillside trees
     Said to the winds that touched their leafy keys;
     Who saw so keenly and so well could paint
     The village-folk, with all their humors quaint,
     The parson ambling on his wall-eyed roan.
     Grave and erect, with white hair backward blown;
     The tough old boatman, half amphibious grown;
     The muttering witch-wife of the gossip's tale,
     And the loud straggler levying his blackmail,—
     Old customs, habits, superstitions, fears,
     All that lies buried under fifty years.
     To thee, as is most fit, I bring my lay,
     And, grateful, own the debt I cannot pay.

              . . . . . . . . . .

     Over the wooded northern ridge,
     Between its houses brown,
     To the dark tunnel of the bridge
     The street comes straggling down.

     You catch a glimpse, through birch and pine,
     Of gable, roof, and porch,
     The tavern with its swinging sign,
     The sharp horn of the church.

     The river's steel-blue crescent curves
     To meet, in ebb and flow,
     The single broken wharf that serves
     For sloop and gundelow.

     With salt sea-scents along its shores
     The heavy hay-boats crawl,
     The long antennae of their oars
     In lazy rise and fall.

     Along the gray abutment's wall
     The idle shad-net dries;
     The toll-man in his cobbler's stall
     Sits smoking with closed eyes.

     You hear the pier's low undertone
     Of waves that chafe and gnaw;
     You start,—a skipper's horn is blown
     To raise the creaking draw.

     At times a blacksmith's anvil sounds
     With slow and sluggard beat,
     Or stage-coach on its dusty rounds
     Fakes up the staring street.

     A place for idle eyes and ears,
     A cobwebbed nook of dreams;
     Left by the stream whose waves are years
     The stranded village seems.

     And there, like other moss and rust,
     The native dweller clings,
     And keeps, in uninquiring trust,
     The old, dull round of things.

     The fisher drops his patient lines,
     The farmer sows his grain,
     Content to hear the murmuring pines
     Instead of railroad-train.

     Go where, along the tangled steep
     That slopes against the west,
     The hamlet's buried idlers sleep
     In still profounder rest.

     Throw back the locust's flowery plume,
     The birch's pale-green scarf,
     And break the web of brier and bloom
     From name and epitaph.

     A simple muster-roll of death,
     Of pomp and romance shorn,
     The dry, old names that common breath
     Has cheapened and outworn.

     Yet pause by one low mound, and part
     The wild vines o'er it laced,
     And read the words by rustic art
     Upon its headstone traced.

     Haply yon white-haired villager
     Of fourscore years can say
     What means the noble name of her
     Who sleeps with common clay.

     An exile from the Gascon land
     Found refuge here and rest,
     And loved, of all the village band,
     Its fairest and its best.

     He knelt with her on Sabbath morns,
     He worshipped through her eyes,
     And on the pride that doubts and scorns
     Stole in her faith's surprise.

     Her simple daily life he saw
     By homeliest duties tried,
     In all things by an untaught law
     Of fitness justified.

     For her his rank aside he laid;
     He took the hue and tone
     Of lowly life and toil, and made
     Her simple ways his own.

     Yet still, in gay and careless ease,
     To harvest-field or dance
     He brought the gentle courtesies,
     The nameless grace of France.

     And she who taught him love not less
     From him she loved in turn
     Caught in her sweet unconsciousness
     What love is quick to learn.

     Each grew to each in pleased accord,
     Nor knew the gazing town
     If she looked upward to her lord
     Or he to her looked down.

     How sweet, when summer's day was o'er,
     His violin's mirth and wail,
     The walk on pleasant Newbury's shore,
     The river's moonlit sail!

     Ah! life is brief, though love be long;
     The altar and the bier,
     The burial hymn and bridal song,
     Were both in one short year!

     Her rest is quiet on the hill,
     Beneath the locust's bloom
     Far off her lover sleeps as still
     Within his scutcheoned tomb.

     The Gascon lord, the village maid,
     In death still clasp their hands;
     The love that levels rank and grade
     Unites their severed lands.

     What matter whose the hillside grave,
     Or whose the blazoned stone?
     Forever to her western wave
     Shall whisper blue Garonne!

     O Love!—so hallowing every soil
     That gives thy sweet flower room,
     Wherever, nursed by ease or toil,
     The human heart takes bloom!—

     Plant of lost Eden, from the sod
     Of sinful earth unriven,
     White blossom of the trees of God
     Dropped down to us from heaven!

     This tangled waste of mound and stone
     Is holy for thy sale;
     A sweetness which is all thy own
     Breathes out from fern and brake.

     And while ancestral pride shall twine
     The Gascon's tomb with flowers,
     Fall sweetly here, O song of mine,
     With summer's bloom and showers!

     And let the lines that severed seem
     Unite again in thee,
     As western wave and Gallic stream
     Are mingled in one sea!

     1863.

     PRELUDE.

     ALONG the roadside, like the flowers of gold
     That tawny Incas for their gardens wrought,
     Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-rod,
     And the red pennons of the cardinal-flowers
     Hang motionless upon their upright staves.
     The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind,
     Vying-weary with its long flight from the south,
     Unfelt; yet, closely scanned, yon maple leaf
     With faintest motion, as one stirs in dreams,
     Confesses it. The locust by the wall
     Stabs the noon-silence with his sharp alarm.
     A single hay-cart down the dusty road
     Creaks slowly, with its driver fast asleep
     On the load's top. Against the neighboring hill,
     Huddled along the stone wall's shady side,
     The sheep show white, as if a snowdrift still
     Defied the dog-star. Through the open door
     A drowsy smell of flowers-gray heliotrope,
     And white sweet clover, and shy mignonette—
     Comes faintly in, and silent chorus lends
     To the pervading symphony of peace.
     No time is this for hands long over-worn
     To task their strength; and (unto Him be praise
     Who giveth quietness!) the stress and strain
     Of years that did the work of centuries
     Have ceased, and we can draw our breath once more
     Freely and full. So, as yon harvesters
     Make glad their nooning underneath the elms
     With tale and riddle and old snatch of song,
     I lay aside grave themes, and idly turn
     The leaves of memory's sketch-book, dreaming o'er
     Old summer pictures of the quiet hills,
     And human life, as quiet, at their feet.

     And yet not idly all. A farmer's son,
     Proud of field-lore and harvest craft, and feeling
     All their fine possibilities, how rich
     And restful even poverty and toil
     Become when beauty, harmony, and love
     Sit at their humble hearth as angels sat
     At evening in the patriarch's tent, when man
     Makes labor noble, and his farmer's frock
     The symbol of a Christian chivalry
     Tender and just and generous to her
     Who clothes with grace all duty; still, I know
     Too well the picture has another side,—
     How wearily the grind of toil goes on
     Where love is wanting, how the eye and ear
     And heart are starved amidst the plenitude
     Of nature, and how hard and colorless
     Is life without an atmosphere. I look
     Across the lapse of half a century,
     And call to mind old homesteads, where no flower
     Told that the spring had come, but evil weeds,
     Nightshade and rough-leaved burdock in the place
     Of the sweet doorway greeting of the rose
     And honeysuckle, where the house walls seemed
     Blistering in sun, without a tree or vine
     To cast the tremulous shadow of its leaves
     Across the curtainless windows, from whose panes
     Fluttered the signal rags of shiftlessness.
     Within, the cluttered kitchen-floor, unwashed
     (Broom-clean I think they called it); the best room
     Stifling with cellar damp, shut from the air
     In hot midsummer, bookless, pictureless,
     Save the inevitable sampler hung
     Over the fireplace, or a mourning piece,
     A green-haired woman, peony-cheeked, beneath
     Impossible willows; the wide-throated hearth
     Bristling with faded pine-boughs half concealing
     The piled-up rubbish at the chimney's back;
     And, in sad keeping with all things about them,
     Shrill, querulous-women, sour and sullen men,
     Untidy, loveless, old before their time,
     With scarce a human interest save their own
     Monotonous round of small economies,
     Or the poor scandal of the neighborhood;
     Blind to the beauty everywhere revealed,
     Treading the May-flowers with regardless feet;
     For them the song-sparrow and the bobolink
     Sang not, nor winds made music in the leaves;
     For them in vain October's holocaust
     Burned, gold and crimson, over all the hills,
     The sacramental mystery of the woods.
     Church-goers, fearful of the unseen Powers,
     But grumbling over pulpit-tax and pew-rent,
     Saving, as shrewd economists, their souls
     And winter pork with the least possible outlay
     Of salt and sanctity; in daily life
     Showing as little actual comprehension
     Of Christian charity and love and duty,
     As if the Sermon on the Mount had been
     Outdated like a last year's almanac
     Rich in broad woodlands and in half-tilled fields,
     And yet so pinched and bare and comfortless,
     The veriest straggler limping on his rounds,
     The sun and air his sole inheritance,
     Laughed at a poverty that paid its taxes,
     And hugged his rags in self-complacency!

     Not such should be the homesteads of a land
     Where whoso wisely wills and acts may dwell
     As king and lawgiver, in broad-acred state,
     With beauty, art, taste, culture, books, to make
     His hour of leisure richer than a life
     Of fourscore to the barons of old time,
     Our yeoman should be equal to his home
     Set in the fair, green valleys, purple walled,
     A man to match his mountains, not to creep
     Dwarfed and abased below them. I would fain
     In this light way (of which I needs must own
     With the knife-grinder of whom Canning sings,
     "Story, God bless you! I have none to tell you!")
     Invite the eye to see and heart to feel
     The beauty and the joy within their reach,—
     Home, and home loves, and the beatitudes
     Of nature free to all. Haply in years
     That wait to take the places of our own,
     Heard where some breezy balcony looks down
     On happy homes, or where the lake in the moon
     Sleeps dreaming of the mountains, fair as Ruth,
     In the old Hebrew pastoral, at the feet
     Of Boaz, even this simple lay of mine
     May seem the burden of a prophecy,
     Finding its late fulfilment in a change
     Slow as the oak's growth, lifting manhood up
     Through broader culture, finer manners, love,
     And reverence, to the level of the hills.

     O Golden Age, whose light is of the dawn,
     And not of sunset, forward, not behind,
     Flood the new heavens and earth, and with thee bring
     All the old virtues, whatsoever things
     Are pure and honest and of good repute,
     But add thereto whatever bard has sung
     Or seer has told of when in trance and dream
     They saw the Happy Isles of prophecy
     Let Justice hold her scale, and Truth divide
     Between the right and wrong; but give the heart
     The freedom of its fair inheritance;
     Let the poor prisoner, cramped and starved so long,
     At Nature's table feast his ear and eye
     With joy and wonder; let all harmonies
     Of sound, form, color, motion, wait upon
     The princely guest, whether in soft attire
     Of leisure clad, or the coarse frock of toil,
     And, lending life to the dead form of faith,
     Give human nature reverence for the sake
     Of One who bore it, making it divine
     With the ineffable tenderness of God;
     Let common need, the brotherhood of prayer,
     The heirship of an unknown destiny,
     The unsolved mystery round about us, make
     A man more precious than the gold of Ophir.
     Sacred, inviolate, unto whom all things
     Should minister, as outward types and signs
     Of the eternal beauty which fulfils
     The one great purpose of creation, Love,
     The sole necessity of Earth and Heaven!

              . . . . . . . . . . .

     For weeks the clouds had raked the hills
     And vexed the vales with raining,
     And all the woods were sad with mist,
     And all the brooks complaining.

     At last, a sudden night-storm tore
     The mountain veils asunder,
     And swept the valleys clean before
     The besom of the thunder.

     Through Sandwich notch the west-wind sang
     Good morrow to the cotter;
     And once again Chocorua's horn
     Of shadow pierced the water.

     Above his broad lake Ossipee,
     Once more the sunshine wearing,
     Stooped, tracing on that silver shield
     His grim armorial bearing.

     Clear drawn against the hard blue sky,
     The peaks had winter's keenness;
     And, close on autumn's frost, the vales
     Had more than June's fresh greenness.

     Again the sodden forest floors
     With golden lights were checkered,
     Once more rejoicing leaves in wind
     And sunshine danced and flickered.

     It was as if the summer's late
     Atoning for it's sadness
     Had borrowed every season's charm
     To end its days in gladness.

     Rivers of gold-mist flowing down
     From far celestial fountains,—
     The great sun flaming through the rifts
     Beyond the wall of mountains.

     We paused at last where home-bound cows
     Brought down the pasture's treasure,
     And in the barn the rhythmic flails
     Beat out a harvest measure.

     We heard the night-hawk's sullen plunge,
     The crow his tree-mates calling
     The shadows lengthening down the slopes
     About our feet were falling.

     And through them smote the level sun
     In broken lines of splendor,
     Touched the gray rocks and made the green
     Of the shorn grass more tender.

     The maples bending o'er the gate,
     Their arch of leaves just tinted
     With yellow warmth, the golden glow
     Of coming autumn hinted.

     Keen white between the farm-house showed,
     And smiled on porch and trellis,
     The fair democracy of flowers
     That equals cot and palace.

     And weaving garlands for her dog,
     'Twixt chidings and caresses,
     A human flower of childhood shook
     The sunshine from her tresses.

     Clear drawn against the hard blue sky,
     The peaks had winter's keenness;
     And, close on autumn's frost, the vales
     Had more than June's fresh greenness.

     Again the sodden forest floors
     With golden lights were checkered,
     Once more rejoicing leaves in wind
     And sunshine danced and flickered.

     It was as if the summer's late
     Atoning for it's sadness
     Had borrowed every season's charm
     To end its days in gladness.

     I call to mind those banded vales
     Of shadow and of shining,
     Through which, my hostess at my side,
     I drove in day's declining.

     We held our sideling way above
     The river's whitening shallows,
     By homesteads old, with wide-flung barns
     Swept through and through by swallows;

     By maple orchards, belts of pine
     And larches climbing darkly
     The mountain slopes, and, over all,
     The great peaks rising starkly.

     You should have seen that long hill-range
     With gaps of brightness riven,—
     How through each pass and hollow streamed
     The purpling lights of heaven,—

     On either hand we saw the signs
     Of fancy and of shrewdness,
     Where taste had wound its arms of vines
     Round thrift's uncomely rudeness.

     The sun-brown farmer in his frock
     Shook hands, and called to Mary
     Bare-armed, as Juno might, she came,
     White-aproned from her dairy.

     Her air, her smile, her motions, told
     Of womanly completeness;
     A music as of household songs
     Was in her voice of sweetness.

     Not fair alone in curve and line,
     But something more and better,
     The secret charm eluding art,
     Its spirit, not its letter;—

     An inborn grace that nothing lacked
     Of culture or appliance,
     The warmth of genial courtesy,
     The calm of self-reliance.

     Before her queenly womanhood
     How dared our hostess utter
     The paltry errand of her need
     To buy her fresh-churned butter?

     She led the way with housewife pride,
     Her goodly store disclosing,
     Full tenderly the golden balls
     With practised hands disposing.

     Then, while along the western hills
     We watched the changeful glory
     Of sunset, on our homeward way,
     I heard her simple story.

     The early crickets sang; the stream
     Plashed through my friend's narration
     Her rustic patois of the hills
     Lost in my free-translation.

     "More wise," she said, "than those who swarm
     Our hills in middle summer,
     She came, when June's first roses blow,
     To greet the early comer.

     "From school and ball and rout she came,
     The city's fair, pale daughter,
     To drink the wine of mountain air
     Beside the Bearcamp Water.

     "Her step grew firmer on the hills
     That watch our homesteads over;
     On cheek and lip, from summer fields,
     She caught the bloom of clover.

     "For health comes sparkling in the streams
     From cool Chocorua stealing
     There's iron in our Northern winds;
     Our pines are trees of healing.

     "She sat beneath the broad-armed elms
     That skirt the mowing-meadow,
     And watched the gentle west-wind weave
     The grass with shine and shadow.

     "Beside her, from the summer heat
     To share her grateful screening,
     With forehead bared, the farmer stood,
     Upon his pitchfork leaning.

     "Framed in its damp, dark locks, his face
     Had nothing mean or common,—
     Strong, manly, true, the tenderness
     And pride beloved of woman.

     "She looked up, glowing with the health
     The country air had brought her,
     And, laughing, said: 'You lack a wife,
     Your mother lacks a daughter.

     "'To mend your frock and bake your bread
     You do not need a lady
     Be sure among these brown old homes
     Is some one waiting ready,—

     "'Some fair, sweet girl with skilful hand
     And cheerful heart for treasure,
     Who never played with ivory keys,
     Or danced the polka's measure.'

     "He bent his black brows to a frown,
     He set his white teeth tightly.
     ''T is well,' he said, 'for one like you
     To choose for me so lightly.

     "You think, because my life is rude
     I take no note of sweetness
     I tell you love has naught to do
     With meetness or unmeetness.

     "'Itself its best excuse, it asks
     No leave of pride or fashion
     When silken zone or homespun frock
     It stirs with throbs of passion.

     "'You think me deaf and blind: you bring
     Your winning graces hither
     As free as if from cradle-time
     We two had played together.

     "'You tempt me with your laughing eyes,
     Your cheek of sundown's blushes,
     A motion as of waving grain,
     A music as of thrushes.

     "'The plaything of your summer sport,
     The spells you weave around me
     You cannot at your will undo,
     Nor leave me as you found me.

     "'You go as lightly as you came,
     Your life is well without me;
     What care you that these hills will close
     Like prison-walls about me?

     "'No mood is mine to seek a wife,
     Or daughter for my mother
     Who loves you loses in that love
     All power to love another!

     "'I dare your pity or your scorn,
     With pride your own exceeding;
     I fling my heart into your lap
     Without a word of pleading.'

     "She looked up in his face of pain
     So archly, yet so tender
     'And if I lend you mine,' she said,
     'Will you forgive the lender?

     "'Nor frock nor tan can hide the man;
     And see you not, my farmer,
     How weak and fond a woman waits
     Behind this silken armor?

     "'I love you: on that love alone,
     And not my worth, presuming,
     Will you not trust for summer fruit
     The tree in May-day blooming?'

     "Alone the hangbird overhead,
     His hair-swung cradle straining,
     Looked down to see love's miracle,—
     The giving that is gaining.

     "And so the farmer found a wife,
     His mother found a daughter
     There looks no happier home than hers
     On pleasant Bearcamp Water.

     "Flowers spring to blossom where she walks
     The careful ways of duty;
     Our hard, stiff lines of life with her
     Are flowing curves of beauty.

     "Our homes are cheerier for her sake,
     Our door-yards brighter blooming,
     And all about the social air
     Is sweeter for her coming.

     "Unspoken homilies of peace
     Her daily life is preaching;
     The still refreshment of the dew
     Is her unconscious teaching.

     "And never tenderer hand than hers
     Unknits the brow of ailing;
     Her garments to the sick man's ear
     Have music in their trailing.

     "And when, in pleasant harvest moons,
     The youthful huskers gather,
     Or sleigh-drives on the mountain ways
     Defy the winter weather,—

     "In sugar-camps, when south and warm
     The winds of March are blowing,
     And sweetly from its thawing veins
     The maple's blood is flowing,—

     "In summer, where some lilied pond
     Its virgin zone is baring,
     Or where the ruddy autumn fire
     Lights up the apple-paring,—

     "The coarseness of a ruder time
     Her finer mirth displaces,
     A subtler sense of pleasure fills
     Each rustic sport she graces.

     "Her presence lends its warmth and health
     To all who come before it.
     If woman lost us Eden, such
     As she alone restore it.

     "For larger life and wiser aims
     The farmer is her debtor;
     Who holds to his another's heart
     Must needs be worse or better.

     "Through her his civic service shows
     A purer-toned ambition;
     No double consciousness divides
     The man and politician.

     "In party's doubtful ways he trusts
     Her instincts to determine;
     At the loud polls, the thought of her
     Recalls Christ's Mountain Sermon.

     "He owns her logic of the heart,
     And wisdom of unreason,
     Supplying, while he doubts and weighs,
     The needed word in season.

     "He sees with pride her richer thought,
     Her fancy's freer ranges;
     And love thus deepened to respect
     Is proof against all changes.

     "And if she walks at ease in ways
     His feet are slow to travel,
     And if she reads with cultured eyes
     What his may scarce unravel,

     "Still clearer, for her keener sight
     Of beauty and of wonder,
     He learns the meaning of the hills
     He dwelt from childhood under.

     "And higher, warmed with summer lights,
     Or winter-crowned and hoary,
     The ridged horizon lifts for him
     Its inner veils of glory.

     "He has his own free, bookless lore,
     The lessons nature taught him,
     The wisdom which the woods and hills
     And toiling men have brought him:

     "The steady force of will whereby
     Her flexile grace seems sweeter;
     The sturdy counterpoise which makes
     Her woman's life completer.

     "A latent fire of soul which lacks
     No breath of love to fan it;
     And wit, that, like his native brooks,
     Plays over solid granite.

     "How dwarfed against his manliness
     She sees the poor pretension,
     The wants, the aims, the follies, born
     Of fashion and convention.

     "How life behind its accidents
     Stands strong and self-sustaining,
     The human fact transcending all
     The losing and the gaining.

     "And so in grateful interchange
     Of teacher and of hearer,
     Their lives their true distinctness keep
     While daily drawing nearer.

     "And if the husband or the wife
     In home's strong light discovers
     Such slight defaults as failed to meet
     The blinded eyes of lovers,

     "Why need we care to ask?—who dreams
     Without their thorns of roses,
     Or wonders that the truest steel
     The readiest spark discloses?

     "For still in mutual sufferance lies
     The secret of true living;
     Love scarce is love that never knows
     The sweetness of forgiving.

     "We send the Squire to General Court,
     He takes his young wife thither;
     No prouder man election day
     Rides through the sweet June weather.

     "He sees with eyes of manly trust
     All hearts to her inclining;
     Not less for him his household light
     That others share its shining."

     Thus, while my hostess spake, there grew
     Before me, warmer tinted
     And outlined with a tenderer grace,
     The picture that she hinted.

     The sunset smouldered as we drove
     Beneath the deep hill-shadows.
     Below us wreaths of white fog walked
     Like ghosts the haunted meadows.

     Sounding the summer night, the stars
     Dropped down their golden plummets;
     The pale arc of the Northern lights
     Rose o'er the mountain summits,

     Until, at last, beneath its bridge,
     We heard the Bearcamp flowing,
     And saw across the mapled lawn
     The welcome home lights glowing.

     And, musing on the tale I heard,
     'T were well, thought I, if often
     To rugged farm-life came the gift
     To harmonize and soften;

     If more and more we found the troth
     Of fact and fancy plighted,
     And culture's charm and labor's strength
     In rural homes united,—

     The simple life, the homely hearth,
     With beauty's sphere surrounding,
     And blessing toil where toil abounds
     With graces more abounding.

     1868.

     THE land was pale with famine
     And racked with fever-pain;
     The frozen fiords were fishless,
     The earth withheld her grain.

     Men saw the boding Fylgja
     Before them come and go,
     And, through their dreams, the Urdarmoon
     From west to east sailed slow.

     Jarl Thorkell of Thevera
     At Yule-time made his vow;
     On Rykdal's holy Doom-stone
     He slew to Frey his cow.

     To bounteous Frey he slew her;
     To Skuld, the younger Norn,
     Who watches over birth and death,
     He gave her calf unborn.

     And his little gold-haired daughter
     Took up the sprinkling-rod,
     And smeared with blood the temple
     And the wide lips of the god.

     Hoarse below, the winter water
     Ground its ice-blocks o'er and o'er;
     Jets of foam, like ghosts of dead waves,
     Rose and fell along the shore.

     The red torch of the Jokul,
     Aloft in icy space,
     Shone down on the bloody Horg-stones
     And the statue's carven face.

     And closer round and grimmer
     Beneath its baleful light
     The Jotun shapes of mountains
     Came crowding through the night.

     The gray-haired Hersir trembled
     As a flame by wind is blown;
     A weird power moved his white lips,
     And their voice was not his own.

     "The AEsir thirst!" he muttered;
     "The gods must have more blood
     Before the tun shall blossom
     Or fish shall fill the flood.

     "The AEsir thirst and hunger,
     And hence our blight and ban;
     The mouths of the strong gods water
     For the flesh and blood of man!

     "Whom shall we give the strong ones?
     Not warriors, sword on thigh;
     But let the nursling infant
     And bedrid old man die."

     "So be it!" cried the young men,
     "There needs nor doubt nor parle."
     But, knitting hard his red brows,
     In silence stood the Jarl.

     A sound of woman's weeping
     At the temple door was heard,
     But the old men bowed their white heads,
     And answered not a word.

     Then the Dream-wife of Thingvalla,
     A Vala young and fair,
     Sang softly, stirring with her breath
     The veil of her loose hair.

     She sang: "The winds from Alfheim
     Bring never sound of strife;
     The gifts for Frey the meetest
     Are not of death, but life.

     "He loves the grass-green meadows,
     The grazing kine's sweet breath;
     He loathes your bloody Horg-stones,
     Your gifts that smell of death.

     "No wrong by wrong is righted,
     No pain is cured by pain;
     The blood that smokes from Doom-rings
     Falls back in redder rain.

     "The gods are what you make them,
     As earth shall Asgard prove;
     And hate will come of hating,
     And love will come of love.

     "Make dole of skyr and black bread
     That old and young may live;
     And look to Frey for favor
     When first like Frey you give.

     "Even now o'er Njord's sea-meadows
     The summer dawn begins
     The tun shall have its harvest,
     The fiord its glancing fins."

     Then up and swore Jarl Thorkell
     "By Gimli and by Hel,
     O Vala of Thingvalla,
     Thou singest wise and well!

     "Too dear the AEsir's favors
     Bought with our children's lives;
     Better die than shame in living
     Our mothers and our wives.

     "The full shall give his portion
     To him who hath most need;
     Of curdled skyr and black bread,
     Be daily dole decreed."

     He broke from off his neck-chain
     Three links of beaten gold;
     And each man, at his bidding,
     Brought gifts for young and old.

     Then mothers nursed their children,
     And daughters fed their sires,
     And Health sat down with Plenty
     Before the next Yule fires.

     The Horg-stones stand in Rykdal;
     The Doom-ring still remains;
     But the snows of a thousand winters
     Have washed away the stains.

     Christ ruleth now; the Asir
     Have found their twilight dim;
     And, wiser than she dreamed, of old
     The Vala sang of Him

     1868.

     THE Rabbi Nathan two-score years and ten
     Walked blameless through the evil world, and then,
     Just as the almond blossomed in his hair,
     Met a temptation all too strong to bear,
     And miserably sinned. So, adding not
     Falsehood to guilt, he left his seat, and taught
     No more among the elders, but went out
     From the great congregation girt about
     With sackcloth, and with ashes on his head,
     Making his gray locks grayer. Long he prayed,
     Smiting his breast; then, as the Book he laid
     Open before him for the Bath-Col's choice,
     Pausing to hear that Daughter of a Voice,
     Behold the royal preacher's words: "A friend
     Loveth at all times, yea, unto the end;
     And for the evil day thy brother lives."
     Marvelling, he said: "It is the Lord who gives
     Counsel in need. At Ecbatana dwells
     Rabbi Ben Isaac, who all men excels
     In righteousness and wisdom, as the trees
     Of Lebanon the small weeds that the bees
     Bow with their weight. I will arise, and lay
     My sins before him."

                             And he went his way
     Barefooted, fasting long, with many prayers;
     But even as one who, followed unawares,
     Suddenly in the darkness feels a hand
     Thrill with its touch his own, and his cheek fanned
     By odors subtly sweet, and whispers near
     Of words he loathes, yet cannot choose but hear,
     So, while the Rabbi journeyed, chanting low
     The wail of David's penitential woe,
     Before him still the old temptation came,
     And mocked him with the motion and the shame
     Of such desires that, shuddering, he abhorred
     Himself; and, crying mightily to the Lord
     To free his soul and cast the demon out,
     Smote with his staff the blankness round about.

     At length, in the low light of a spent day,
     The towers of Ecbatana far away
     Rose on the desert's rim; and Nathan, faint
     And footsore, pausing where for some dead saint
     The faith of Islam reared a domed tomb,
     Saw some one kneeling in the shadow, whom
     He greeted kindly: "May the Holy One
     Answer thy prayers, O stranger!" Whereupon
     The shape stood up with a loud cry, and then,
     Clasped in each other's arms, the two gray men
     Wept, praising Him whose gracious providence
     Made their paths one. But straightway, as the sense
     Of his transgression smote him, Nathan tore
     Himself away: "O friend beloved, no more
     Worthy am I to touch thee, for I came,
     Foul from my sins, to tell thee all my shame.
     Haply thy prayers, since naught availeth mine,
     May purge my soul, and make it white like thine.
     Pity me, O Ben Isaac, I have sinned!"

     Awestruck Ben Isaac stood. The desert wind
     Blew his long mantle backward, laying bare
     The mournful secret of his shirt of hair.
     "I too, O friend, if not in act," he said,
     "In thought have verily sinned. Hast thou not read,
     'Better the eye should see than that desire
     Should wander?' Burning with a hidden fire
     That tears and prayers quench not, I come to thee
     For pity and for help, as thou to me.
     Pray for me, O my friend!" But Nathan cried,
     "Pray thou for me, Ben Isaac!"

                                     Side by side
     In the low sunshine by the turban stone
     They knelt; each made his brother's woe his own,
     Forgetting, in the agony and stress
     Of pitying love, his claim of selfishness;
     Peace, for his friend besought, his own became;
     His prayers were answered in another's name;
     And, when at last they rose up to embrace,
     Each saw God's pardon in his brother's face!

     Long after, when his headstone gathered moss,
     Traced on the targum-marge of Onkelos
     In Rabbi Nathan's hand these words were read:
     "Hope not the cure of sin till Self is dead;
     Forget it in love's service, and the debt
     Thou, canst not pay the angels shall forget;
     Heaven's gate is shut to him who comes alone;
     Save thou a soul, and it shall save thy own!"

     1868.