Where the lake's frore Sahara of nevertracked white,

When the crack shoots across it, complains to the night

With a long, lonely moan, that leagues northward is lost,

As the ice shrinks away from the tread of the frost;

Where the lumberers sit by the log-fires that throw

Their own threatening shadows far round o'er the snow,

When the wolf howls aloof, and the wavering glare

Flashes out from the blackness the eyes of the bear,

When the wood's huge recesses, halflighted, supply

A canvas where Fancy her mad brush may try,

Blotting in giant Horrors that venture not

down

Through the right-angled streets of the brisk, whitewashed town,

But skulk in the depths of the measureless wood

Mid the Dark's creeping whispers that curdle the blood,

When the eye, glanced in dread o'er the shoulder, may dream,

Ere it shrinks to the camp-fire's companioning gleam,

That it saw the fierce ghost of the Red Man crouch back

To the shroud of the tree-trunk's invincible black;

There the old shapes crowd thick round the pine-shadowed camp, Which shun the keen gleam of the scholarly lamp,

And the seed of the legend finds true Norland ground,

While the border-tale's told and the canteen flits round.

A CONTRAST

THY love thou sentest oft to me, And still as oft I thrust it back; Thy messengers I could not see

Now every day thy love I meet,

As o'er the earth it wanders wide, With weary step and bleeding feet, Still knocking at the heart of pride And offering grace, though still denied.

EXTREME UNCTION

Go! leave me, Priest; my soul would be Alone with the consoler, Death;

Far sadder eyes than thine will see

This crumbling clay yield up its breath; These shrivelled hands have deeper stains Than holy oil can cleanse away, Hands that have plucked the world's coarse gains

As erst they plucked the flowers of May.

Call, if thou canst, to these gray eyes

Some faith from youth's traditions

wrung;

This fruitless husk which dustward dries
Hath been a heart once, hath been young;
On this bowed head the awful Past
Once laid its consecrating hands;
The Future in its purpose vast

Paused, waiting my supreme commands.

But look! whose shadows block the door?
Who are those two that stand aloof?
See on my hands this freshening gore
Writes o'er again its crimson proof!
My looked-for death-bed guests are met;
There my dead Youth doth wring its
hands,

And there, with eyes that goad me yet,
The ghost of my Ideal stands !

Yes, I who now, with angry tears,

Am exiled back to brutish clod, Have borne unquenched for fourscore years A spark of the eternal God; And to what end? How yield I back

The trust for such high uses given? Heaven's light hath but revealed a track Whereby to crawl away from heaven.

Men think it is an awful sight

To see a soul just set adrift

On that drear voyage from whose night
The ominous shadows never lift;
But 't is more awful to behold

A helpless infant newly born,
Whose little hands unconscious hold
The keys of darkness and of morn.

Mine held them once; I flung away
Those keys that might have open set
The golden sluices of the day,

But clutch the keys of darkness yet;
I hear the reapers singing go

Into God's harvest; I, that might With them have chosen, here below Grope shuddering at the gates of night.

O glorious Youth, that once wast mine ! O high Ideal! all in vain

Ye enter at this ruined shrine

Whence worship ne'er shall rise again; The bat and owl inhabit here,

The snake nests in the altar-stone, The sacred vessels moulder near, The image of the God is gone.

With diet spare and raiment thin
He shielded himself from the father of sin;
With bed of iron and scourgings oft,
His heart to God's hand as wax made soft.

Through earnest prayer and watchings long

He sought to know 'tween right and wrong,
Much wrestling with the blessed Word
To make it yield the sense of the Lord,
That he might build a storm-proof creed
To fold the flock in at their need.

At last he builded a perfect faith,
Fenced round about with The Lord thus

saith;

To himself be fitted the doorway's size, Meted the light to the need of his eyes, And knew, by a sure and inward sign, That the work of his fingers was divine.

Then Ambrose said, "All those shall die The eternal death who believe not as I;" And some were boiled, some burned in fire, Some sawn in twain, that his heart's desire, For the good of men's souls might be satisfied

By the drawing of all to the righteous side.

One day, as Ambrose was seeking the truth
In his lonely walk, he saw a youth
Resting himself in the shade of a tree;
It had never been granted him to see
So shining a face, and the good man
thought

'T were pity he should not believe as he ought.

So he set himself by the young man's side, And the state of his soul with questions tried;

But the heart of the stranger was hardened indeed,

Nor received the stamp of the one true creed;

And the spirit of Ambrose waxed sore to find

Such features the porch of so narrow a mind.

"As each beholds in cloud and fire The shape that answers his own desire, So each," said the youth, "in the Law shall find

The figure and fashion of his mind;

And to each in his mercy hath God allowed His several pillar of fire and cloud."

The soul of Ambrose burned with zeal
And holy wrath for the young man's weal:
"Believest thou then, most wretched
youth,"

Cried he, "a dividual essence in Truth?
I fear me thy heart is too cramped with sin
To take the Lord in his glory in."

Now there bubbled beside them where they stood

A fountain of waters sweet and good;
The youth to the streamlet's brink drew

near

Saying, "Ambrose, thou maker of creeds, look here!"

Six vases of crystal then he took,
And set them along the edge of the brook.

"As into these vessels the water I pour,
There shall one hold less, another more,
And the water unchanged, in every case,
Shall put on the figure of the vase;

O thou, who wouldst unity make through strife,

Canst thou fit this sign to the Water of Life?"

When Ambrose looked up, he stood alone, The youth and the stream and the vases were gone;

But he knew, by a sense of humbled grace, He had talked with an angel face to face, And felt his heart change inwardly,

As he fell on his knees beneath the tree.

ABOVE AND BELOW

I

DWELLERS in the valley-land, Who in deep twilight grope and cower, Till the slow mountain's dial-hand

Shorten to noon's triumphal hour, While ye sit idle, do ye think

The Lord's great work sits idle too? That light dare not o'erleap the brink

Of morn, because 't is dark with you?

Though yet your valleys skulk in night,
In God's ripe fields the day is cried,
And reapers, with their sickles bright,
Troop, singing, down the mountain-side :

Lone watcher on the mountain-height,
It is right precious to behold
The first long surf of climbing light
Flood all the thirsty east with gold;
But we, who in the shadow sit,

Know also when the day is nigh,
Seeing thy shining forehead lit
With his inspiring prophecy.

Thou hast thine office; we have ours;
God lacks not early service here,
But what are thine eleventh hours
He counts with us for morning cheer;
Our day, for Him, is long enough,

And when He giveth work to do,
The bruised reed is amply tough

To pierce the shield of error through.

But not the less do thou aspire

Light's earlier messages to preach; Keep back no syllable of fire,

Plunge deep the rowels of thy speech. Yet God deems not thine aeried sight More worthy than our twilight dim; For meek Obedience, too, is Light, And following that is finding Him.

THE CAPTIVE

IT was past the hour of trysting,
But she lingered for him still;
Like a child, the eager streamlet
Leaped and laughed adown the hill,
Happy to be free at twilight

From its toiling at the mill.

Then the great moon on a sudden Ominous, and red as blood,

Startling as a new creation,
O'er the eastern hilltop stood,
Casting deep and deeper shadows
Through the mystery of the wood.

Dread closed vast and vague about her,
And her thoughts turned fearfully
To her heart, if there some shelter
From the silence there might be,
Like bare cedars leaning inland

From the blighting of the sea.

Yet he came not, and the stillness
Dampened round her like a tomb;
She could feel cold eyes of spirits

Looking on her through the gloom,
She could hear the groping footsteps
Of some blind, gigantic doom.

Suddenly the silence wavered

Like a light mist in the wind,
For a voice broke gently through it,
Felt like sunshine by the blind,
And the dread, like mist in sunshine,
Furled serenely from her mind.

"Once my love, my love forever,

Flesh or spirit, still the same, If I failed at time of trysting, Deem thou not my faith to blame; I, alas, was made a captive,

As from Holy Land I came.

"On a green spot in the desert,

Gleaming like an emerald star, Where a palm-tree, in lone silence, Yearning for its mate afar, Droops above a silver runnel, Slender as a scimitar,

"There thou 'lt find the humble postern To the castle of my foe;

If thy love burn clear and faithful,
Strike the gateway, green and low,
Ask to enter, and the warder
Surely will not say thee no."

Slept again the aspen silence,
But her loneliness was o'er;
Round her soul a motherly patience
Clasped its arms forevermore;
From her heart ebbed back the sorrow,
Leaving smooth the golden shore.
Donned she now the pilgrim scallop,
Took the Pilgrim staff in hand;

Like a cloud-shade flitting eastward, Wandered she o'er sea and land; And her footsteps in the desert

Fell like cool rain on the sand.

Soon, beneath the palm-tree's shadow,
Knelt she at the postern low;
And thereat she knocked full gently,
Fearing much the warder's no;
All her heart stood still and listened,
As the door swung backward slow.

There she saw no surly warder
With an eye like bolt and bar;
Through her soul a sense of music
Throbbed, and, like a guardian Lar
On the threshold stood an angel,
Bright and silent as a star.

Fairest seemed he of God's seraphs,
And her spirit, lily-wise,
Opened when he turned upon her
The deep welcome of his eyes,
Sending upward to that sunlight
All its dew for sacrifice.

Then she heard a voice come onward
Singing with a rapture new,
As Eve heard the songs in Eden,
Dropping earthward with the dew;
Well she knew the happy singer,
Well the happy song she knew.

Forward leaped she o'er the threshold,
Eager as a glancing surf;

Fell from her the spirit's languor,
Fell from her the body's scurf;
'Neath the palm next day some Arabs
Found a corpse upon the turf.

THE BIRCH-TREE

RIPPLING through thy branches goes the sunshine,

Among thy leaves that palpitate forever; Ovid in thee a pining Nymph had pris

oned,

The soul once of some tremulous inland river,

Quivering to tell her woe, but, ah! dumb, dumb forever!

While all the forest, witched with slumberous moonshine,