An' she looked full ez rosy agin Ez the apples she was peelin'.

'T was kin' o' kingdom-come to look
On sech a blessed cretur,
A dogrose blushin' to a brook
Ain't modester nor sweeter.

He was six foot o' man, A 1,

Clean grit an' human natur'; None could n't quicker pitch a ton Nor dror a furrer straighter.

He'd sparked it with full twenty gals, Hed squired 'em, danced 'em, druv 'em, Fust this one, an' then thet, by spells All is, he could n't love 'em.

But long o' her his veins 'ould run

All crinkly like curled maple,
The side she breshed felt full o' sun
Ez a south slope in Ap'il.

She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing
Ez hisn in the choir;

My! when he made Ole Hunderd ring,

She knowed the Lord was nigher.

An' she'd blush scarlit, right in prayer,
When her new meetin'-bunnet
Felt somehow thru its crown a pair
O' blue eyes sot upon it.

Thet night, I tell ye, she looked some!
She seemed to 've gut a new soul,
For she felt sartin-sure he'd come,

Down to her very shoe-sole.

She heered a foot, an' knowed it tu,
A-raspin' on the scraper,
All ways to once her feelins flew

Like sparks in burnt-up paper.

He kin' o' l'itered on the mat,
Some doubtfle o' the sekle,
His heart kep' goin' pity-pat,
But hern went pity Zekle.

An' yit she gin her cheer a jerk
Ez though she wished him furder,
An' on her apples kep' to work,
Parin' away like murder.

"You want to see my Pa, I s'pose?"

"Wal

signin'

no

I come da

To say why gals act so or so,

Or don't, 'ould be presumin';
Mebby to mean yes an' say no
Comes nateral to women.

He stood a spell on one foot fust,
Then stood a spell on t' other,
An' on which one he felt the wust
He could n't ha' told ye nuther.

Says he, "I'd better call agin";

Says she, "Think likely, Mister";
Thet last word pricked him like a pin,
An'....
Wal, he up an' kist her.

When Ma bimeby upon 'em slips,
Huldy sot pale ez ashes,
All kin' o' smily roun' the lips

An' teary roun' the lashes.

For she was jes' the quiet kind
Whose naturs never vary,
Like streams that keep a summer mind
Snowhid in Jenooary.

The blood clost roun' her heart felt glued
Too tight for all expressin',
Tell mother see how metters stood,
An' gin 'em both her blessin'.

Then her red come back like the tide
Down to the Bay o' Fundy,
An' all I know is they was cried
In meetin' come nex' Sunday.

AMBROSE.

NEVER, surely, was holier man
Than Ambrose, since the world began;
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 'twixt right and

wrong,

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 given 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 face 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 features 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!"

227

And when over breakers to leeward
The tattered surges are hurled,
It may keep our head to the tempest,
With its grip on the base of the world.

But, after the shipwreck, tell me
What help in its iron thews,
Still true to the broken hawser,
Deep down among sea-weed and ooze?
In the breaking gulfs of sorrow,
When the helpless feet stretch out
And find in the deeps of darkness
No footing so solid as doubt,

Then better one spar of Memory,
One broken plank of the Past,
That our human heart may cling to,
Though hopeless of shore at last!

To the spirit its splendid conjectures,
To the flesh its sweet despair,
Its tears o'er the thin-worn locket
With its anguish of deathless hair!

Immortal? I feel it and know it,
Who doubts it of such as she?
But that is the pang's very secret, —
Immortal away from me.

turn

LIFE may be given in many ways,
And loyalty to Truth be sealed
As bravely in the closet as the field,
So generous is Fate;

But then to stand beside her,
When craven churls deride her,
To front a lie in arms, and not to yield, -
This shows, methinks, God's plan
And measure of a stalwart man,
Limbed like the old heroic breeds,
Who stand self-poised on manhood's
solid earth,

Not forced to frame excuses for his birth,

Fed from within with all the strength he needs.

Such was he, our Martyr-Chief,

Whom late the Nation he had led,
With ashes on her head,

Wept with the passion of an angry grief:

To speak what in my heart will beat and

burn,

And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn.

Nature, they say, doth dote,
And cannot make a man
Save on some worn-out plan,
Repeating us by rote:

For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw,

And, choosing sweet clay from the breast

Of the unexhausted West,

With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true.

How beautiful to see

Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead;

One whose meek flock the people joyed to be,

Not lured by any cheat of birth, But by his clear-grained human worth,

And brave old wisdom of sincerity!" They knew that outward grace is dust;

They could not choose but trust In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill,

And supple-tempered will That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust.

His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind,

Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy

I praise him not; it were too late; And some innative weakness there must be

In him who condescends to victory
Such as the Present gives, and cannot
wait,

Safe in himself as in a fate.
So always firmly he:

He knew to bide his time,
And can his fame abide,
Still patient in his simple faith sublime,
Till the wise years decide.
Great captains, with their guns and
drums,

Disturb our judgment for the hour,
But at last silence comes:

These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,

Our children shall behold his fame,
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing

229

'T is not the grapes of Canaan that repay, But the high faith that failed not by the

way;

Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave;

No bar of endless night exiles the brave; And to the saner mind

We rather seem the dead that stayed behind.

Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow! For never shall their aureoled presence lack:

I see them muster in a gleaming row, With ever-youthful brows that nobler show;

We find in our dull road their shining track;

In every nobler mood We feel the orient of their spirit glow, Part of our life's unalterable good, Of all our saintlier aspiration;

They come transfigured back, Secure from change in their high-hearted ways,

Beautiful evermore, and with the rays Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation!

MARIA WHITE LOWELL.

[U. S. A., 1821-1853]

THE ALPINE SHEEP.

WHEN on my ear your loss was knelled, And tender sympathy upburst,

A little spring from memory welled, Which once had quenched my bitter thirst.

And I was fain to bear to you

A portion of its mild relief,
That it might be as healing dew,
To steal some fever from your grief.

After our child's untroubled breath
Up to the Father took its way,
And on our home the shade of Death
Like a long twilight haunting lay,

And friends came round, with us to weep
Her little spirit's swift remove,

The story of the Alpine sheep
Was told to us by one we love.

And the dial's lazy shadow hovered nigh the brink of noon.

On the benches in the market, rows of languid idlers lay,

When to Pisa's nodding belfry, with a friend, I took my way.

From the top we looked around us, and as far as eye might strain, Saw no sign of life or motion in the town, or on the plain,

Hardly seemed the river moving, through the willows to the main; Nor was any noise disturbing Pisa from her drowsy hour,

Save the doves that fluttered 'neath us, in and out and round the tower.

Not a shout from gladsome children, or the clatter of a wheel,

Nor the spinner of the suburb, winding his discordant reel, Nor the stroke upon the pavement of a hoof or of a heel.

Even the slumberers, in the churchyard of the Campo Santo seemed Scarce more quiet than the living world that underneath us dreamed.

Dozing at the city's portal, heedless guard the sentry kept,

| More than oriental dulness o'er the sunny farms had crept,

Near the walls the ducal herdsman by the dusty roadside slept; While his camels, resting round him, half alarmed the sullen ox, Seeing those Arabian monsters pasturing with Etruria's flocks.

Then it was, like one who wandered, lately, singing by the Rhine, Strains perchance to maiden's hearing sweeter than this verse of mine, That we bade Imagination lift us on her wing divine.

And the days of Pisa's greatness rose from the sepulchral past,

When a thousand conquering galleys bore her standard at the mast.

Memory for a moment crowned her sov ereign mistress of the seas, When she braved, upon the billows, Venice and the Genoese, Daring to deride the Pontiff, though he shook his angry keys.