46 Thy foliage, like the tresses of a Dryad, Dripping about thy slim white stem."-THE BIRCH TREE. Page 122. AN INTERVIEW WITH MILES STANDISH. The flames by fits curled round the bars, While embers dropped like falling stars, I sat and mused; the fire burned low, My antique high-backed Spanish chair The oak that made its sturdy frame It came out in that famous bark For furniture decrepit; For, as that saved of bird and beast So has the seed of these increased Kings sit, they say, in slippery seats; Of ice the northern voyager meets I offer to all bores this perch, Dear well-intentioned people, With heads as void as week-day church, To folks with missions, whose gaunt eyes Salt of the earth! in what queer Guys 123 N/* My wonder, then, was not unmixed When, as my roving eyes grew fixed I saw its trembling arms inclose Whose doublet plain and plainer hose Now even such men as Nature forms Who knows, thought I, but he has come, Just then the ghost drew up his chair 'I come from Plymouth, deadly bored Strength's knots and gnarls all pared away, We had some toughness in our grain 'He had stiff knees, the Puritan, That were not good at bending; The homespun dignity of man He thought was worth defending; N 125 AN INTERVIEW WITH MILES STANDISH. He did not, with his pinchbeck ore, These loud ancestral boasts of yours, Such stalwart men as these are.' 'Good Sir,' I said, 'you seem much stirred; 'Now God confound the dastard word! Northward it hath this sense alone, "'Tis shame to see such painted sticks • We forefathers to such a rout! No, by my faith in God's word!' 'No, Freedom, no! blood should not stain 'I feel the soul in me draw near And they who sowed the light shall reap The golden sheaves of morning. |