And, when the second morning shone,
We looked upon a world unknown,
On nothing we could call our own.
Around the glistening wonder bent
The blue walls of the firmament,
No cloud above, no earth below,—
A universe of sky and snow!
The old familiar sights of ours

Took marvelous shapes; strange domes and towers
Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,

Or garden wall, or belt of wood;

A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,

A fenceless drift what once was road;

The bridle-post an old man sat

With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;

The well-curb had a Chinese roof;

And even the long sweep, high aloof,

In its slant splendor, seemed to tell
Of Pisa's leaning miracle.

A path to the barn is next cleared by the boys, and the

reception they meet with from its brute occupants described.

The storm continues throughout the day, and

As night drew on, and, from the crest
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west,
The sun, a snow-blown traveler, sank
From sight beneath the smothering bank,
We piled, with care, our nightly stack
Of wood against the chimney-back,—
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick,
And on its top the stout back-stick;
The knotty forestick laid apart,
And filled between with curious art
The ragged brush; then, hovering near,
We watched the first red blaze appear,
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,
Until the old, rude-furnished room
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom;

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While radiant with a mimic flame
Outside the sparkling drift became,
And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free.
The crane and pendent trammels showed,
The Turks' heads on the andirons glowed;
While childish fancy, prompt to tell
The meaning of the miracle,

Whispered the old rhyme: "Under the tree,
When fire outdoors burns merrily,

There the witches are making tea."

What matter how the night behaved?
What matter how the north-wind raved?
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow.

O Time and Change!—with hair as gray
As was my sire's that winter's day,
How strange it seems, with so much gone
Of life and love, to still live on!
Ah, brother! only I and thou
Are left of all that circle now,—
The dear home faces whereupon
That fitful firelight paled and shone.
Henceforward, listen as we will,
The voices of that hearth are still;
Look where we may, the wide earth o'er,
Those lighted faces smile no more.
We tread the paths their feet have worn,

We sit beneath their orchard-trees,
We hear, like them, the hum of bees

And rustle of the bladed corn;
We turn the pages that they read,
Their written words we linger o'er,
But in the sun they cast no shade,
No voice is heard, no sign is made,
No step is on the conscious floor!

Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust

(Since He who knows our need is just), That somehow, somewhere, meet we must

We sped the time with stories old,
Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told,

Or stammered from our school-book lore,

"The chief of Gambia's golden shore."

Our mother, while she turned her wheel
Or run the new-knit stocking-heel,
Told how the Indian hordes came down
At midnight on Cochecho town,
And how her own great-uncle bore
His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore.
Recalling, in her fitting phrase,
So rich and picturesque and free,
(The common unrhymed poetry
Of simple life and country ways,)
The story of her early days,—
She made us welcome to her home;
Old hearths grew wide to give us room;
We stole with her a frightened look
At the gray wizard's conjuring-book,
The fame whereof went far and wide
Through all the simple country-side;
We heard the hawks at twilight play,
The boat-horn on Piscataqua,
The loon's weird laughter far away;

We fished her little trout-brook, knew
What flowers in wood and meadow grew,
What sunny hillsides autumn-brown
She climbed to shake the ripe nuts dowD
Saw where in sheltered cove and bay
The ducks' black squadron anchored lay
And heard the wild geese calling loud
Beneath the gray November cloud.

How the time for a week or more is whiled away is next described, and the poem closes musingly thus:

These Flemish pictures of old days;
Sit with me by the homestead hearth,'
And stretch the hands of memory forth
To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze!

And thanks untraced to lips unknown
Shall greet me like the odors blown
From unseen meadows newly mown,

Or lilies floating in some pond,

Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond;
The traveler owns the grateful sense

Of sweetness near, he knows not whence,
And, pausing, takes with forehead bare
The benediction of the air.

In 1867 appeared The Tent on the Beach, and Other Poems. This (the main poem) is an idyl of the sea-shore, and in its general plan is similar to Longfellow's Tales of a Way side Inn

When heats as of a tropic clime

Burned all our inland valleys through,
Three friends, the guests of summer-time,

Pitched their white tents where sea-winds blew.

These friends were "a lettered magnate, born."

And one, whose Arab face was tanned

By tropic sun and boreal frost,

So traveled there was scarce a land
Or people left him to exhaust.

They rested there, escaped awhile

From cares that wear the life away, To eat the lotus of the Nile

And drink the poppies of Cathay,To fling their loads of custom down,

Like drift-weed, on the sand-slopes brown,

a dreamer

And in the sea-waves drown the restless pack

Of duties, claims, and needs that barked upon their track.

The time is spent in hunting, fishing, and story-telling The stories are nine in number, and comprehend great variety, both in metre and in subject-matter. The two fol'owing, perhaps, have elicited the most general interest: