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For his ear, the inward feeling
Needs no outward tongue;

He can see the spirit kneeling
While the axe is swung.

Heeding truth alone, and turning
From the false and dim,

Lamp of toil or altar burning

Are alike to Him.

Strike, then, comrades!-Trade is waiting
On our rugged toil;

Far ships waiting for the freighting
Of our woodland spoil!

Ships, whose traffic links these highlands,
Bleak and cold, of ours,

With the citron-planted islands

Of a clime of flowers;

To our frosts the tribute bringing
Of eternal heats;

In our lap of winter flinging
Tropic fruits and sweets.

Cheerly, on the axe of labor,

Let the sunbeams dance,
Better than the flash of sabre
Or the gleam of lance!
Strike!-with every blow is given
Freer sun and sky,

And the long-hid earth to heaven
Looks, with wondering eye!

Loud behind us grow the murmurs
Of the age to come;

Clang of smiths, and tread of farmers,
Bearing harvest home!

Here her virgin lap with treasures
Shall the green earth fill;

Waving wheat and golden maize-ears
Crown each beechen hill.

Keep who will the city's alleys,

Take the smooth-shorn plain,—

Give to us the cedar valleys,

Rocks and hills of Maine!

In our North-land, wild and woody,
Let us still have part;

Rugged nurse and mother sturdy,
Hold us to thy heart!

O! our free hearts beat the warmer
For thy breath of snow;

And our tread is all the firmer
For thy rocks below.
Freedom, hand in hand with labor,
Walketh strong and brave;
On the forehead of his neighbor
No man writeth Slave!

Lo, the day breaks! old Katahdin's
Pine-trees show its fires,

While from these dim forest gardens
Rise their blackened spires.
Up, my comrades! up and doing!
Manhood's rugged play

Still renewing, bravely hewing

Through the world our way!

In 1852 appeared The Chapel of the Hermits, and other Poems. The Panorama, and other Poems, constituted the next volume, issued in 1856. As the most significant and beautiful of the miscellaneous poems of the last-named volume, we present, beginning with the eighth stanza,!

THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID.

ALONE, the Thebaid hermit leaned
At noontime o'er the sacred word.

Was it an angel or a fiend

Whose voice he heard?

It broke the desert's hush of awe,
A human utterance, sweet and mild;
And, looking up, the hermit saw

A little child.

A child, with wonder-widened eyes,
O'erawed and troubled by the sight
Of hot, red sands, and brazen skies,
And anchorite.

"What dost thou here, poor man? No shade Of cool, green doums, nor grass, nor well, Nor corn, nor vines." The hermit said: "With God I dwell.

"Alone with Him in this great calm,
I live not by the outward sense;
My Nile his love, my sheltering palm
His providence."

The child gazed round him. "Does God live
Here only?-where the desert's rim
Is green with corn, at morn and eve,
We pray to Him.

"My brother tills beside the Nile

His little field: beneath the leaves
My sisters sit and spin the while,
My mother weaves

"And when the millet's ripe heads fall,
And all the bean-field hangs in pod,
My mother smiles, and says that all
Are gifts from God.

"And when to share our evening meal,
She calls the stranger at the door,
She says God fills the hands that deal
Food to the poor."

Adown the hermit's wasted cheeks
Glistened the flow of human tears;
"Dear Lord!" he said, "Thy angel speaks,
Thy servant hears."

Within his arms the child he took,

And thought of home and life with men

And all his pilgrim feet forsook

Returned again.

The palmy shadows cool and long,

The eyes that smiled through lavish locks,
Home's cradle-hymn and harvest-song,
And bleat of flocks.

'O, child!" he said, "thou teachest me
There is no place where God is not;
That love will make, where'er it be,
A holy spot."

He rose from off the desert sand,
And, leaning on his staff of thorn,
Went, with the young child, hand in hand,
Like night with morn.

They crossed the desert's burning line,
And heard the palm-tree's rustling fan,
The Nile-bird's cry, the low of kine,
And voice of man.

Unquestioning, his childish guide

He followed as the small hand led
To where a woman, gentle-eyed,
Her distaff fed.

She rose, she clasped her truant boy,
She thanked the stranger with her eyes;
The hermit gazed in doubt and joy

And dumb surprise.

And, lo! with sudden warmth and light
A tender memory thrilled his frame;
New-born, the world-lost anchorite
A man became.

"O, sister of El Zara's race,

Behold me!-had we not one mother?" She gazed into the stranger's face;

"Thou art my brother!"

"O, kin of blood!-Thy life of use

And patient trust is more than mine;

And wiser than the gray recluse

This child of thine.

"For, taught of him whom God hath sent,
That toil is praise, and love is prayer,
I come, life's cares and pains content
With thee to share."

Even as his foot the threshold crossed,
The hermit's better life began;
Its holiest saint the Thebaid lost,
And found a man!

The above volume was followed successively by Ballads, Later Poems, Home Ballads, and Occasional Poems. Of the "Ballads," the most eventful and poetic is

MARY GARVIN.

THE evening gun had sounded from gray Fort Mary's walls; Through the forest, like a wild beast, roared and plunged the Saco's falls.

And westward on the sea-wind, that damp and gusty grew, Over cedars darkening inland the smokes of Spurwink blew.

On the hearth of Farmer Garvin blazed the crackling walnut log;

Right and left sat dame and goodman, and between them lay the dog,

Head on paws, and tail slow wagging, and beside him on her mat,

Sitting drowsy in the fire-light, winked and purred the mot

tled cat.

"Twenty years!" said Goodman Garvin, speaking sadly, under breath,

And his gray head slowly shaking, as one who speaks of

death.

The Goodwife dropped her needles: "It is twenty years, to

day,

Since the Indians fell on Saco, and stole our child away."

Then they sank into the silence, for each knew the other's thought,

Of a great and common sorrow, and words were needed not.

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