Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest,
We plant upon the sunny lea

A shadow for the noontide hour,
A shelter from the summer shower,
When we plant the apple-tree.

What plant we in the apple-tree?
Sweets for a hundred flowery springs.
To load the May-wind's restless wings,
When, from the orchard-row, he pours
Its fragrance through our open doors;
A world of blossoms for the bee;
Flowers for the sick girl's silent room
For the glad infant sprigs of bloom,
We plant with the apple-tree.

What plant we in the apple-tree?
Fruits that shall swell in sunny June,
And redden in the August noon,
And drop as gentle airs come by

That fan the blue September sky;

While children, wild with noisy glee,
Shall scent their fragrance as they pass,
And search for them the tufted grass
At the foot of the apple-tree.

And when above this apple-tree

The winter stars are quivering bright,
And winds go howling through the night,
Girls, whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth,

Shall peel its fruit by cottage-hearth,

And guests in prouder homes shall see, Heaped with the orange and the grape, As fair as they in tint and shape,

The fruit of the apple-tree.

The fruitage of this apple-tree
Winds and our flag of stripe and star
Shall bear to coasts that lie afar,
Where men shall wonder at the view,
And ask in what fair groves they grew;
And they who roam beyond the sea
Shall look, and think of childhood's day,
And long hours passed in summer play
In the shade of the apple-tree.

100

Each year shall give this apple-tree
A broader flush of roseate bloom,
A deeper maze of verdurous gloom,
And loosen, when the frost-clouds lower,
The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower,
The years shall come and pass, but we
Shall hear no longer, where we lie,
The summer's song, the autumn's sigh,
In the boughs of the apple-tree.
And time shall waste this apple-tree.
Oh, when its aged branches throw
Thin shadows on the sward below,
Shall fraud and force and iron will
Oppress the weak and helpless still?

What shall the tasks of mercy be,
Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears
Of those who live when length of years
Is wasting this apple tree?

"Who planted this old apple-tree?”
The children of that distant day

Thus to some aged man will say ;

And, gazing on its mossy stem,
The gray-haired man shall answer them:
A poet of the land was he,

Born in the rude, but good old times;
'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes
On planting the apple-tree."

V I.

THE DRUMMER'S BRIDE.

Hollow-eyed and pale at the window of a jail,

Through her soft disheveled hair, a maniac did stare, ₺ stare, stare!
At a distance, down the street, making music with their feet,
Came the soldiers from the wars, all embellished with their scars,

c To the tapping of a drum, of a drum ;

To the pounding and the sounding of a drum '

d Of a drum, of a drum, of a drum' drum, drum, drum!

a All the music of the sub-vocal M may be brought out in reading this selection. Begin alow in the narrative voice, with such action as will represent the jail to the audience on the right. b Slow and slightly aspirate. c Musical and measured. d Prolong the M

The woman heaves a sigh, and a fire fills her eye.

ΙΟΙ

When she hears the distant drum, she cries f "Here they come! here

they come !"'

Then, clutching fast the grating, with eager, nervous waiting,

See, she looks into the air, through her long and silky hair,

For the echo of a drum, of a drum;

For the cheering and the hearing of a drum!

Of a drum, of a drum, of a drum! drum, drum, drum!

g And nearer, nearer, nearer, comes, more distinct and clearer,
The rattle of the drumming; shrieks the woman, h “He is coming,
He is coming now to me; quick, drummer, quick, till I see!"
And her eye is glassy bright, while she beats in mad delight

To the echo of a drum, of a drum;

To the rapping, tapping, tapping of a drum !

Of a drum, of a drum, of a drum! drum, drum, drum !

i Now she sees them, in the street, march along with dusty feet,
As she looks through the spaces, gazing madly in their faces;
And she reaches out her hand, j screaming wildly to the band;
k But her words, like her lover, are lost beyond recover,
'Mid the beating of a drum, of a drum;

'Mid the clanging and the banging of a drum!

Of a drum, of a drum, of a drum! drum, drum, drum!

So the pageant passes by, and the woman's flashing eye
Quickly loses all its stare, and fills with a tear, with a tear;
As, sinking from her place, with her hands upon her face.

Hear!" she weeps and sobs as mild as a disappointed child

Sobbing. He will never come, never come'

Now nor ever, never, never, will he come

With his drum, with his drum, with his drum! drum, drum, drum!"

Still the drummer, up the street, beats his distant, dying beat,

And she shouts, within her cell, m' Ha' they're marching down to hell, And the devils dance and wait at the open iron gate:

Hark! it is the dying sound, as they march into the ground,

To the sighing and the dying of the drum !

To the throbbing and the sobbing of the drum !

Of a drum. of a drum, of a drum! drum, drum, drum !"

sound in imitation of the drum, marching time. e Lower pitch slow movement, with feeling. f High pitch; personation, then narrative with gesture. Close the stanza as the first. prolonging the M element in the last line. g Repetitions require change of pitch. Increase on these words. h Shriek this personation: continue little lower pitch, but with animation; close this stanza more rapidly than the others; represent the soldiers marching past. i High pitch and animated. j Very high. k Low pitch; slow, with feeling. Close this line with tremor voice-and personation same-with much emotion. m Very loud, with action. n Low and slow, with vanishing sound, as if the drum sound was in the distance.

102

VII.

THE BACHELOR'S CANE-BOTTOMED CHAIR

In tattered old slippers that toast at the bars,
And a ragged old jacket perfumed with cigars,
Away from the world and its toils and its cares,
I've a snug little kingdom up four pair of stairs.

To mount to this realm is a toil, to be sure,
But the fire there is bright and the air rather pure ;
And the view I behold on a sunshiny day
Is grand, through the chimney-pots over the way.

This snug little chamber is crammed in all nooks,
With worthless old knickknacks and silly old books,
And foolish old odds and foolish old ends,

Cracked bargains from brokers, cheap keepsakes from friends,

Old armor, prints, pipes, china (all cracked,)

Old rickety tables, and chairs broken-backed;

A twopenny treasury, wondrous to see;

What matter? 'tis pleasant to you, friend, and me.

No better divan need the Sultan require,

Than the creaking old sofa that basks by the fire;
And 'tis wonderful, surely, what music you get
From the rickety, ramshackle, wheezy spinet.

That praying-rug came from the Turcoman's camp;
By Tiber once twinkled that brazen old lamp;
A Mameluke fierce, yonder dagger has drawn ;
'Tis a murderous knife to toast muffins upon.

Long, long through the hours, and the night, and the chimes,
Here we talk of old books, and old friends, and old times;
As we sit in a fog made of rich Latakie

This chamber is pleasant to you, friend, and me.

But of all the cheap treasures that garnish my nest,
There's one that I love and cherish the best ;
For the finest of couches that's padded with hair,
I never would change thee, my cane-bottomed chair.

'Tis a bandy-legged, high-shouldered, worm-eaten seat,
With a creaking old back, and twisted old feet;
But since the fair morning when FANNY sat there,
I bless thee and love thee, old cane-bottomed chair.

If chairs have but feelings in holding such charms,
A thrill must have passed through your old withered arms.
I looked and I longed, and I wished in despair :

I wished myself turned to a cane-bottomed chair.

It was but a moment she sat in this place,

She'd a scarf on her neck and a smile on her face!

A smile on her face, and a rose in her hair,

And she sat there and bloomed in my cane-bottomed chair.

And so I have valued my chair ever since,

Like the shrine of a saint, or the throne of a prince;

Saint FANNY, my patroness sweet I declare,

The queen

of my

heart and my cane-bottomed chair.

When the candles burn low, and the company's gone,
In the silence of night as I sit here alone-

I sit here alone, but we yet are a pair-
My FANNY I see in my cane-bottomed chair.

She comes from the past and revisits my room,
She looks as she then did, all beauty and bloom-
So smiling and tender, so fresh and so fair-
And yonder she sits, in my cane-bottomed chair.

What a world of merriment their melody foretells!

How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, in the icy air of night!

While the stars that oversprinkle all the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight -

Keeping time, time, time, in a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells-

From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

Hear the mellow wedding bells, golden bells,

What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!

Through the balmy air of night how they ring out their delight! From the molten-golden notes, all in tune,

What a liquid ditty floats