THE TWO VOICES.

LETTERS.

EVERY day brings a ship,

Every ship brings a word; Well for those who have no fear, Looking sea-ward well assured That the word the vessel brings Is the word they wish to hear.

A NEW DAY.

R. W. Emerson.

ACROSS a thousand leagues of land

The mighty sun looks free,

And in their fringe of rock or sand
A thousand leagues of sea.
Lo! I, in this majestic room,

As real as the sun,

Inherit this day and its doom

Eternally begun.

A world of men the rays illume,
God's men, and I am one.
But life that is not pure and bold
Doth tarnish every morning's gold.

W. Allingham.

NOT ONLY.

"Heaven lies about us in our infancy."

NOT only around our infancy

Ν

Wordsworth.

Doth heaven with all its splendors lie:

Daily, with souls that cringe and plot,

We Sinais climb, and know it not.

Over our manhood bend the skies; Against our fallen and traitor lives

The great winds utter prophecies;

With our faint hearts the mountain strives;
Its arms outstretched, the Druid wood
Waits with its benedicite;

And to our age's drowsy blood

Still shouts the inspiring sea.

J. R. Lowell.

T

IN THE COUNTRY.

O one who has been long in city pent

'Tis very sweet to look into the fair

And open face of heaven, to breathe a prayer Full in the smile of the blue firmament.

Who is more happy, when, with heart's content,
Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair
Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair
And gentle tale of love and languishment?
Returning home at evening, with an ear
Catching the notes of Philomel, an eye

A SUMMER LONGING.

Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career,
He mourns that day so soon has glided by,
Even like the passage of an angel's tear

That falls through the clear ether silently.

John Keats.

13

I

A SUMMER LONGING.

MUST away to wooded hills and vales,

Where broad, slow streams flow cool and si

lently,

And idle barges flap their listless sails.

For me the summer sunset glows and pales,
And green fields wait for me.

I long for shadowy forests, where the birds
Twitter and chirp at noon from every tree;
I long for blossomed leaves and lowing herds;
And Nature's voices say in mystic words,

"The green fields wait for thee."

I dream of uplands where the primrose shines,
And waves her yellow lamps above the lea;
Of tangled copses swung with trailing vines;
Of open vistas, skirted with tall pines,
Where green fields wait for me.

I think of long, sweet afternoons, when I
May lie and listen to the distant sea,
Or hear the breezes in the reeds that sigh,
Or insect voices chirping shrill and dry,
In fields that wait for me.