Sun and cloud, o'er hill and hollow Chasing, weave their web of play.

"Martha Mason, Martha Mason, Prithee tell us of the reason

Why you mope at home to-day : Surely smiling is not sinning; Leave your quilling, leave your spinning; What is all your store of linen,

If your heart is never gay?
Come away, come away!
Never yet did sad beginning
Make the task of life a play."

Overbending, till she's blending
With the flaxen skein she's tending
Pale brown tresses smoothed away
From her face of patient sorrow,
Sits she, seeking but to borrow,
From the trembling hope of morrow,
Solace for the weary day.

"Go your way, laugh and play; Unto Him who heeds the sparrow And the lily, let me pray.”

"With our rally, rings the valley, Join us!" cried the blue-eyed Nelly; "Join us!" cried the laughing May,

"To the beach we all are going,
And, to save the task of rowing,
West by north the wind is blowing,

Blowing briskly down the bay!
Come away, come away!
Time and tide are swiftly flowing,
Let us take them while we may !

"Never tell us that you'll fail us,
Where the purple beach-plum mellows
On the bluffs so wild and gray.
Hasten, for the oars are falling;
Hark, our merry mates are calling:
Time it is that we were all in,

Singing tideward down the bay!"
"Nay, nay, let me stay;
Sore and sad for Robert Rawlin

Is my heart," she said, "to-day."

"Vain your calling for Rob Rawlin! Some red squaw his moose-meat 's broiling,

Or some French lass, singing gay;
Just forget as he 's forgetting;
What avails a life of fretting?
If some stars must needs be setting,
Others rise as good as they."

66

'Cease, I pray; go your way!"

207

Martha cries, her eyelids wetting; "Foul and false the words you say!"

"Martha Mason, hear to reason! Prithee, put a kinder face on!" "Cease to vex me," did she say; "Better at his side be lying, With the mournful pine-trees sighing, And the wild birds o'er us crying, Than to doubt like mine a prey; While away, far away,

Turns my heart, forever trying

Some new hope for each new day.

"When the shadows veil the meadows, And the sunset's golden ladders

Sink from twilight's walls of gray, From the window of my dreaming, I can see his sickle gleaming, Cheery-voiced, can hear him teaming Down the locust-shaded way; But away, swift away, Fades the fond, delusive seeming, And I kneel again to pray.

"When the growing dawn is showing, And the barn-yard cock is crowing,

And the horned moon pales away:
From a dream of him awaking,
Every sound my heart is making
Seems a footstep of his taking;

Then I hush the thought, and say,
'Nay, nay, he's away!'
Ah! my heart, my heart is breaking
For the dear one far away."

Look up, Martha! worn and swarthy, Glows a face of manhood worthy:

"Robert!"" Martha !" all they say.
O'er went wheel and reel together,
Little cared the owner whither;
Heart of lead is heart of feather,

Noon of night is noon of day!
Come away, come away!
When such lovers meet each other,

Why should prying idlers stay?

Quench the timber's fallen embers,
Quench the red leaves in December's
Hoary rime and chilly spray.
But the hearth shall kindle clearer,
Household welcomes sound sincerer,
Heart to loving heart draw nearer,

When the bridal bells shall say:
"Hope and pray, trust alway;
Life is sweeter, love is dearer,
For the trial and delay!"

THE LAST WALK IN AUTUMN.

I.

stretched hands

Plead with the leaden heavens in vain,

I see, beyond the valley lands,

The sea's long level dim with rain. Around me all things, stark and dumb, Seem praying for the snows to come, And, for the summer bloom and greenness gone,

With winter's sunset lights and dazzling morn atone.

II.

Along the river's summer walk,

The withered tufts of asters nod; And trembles on its arid stalk

The hoar plume of the golden-rod. And on a ground of sombre fir, And azure-studded juniper, The silver birch its buds of purple shows, And scarlet berries tell where bloomed the sweet wild-rose !

III.

With mingled sound of horns and bells, A far-heard clang, the wild geese fly, Storm-sent, from Arctic moors and fells,

Like a great arrow through the sky, Two dusky lines converged in one, Chasing the southward-flying sun; While the brave snow-bird and the hardy jay

Call to them from the pines, as if to bid them stay.

IV.

I passed this way a year ago:

The wind blew south; the noon of day

Was warm as June's; and save that

snow

Flecked the low mountains far away,

wind at play.

What lack of goodly company,

When masters of the ancient lyre Obey my call, and trace for me Their words of mingled tears and fire!

I talk with Bacon, grave and wise, I read the world with Pascal's eyes; And priest and sage, with solemn brows austere,

And poets, garland-bound, the Lords of Thought, draw near.

XIII.

209

Methinks, O friend, I hear thee say,

"In vain the human heart we mock; Bring living guests who love the day,

Not ghosts who fly at crow of cock! The herbs we share with flesh and blood, Are better than ambrosial food, With laurelled shades." I grant it,

nothing loath, But doubly blest is he who can partake

of both.

XIV.

He who might Plato's banquet grace,
Have I not seen before me sit,
And watched his puritanic face,

With more than Eastern wisdom lit? Shrewd mystic! who, upon the back Of his Poor Richard's Almanack, Writing the Sufi's song, the Gentoo's dream,

Links Menu's age of thought to Fulton's age of steam!

XV.

Here too, of answering love secure, Have I not welcomed to my hearth The gentle pilgrim troubadour,

Whose songs have girdled half the earth;

Whose pages, like the magic mat Whereon the Eastern lover sat, Have borne me over Rhine-land's purple vines,

And Nubia's tawny sands, and Phrygia's mountain pines!

XVI.

And he, who to the lettered wealth
Of ages adds the lore unpriced,
The wisdom and the moral health,

The ethics of the school of Christ;
The statesman to his holy trust,
As the Athenian archon, just,
Struck down, exiled like him for truth
alone,

Has he not graced my home with beauty all his own?

XVII.

What greetings smile, what farewells

wave,

What loved ones enter and depart! The good, the beautiful, the brave, The Heaven-lent treasures of the heart!

Will still, as He hath done, incline His gracious care to me and mine; Grant what we ask aright, from wrong debar,

And, as the earth grows dark, make brighter every star!

XXVII.

I have not seen, I may not see,

211

"God wills it: here our rest shall be,

Our years of wandering o'er, For us the Mayflower of the sea

Shall spread her sails no more."

O sacred flowers of faith and hope,
As sweetly now as then

Ye bloom on many a birchen slope,
In many a pine-dark glen.

act,

Unchanged, your leaves unfold, Like love behind the manly strength Of the brave hearts of old.

So live the fathers in their sons,
Their sturdy faith be ours,
And ours the love that overruns

Its rocky strength with flowers.

The Pilgrim's wild and wintry day
Its shadow round us draws;
The Mayflower of his stormy bay,

Our Freedom's struggling cause.

But warmer suns erelong shall bring
To life the frozen sod;

And, through dead leaves of hope, shall spring

Afresh the flowers of God!

BURIAL OF BARBOUR.

BEAR him, comrades, to his grave; Never over one more brave

Shall the prairie grasses weep, In the ages yet to come, When the millions in our room, What we sow in tears, shall reap.

Bear him up the icy hill,
With the Kansas, frozen still

As his noble heart, below,
And the land he came to till
With a freeman's thews and will,
And his poor hut roofed with snow!

One more look of that dead face,
Of his murder's ghastly trace!

One more kiss, O widowed one!
Lay your left hands on his brow,
Lift your right hands up, and vow

That his work shall yet be done.

Patience, friends! The eye of God Every path by Murder trod