lays days

When, by our native streams and forest

ways,

We dreamed them over; while the rivulets made

The red plumes of the roosted cocks, And the loose hay-mow's scented locks

Are filled with summer's ripened stores, Its odorous grass and barley sheaves, From their low scaffolds to their eaves.

With many an autumn threshing

worn,

"Let Goody Martin rest in peace;

I never knew her harm a fly,
And witch or not, God knows, not I.

"I know who swore her life away;

And, as God lives, I'd not condemn
An Indian dog on word of them."

The broadest lands in all the town,
The skill to guide, the power to awe,
Were Harden's; and his word was
law.

None dared withstand him to his face,
But one sly maiden spake aside :
"The little witch is evil-eyed!

"Her mother only killed a cow,

Or witched a churn or dairy-pan;

"Let me not live until my heart, With few to pity, and with none To love me, hardens into stone.

'O God! have mercy on thy child, Whose faith in thee grows weak and small,

And take me ere I lose it all!"

A shadow on the moonlight fell,
And murmuring wind and wave be-

came

A voice whose burden was her name.

Had then God heard her? Had he sent

His angel down? In flesh and blood, Before her Esck Harden stood !

man!"

Poor Mabel, in her lonely home,

Sat by the window's narrow pane,
White in the moonlight's silver rain.

The river, on its pebbled rim,

Made music such as childhood knew ; The door-yard tree was whispered through

By voices such as childhood's ear

Had heard in moonlights long ago;
And through the willow-boughs below

She saw the rippled waters shine;

Beyond, in waves of shade and light
The hills rolled off into the night.

Sweet sounds and pictures mocking so
The sadness of her human lot,

She saw and heard, but heeded not.

She strove to drown her sense of wrong,
And, in her old and simple way,
To teach her bitter heart to pray.

Poor child the prayer, begun in faith,
Grew to a low, despairing cry
Of utter misery: "Let me die !

"Oh! take me from the scornful eyes, And hide me where the cruel speech And mocking finger may not reach!

"I dare not breathe my mother's name : A daughter's right I dare not crave To weep above her unblest grave!

"Dear Mabel, this no more shall

be;

Who scoffs at you, must scoff at

me.

"You know rough Esek Harden well; And if he seems no suitor gay, And if his hair is touched with gray,

'The maiden grown shall never find His heart less warm than when she' smiled,

Upon his knees, a little child!"

Her tears of grief were tears of joy,

As, folded in his strong embrace,
She looked in Esek Harden's face.

"O truest friend of all !" she said, "God bless you for your kindly thought,

And make me worthy of my lot!"

He led her through his dewy fields,
To where the swinging lanterns

glowed, And through the doors the huskers showed.

"Good friends and neighbors!" Esek said,

"I'm weary of this lonely life; In Mabel see my chosen wife!

"She greets you kindly, one and all ; The past is past, and all offence Falls harmless from her innocence.

221

You know what Esek Harden is: He brooks no wrong to him or his."

Now let the merriest tales be told,
And let the sweetest songs be sung
That ever made the old heart young!

For now the lost has found a home; And a lone hearth shall brighter burn, As all the household joys return!

O, pleasantly the harvest-moon,

Between the shadow of the mows, Looked on them through the great elm-boughs!

On Mabel's curls of golden hair,

On Esek's shaggy strength it fell ;' And the wind whispered, "It is well!".

THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN.

FROM the hills of home forth looking,

far beneath the tent-like span Of the sky, I see the white gleam of the headland of Cape Ann. Well I know its coves and beaches to the ebb-tide glimmering down, And the white-walled hamlet children of its ancient fishing-town.

Long has passed the summer morning,

and its memory waxes old, When along yon breezy headlands with a pleasant friend I strolled. Ah! the autumn sun is shining, and the ocean wind blows cool, And the golden-rod and aster_bloom

around thy grave, Rantoul !

With the memory of that morning by the summer sea I blend

A wild and wondrous story, by the

younger Mather penned, In that quaint Magnalia Christi, with all strange and marvellous things, Heaped up huge and undigested, like the chaos Ovid sings.

Dear to me these far, faint glimpses of the dual life of old, Inward, grand with awe and reverence; outward, mean and coarse and cold;

dull and vulgar clay, Golden-threaded fancies weaving in a web of hodden gray.

The great eventful Present hides the Past; but through the din

Of its loud life hints and echoes from the life behind steal in ; And the lore of home and fireside, and the legendary rhyme,

Make the task of duty lighter which the true man owes his time.

So, with something of the feeling which the Covenanter knew,

When with pious chisel wandering Scotland's moorland graveyards through,

From the graves of old traditions I part the blackberry-vines, Wipe the moss from off the headstones, and retouch the faded lines.

Where the sea-waves back and forward, hoarse with rolling pebbles, ran, The garrison-house stood watching on the gray rocks of Cape Ann; On its windy site uplifting gabled roof and palisade,

And rough walls of unhewn timber with the moonlight overlaid.

On his slow round walked the sentry,

south and eastward looking forth O'er a rude and broken coast-line, white

with breakers stretching north, Wood and rock and gleaming sand-drift,

jagged capes, with bush and tree, Leaning inland from the smiting of the wild and gusty sea.

Before the deep-mouthed chimney, dimly lit by dying brands, Twenty soldiers sat and waited, with their muskets in their hands; On the rough-hewn oaken table the venison haunch was shared, And the pewter tankard circled`slowly round from beard to beard.