1856.

Sleep, soldiers! still in honored rest
Your truth and valor wearing:
The bravest are the tenderest,-

The loving are the daring.

TH

THE QUAKER WIDOW.

HEE finds me in the garden, Hannah,-come in! "Tis kind of thee To wait until the Friends were gone, who came to comfort me. The still and quiet company a peace may give, indeed,

But blessed is the single heart that comes to us at need.

Come, sit thee down! Here is the bench where Benjamin would sit
On First-day afternoons in spring, and watch the swallows flit:
He loved to smell the sprouting box, and hear the pleasant bees
Go humming round the lilacs and through the apple-trees.

I think he loved the spring: not that he cared for flowers: most men
Think such things foolishness,-but we were first acquainted then,
One spring: the next he spoke his mind; the third I was his wife,
And in the spring (it happened so) our children entered life.

He was but seventy-five; I did not think to lay him yet
In Kennett graveyard, where at Mouthly Meeting first we met.
The Father's mercy shows in this: 'tis better I should be
Picked out to bear the heavy cross-alone in age—than he.

We've lived together fifty years: it seems but one long day,
One quiet Sabbath of the heart, till he was called away;
And as we bring from Meeting-time a sweet contentment home,
So, Hannah, I have store of peace for all the days to come.

I mind (for I can tell thee now) how hard it was to know
If I had heard the spirit right, that told me I should go;
For father had a deep concern upon his mind that day,
But mother spoke for Benjamin,-she knew what best to say.

Then she was still: they sat awhile: at last she spoke again,

"The Lord incline thee to the right!" and "Thou shalt have him, Jane!" My father said. I cried. Indeed, 'twas not the least of shocks,

For Benjamin was Hicksite, and father Orthodox.

I thought of this ten years ago, when daughter Ruth we lost:

Her husband's of the world, and yet I could not see her crossed.

She wears, thee knows, the gayest gowns, she hears a hireling priest—
Ah, dear! the cross was ours: her life's a happy one, at least.

Perhaps she'll wear a plainer dress when she's as old as I,-
Would thee believe it, Hannah? once I felt temptation nigh!

1860.

My wedding-gown was ashen silk, too simple for my taste;
I wanted lace around the neck, and a ribbon at the waist.

How strange it seemed to sit with him upon the women's side!
I did not dare to lift my eyes: I felt more fear than pride,
Till, in the presence of the Lord," he said, and then there came
A holy strength upon my heart, and I could say the same.

I used to blush when he came near, but then I showed no sign;
With all the meeting looking on, I held his hand in mine.
It seemed my bashfulness was gone, now I was his for life:
Thee knows the feeling, Hannah,—thee, too, hast been a wife.

As home we rode, I saw no fields look half so green as ours;
The woods were coming into leaf, the meadows full of flowers;
The neighbors met us in the lane, and every face was kind,-
'Tis strange how lively everything comes back upon my mind.

I see, as plain as thee sits there, the wedding-dinner spread:
At our own table we were guests, with father at the head,
And Dinah Passmore helped us both,-'twas she stood up with me,
And Abner Jones with Benjamin,—and now they're gone, all three!

It is not right to wish for death; the Lord disposes best.
His Spirit comes to quiet hearts, and fits them for His rest;
And that He halved our little flock was merciful, I see:
For Benjamin has two in heaven, and two are left with me.

Eusebius never cared to farm,-'twas not his call, in truth,
And I must rent the dear old place, and go to daughter Ruth.
Thee'll say her ways are not like mine,-young people now-a-days
Have fallen sadly off, I think, from all the good old ways.

But Ruth is still a Friend at heart; she keeps the simple tongue,
The cheerful, kindly nature we loved when she was young;
And it was brought upon my mind, remembering her, of late,
That we on dress and outward things perhaps day too much weight.

I once heard Jesse Kersey say, a spirit clothed with grace,
And pure, almost, as angels are, may have a homely face.
And dress may be of less account: the Lord will look within:
The soul it is that testifies of righteousness or sin.

Thee mustn't be too hard on Ruth: she's anxious I should go,
And she will do her duty as a daughter should, I know.
"Tis hard to change so late in life, but we must be resigned:
The Lord looks down contentedly upon a willing mind.

PEACH-BLOSSOM.

IGHTLY the hoar-frost freezes

NIG

The young grass of the field,
Nor yet have blander breezes

The buds of the oak unsealed:
Not yet pours out the pine
His airy resinous wine;
But over the southern slope,
In the heat and hurry of hope,
The wands of the peach-tree first
Into rosy beauty burst:

A breath, and the sweet buds ope!

A day, and the orchards bare,
Like maids in haste to be fair,
Lightly themselves adorn

With a scarf the Spring at the door
Has sportively flung before,

Or a stranded cloud of the morn!

What spirit of Persia cometh

And saith to the buds, "Unclose!"

Ere ever the first bee hummeth,

Or woodland wild flower blows? What prescient soul in the sod Garlands each barren rod

With fringes of bloom that speak

Of the baby's tender breast,

And the boy's pure lip unpressed,

And the pink of the maiden's cheek?
The swift, keen Orient so

Prophesies as of old,

While the apple's blood is cold,

Remembering the snow.

Afar, through the mellow hazes

Where the dreams of June are stayed,

The hills, in their vanishing mazes,
Carry the flush, and fade!
Southward they fall, and reach
To the bay and the ocean beach,
Where the soft, half-Syrian air
Blows from the Chesapeake's
Inlets and coves and creeks

On the fields of Delaware!
And the rosy lakes of flowers,

That here alone are ours,
Spread into seas that pour
Billow and spray of pink
Even to the blue wave's brink,
All down the Eastern Shore!

Pain, Doubt, and Death are over!

Who thinks, to-day, of toil?
The fields are certain of clover,

The gardens of wine and oil.
What though the sap of the North
Drowsily peereth forth

In the orchards, and still delays?
The peach and the poet know
Under the chill the glow,
And the token of golden days!

What fool, to-day, would rather
In wintry memories dwell?
What miser reach to gather

The fruit these boughs foretell?
No, no!-the heart has room
For present joy alone,

Light shed and sweetness blown,
For odor and color and bloom!
As the earth in the shining sky,
Our lives in their own bliss lie;
Whatever is taught or told,
However men moan and sigh,
Love never shall grow cold,
And Life shall never die!

1877.

I

THE GROTTOES OF CAPRI.

[By-Ways of Europe. 1869.]

HAVE purposely left the Blue Grotto to the last, as for me it was subordinate in interest to almost all else that I saw. Still it was part of the inevitable programme. One calm day we had spent in the trip to Anacapri, and another, at this season, was not to be immediately expected. Nevertheless, when we arose on the second morning afterwards, the palm-leaves hung silent, the olives twinkled without motion, and the southern sea glimmered with the veiled light of a calm. Vesuvius had but a single peaceful plume of smoke, the snows of the Apulian Mountains gleamed rosily behind his cone, and the fair headland of Sorrento shone in those soft, elusive, aerial grays which must be the despair of a painter. It was a day for the Blue Grotto, and so we descended to the marina.

On the strand, girls with disordered hair and beautiful teeth offered shells and coral. We found mariners readily, and, after a little hesitation, pushed off in a large boat, leaving a little one to follow. The tra

montana had left a faint swell behind it, but four oars carried us at a lively speed along the shore. We passed the ruins of the baths of Tiberius (the Palazzo a' Mare), and then slid into the purple shadows of the cliffs, which rose in a sheer wall five hundred feet above the water. Two men sat on a rock, fishing with poles; and the boats further off the shore were sinking their nets, the ends of which were buoyed up with gourds. Pulling along in the shadows, in less than half an hour we saw the tower of Damecuta shining aloft, above a slope of olives which descended steeply to the sea. Here, under a rough, round bastion of masonry, was the entrance to the Blue Grotto.

man.

We were now transshipped to the little shell of a boat which had followed us. The swell rolled rather heavily into the mouth of the cave, and the adventure seemed a little perilous, had the boatmen been less experienced. We lay flat in the bottom; the oars were taken in, and we had just reached the entrance, when a high wave, rolling up, threatened to dash us against the iron portals. "Look out!" cried the old The young sailor held the boat back with his hands, while the wave rolled under us into the darkness beyond; then, seizing the moment, we shot in after it, and were safe under the expanding roof. At first, all was tolerably dark: I only saw that the water near the entrance was intensely and luminously blue. Gradually, as the eye grew accustomed to the obscurity, the irregular vault of the roof became visible, tinted by a faint reflection from the water. The effect increased the longer we remained; but the rock nowhere repeated the dazzling sapphire of the sea. It was rather a blue-gray, very beautiful, but far from presenting the effect given in the pictures sold at Naples. The silvery, starry radiance of foam or bubbles on the shining blue ground was the loveliest phenomenon of the grotto. To dip one's hand in the sea, and scatter the water, was to create sprays of wonderful, phosphorescent blossoms, jewels of the Sirens, flashing and vanishing garlands of the Undines.

A chamber, and the commencement of a gallery leading somewhere,probably to the twelfth palace of Tiberius, on the headland of Damecuta,

-were to be distinguished near the rear of the cavern. But rather than explore further mysteries, we watched our chance and shot out, after a full-throated wave, into the flood of white daylight. Keeping on our course around the island, we passed the point of Damecuta,-making a chord to the arc of the shore,-to the first battery, beyond which the Anacapri territory opened fairly to view. From the northern to the northwestern cape the coast sinks, like the side of an amphitheatre, in a succession of curving terraces, gray with the abundant olive. Two deep, winding ravines, like the wadies of Arabia, have been worn by the rainfall of thousands of years, until they have split the shore-wall down to the sea.