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his show, Themselves but shadows, into shadows go;

And, if no song of idlesse I have sung, Nor tints of beauty on the canvas flung,

If the harsh numbers grate on tender

vales

Or, grim and weird, her winter fireside tales

Haunted by ghosts of unreturning sails,

Lost barks at parting hung from stem to helm

With prayers of love like dreams on Virgil's elm.

Nor private grief nor malice holds my pen;

I owe but kindness to my fellow-men; And, South or North, wherever hearts of prayer

Their woes and weakness to our Father bear,

Wherever fruits of Christian love are found

In holy lives, to me is holy ground.
But the time passes. It were vain to

And low response of leaf and wave.

Fair scenes! whereto the Day and Night
Make rival love, I leave ye soon,
What time before the eastern light
The pale ghost of the setting moon

Shall hide behind yon rocky spines,
And the young archer, Morn, shall
break

His arrows on the mountain pines,
And, golden-sandalled, walk the lake!

Farewell! around this smiling bay Gay-hearted Health, and Life in bloom,

With lighter steps than mine, may stray In radiant summers yet to come.

But none shall more regretful leave

These waters and these hills than I : Or, distant, fonder dream how eve

Or dawn is painting wave and sky;

How rising moons shine sad and mild On wooded isle and silvering bay; Or setting suns beyond the piled

And purple mountains lead the day;

Nor laughing girl, nor bearding boy,
Nor full-pulsed manhood, lingering
here,
Shall add, to life's abounding joy,

The charmed repose to suffering dear.

Still waits kind Nature to impart
Her choicest gifts to such as gain
An entrance to her loving heart
Through the sharp discipline of pain.
Forever from the Hand that takes

One blessing from us others fall;
And, soon or late, our Father makes
His perfect recompense to all!

O, watched by Silence and the Night,
And folded in the strong embrace
Of the great mountains, with the light
Of the sweet heavens upon thy face,

Lake of the Northland! keep thy dower
Of beauty still, and while above
Thy solemn mountains speak of power,
Be thou the mirror of God's love.

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said:

"With God I dwell.

"Alone with Him in this great calm,
I live not by the outward sense;
My Nile his love, my sheltering palm
His providence."

The child gazed round him.
God live

Is

66

"Does

Here only? where the desert's rim
green with corn, at morn and eve,
We pray to Him.

'My brother tills beside the Nile
His little field: beneath the leaves
My sisters sit and spin the while,
My mother weaves.

"And when the millet's ripe heads fall,
And all the bean-field hangs in pod,
My mother smiles, and says that all
Are gifts from God.

"And when to share our evening meal,

She calls the stranger at the door, She says God fills the hands that deal Food to the poor."

Adown the hermit's wasted cheeks

Glistened the flow of human tears; "Dear Lord!" he said, "thy angel speaks,

Thy servant hears."

Within his arms the child he took,
And thought of home and life with
men;

And all his pilgrim feet forsook
Returned again.

The palmy shadows cool and long,
The eyes that smiled through lavish
locks,

Home's cradle-hymn and harvest-song, And bleat of flocks.

"O child!" he said, "thou teachest me
There is no place where God is not;
That love will make, where'er it be,
A holy spot."

He rose from off the desert sand,
And, leaning on his staff of thorn,
Went, with the young child, hand-in-
hand,

Like night with morn.

The deathless singer and the flowers
He sang of live together.

Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns !
The moorland flower and peasant !
How, at their mention, memory turns
Her pages old and pleasant!

The gray sky wears again its gold
And purple of adorning,
And manhood's noonday shadows hold
The dews of boyhood's morning.

The dews that washed the dust and soil

From off the wings of pleasure,

The sky, that flecked the ground of toil

With golden threads of leisure.

I call to mind the summer day,
The early harvest mowing,
The sky with sun and clouds at play,
And flowers with breezes blowing.

I woke to find the simple truth

Of fact and feeling better Than all the dreams that held my youth A still repining debtor :

That Nature gives her handmaid, Art, The themes of sweet discoursing; The tender idyls of the heart

In every tongue rehearsing.

Why dream of lands of gold and pearl,

Of loving knight and lady, When farmer boy and barefoot girl Were wandering there already?

I saw through all familiar things
The romance underlying;
The joys and griefs that plume the wings
Of Fancy skyward flying.

I saw the same blithe day return,
The same sweet fall of even,
That rose on wooded Craigie-burn,
And sank on crystal Devon.

I matched with Scotland's heathery hills
The sweetbrier and the clover;
With Ayr and Doon, my native rills,

Their wood-hymns chanting over.

O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen,
I saw the Man uprising;
No longer common or unclean,

The child of God's baptizing!

With clearer eyes I saw the worth

Of life among the lowly; The Bible at his Cotter's hearth Had made my own more holy.

And if at times an evil strain,

To lawless love appealing, Broke in upon the sweet refrain Of pure and healthful feeling,

It died upon the eye and ear,

No inward answer gaining; No heart had I to see or hear

The discord and the staining.

Let those who never erred forget

His worth, in vain bewailings; Sweet Soul of Song! I own my debt Uncancelled by his failings !

Lament who will the ribald line

Which tells his lapse from duty,

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