lays days

When, by our native streams and forest

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

Dear God and Father of us all,

Forgive our faith in cruel lies,
Forgive the blindness that denies !

Forgive thy creature when he takes,
For the all-perfect love thou art,
Some grim creation of his heart.

Cast down our idols, overturn
Our bloody altars; let us see
Thyself in thy humanity!

Poor Mabel from her mother's grave
Crept to her desolate hearth-stone,
And wrestled with her fate alone;

With love, and anger, and despair,

The phantoms of disordered sense,
The awful doubts of Providence !

The school-boys jeered her as they passed,

And, when she sought the house of prayer,

Her mother's curse pursued her there.

And still o'er many a neighboring door She saw the horseshoe's curvéd charm, To guard against her mother's harm ;

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That mother, poor, and sick, and lame,

Who daily, by the old arm-chair, Folded her withered hands in pray

er;

Who turned, in Salem's dreary jail,
Her worn old Bible o'er and o'er,
When her dim eyes could read no

more !

Sore tried and pained, the poor girl kept

Her faith, and trusted that her

way,

So dark, would somewhere meet the day.

And still her weary wheel went round
Day after day, with no relief;
Small leisure have the poor for grief.

So in the shadow Mabel sits; Untouched by mirth she sees and hears,

Her smile is sadder than her tears.

But cruel eyes have found her out,

And cruel lips repeat her name, And taunt her with her mother's shame.

She answered not with railing words, But drew her apron o'er her face, And, sobbing, glided from the place.

And only pausing at the door,

Her sad eyes met the troubled gaze
Of one who, in her better days,

Had been her warm and steady friend,
Ere yet her mother's doom had made
Even Esek Harden half afraid.

He felt that mute appeal of tears,
And, starting, with an angry frown
Hushed all the wicked murmurs
down.

"Good neighbors mine," he sternly said,

"This passes harmless mirth or jest ; I brook no insult to my guest.

"She is indeed her mother's child; But God's sweet pity ministers Unto no whiter soul than hers.

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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.

dead men in her shrouds, Sailing sheer above the water, in the loom of morning clouds;

sands the moonlight lay, And the white smoke curling through it drifted slowly down the bay!

"God preserve us !

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said the captain ;

never mortal foes were there; They have vanished with their leader, Prince and Power of the air!

Lay aside your useless weapons; skill and prowess naught avail; They who do the Devil's service wear

their master's coat of mail!"

So the night grew near to cock-crow, when again a warning call

Roused the score of weary soldiers watching round the dusky hall : And they looked to flint and priming,

and they longed for break of day; But the captain closed his Bible: "Let us cease from man, and pray!

To the men who went before us, all the And their steadfast strength of courage unseen powers seemed near, struck its roots in holy fear. Every hand forsook the musket, every head was bowed and bare, Every stout knee pressed the flag-stones, as the captain led in prayer. Ceased thereat the mystic marching of

the spectres round the wall, But a sound abhorred, unearthly, smote the ears and hearts of all, Howls of rage and shrieks of anguish ! Never after mortal man

Saw the ghostly leaguers marching round the block-house of Cape Ann.

So to us who walk in summer through the cool and sea-blown town, From the childhood of its people comes the solemn legend down. Not in vain the ancient fiction, in whose moral lives the youth And the fitness and the freshness of an undecaying truth.

Soon or late to all our dwellings come

the spectres of the mind, Doubts and fears and dread forebodings, In the darkness undefined; Round us throng the grim projections of the heart and of the brain, And our pride of strength is weakness, and the cunning hand is vain.