AMY WENTWORTH.

TO W. B.

ened eyes,

The awful beauty of self-sacrifice,
And wrung by keenest sympathy for all
Who give their loved ones for the living
wall

"Twixt law and treason, - in this evil day

May haply find, through automatic play Of pen and pencil, solace to our pain, And hearten others with the strength we gain.

I know it has been said our times require

No play of art, nor dalliance with the lyre,

No weak essay with Fancy's chloroform To calm the hot, mad pulses of the storm,

But the stern war-blast rather, such as sets

The battle's teeth of serried bayonets,
And pictures grim as Vernet's.

with these

Yet

Some softer tints may blend, and milder keys

Relieve the storm-stunned ear.

keep sweet,

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Let us

If so we may, our hearts, even while we

eat

The bitter harvest of our own device And half a century's moral cowardice. As Nürnberg sang while Wittenberg defied,

And Kranach painted by his Luther's side,

And through the war-march of the Puritan

The silver stream of Marvell's music

ran,

So let the household melodies be sung, The pleasant pictures on the wall be hung,

So let us hold against the hosts of night And slavery all our vantage-ground of light.

Let Treason boast its savagery, and shake

From its flag-folds its symbol rattlesnake,

Nurse its fine arts, lay human skins in tan,

And carve its pipe-bowls from the bones of man,

And make the tale of Fijian banquets dull

By drinking whiskey from a loyal skull,

But let us guard, till this sad war shall cease,

(God grant it soon!) the graceful arts of peace:

No foes are conquered who the victors teach Their vandal speech.

manners and barbaric

And every fog-wreath dim,
And bids the sea-birds flying north
Bear messages to him.

She speeds them with the thanks of men
He perilled life to save,

And grateful prayers like holy oil
To smooth for him the wave.

Brown Viking of the fishing-smack !
Fair toast of all the town!
The skipper's jerkin ill beseems
The lady's silken gown!

But ne'er shall Amy Wentworth wear
For him the blush of shame
Who dares to set his manly gifts
Against her ancient name.

The stream is brightest at its spring,
And blood is not like wine;
Nor honored less than he who heirs
Is he who founds a line.

Full lightly shall the prize be won,
If love be Fortune's spur;
And never maiden stoops to him
Who lifts himself to her.

Her home is brave in Jaffrey Street,
With stately stairways worn
By feet of old Colonial knights
And ladies gentle-born.

Still green about its ample porch

The English ivy twines,

Trained back to show in English oak The herald's carven signs.

And on her, from the wainscot old,

Ancestral faces frown,

And this has worn the soldier's sword, And that the judge's gown.

But, strong of will and proud as they,
She walks the gallery floor

As if she trod her sailor's deck
By stormy Labrador!

The sweetbrier blooms on Kittery-side,
And green are Elliot's bowers;
Her garden is the pebbled beach,
The mosses are her flowers.

She looks across the harbor-bar To see the white gulls fly;

His greeting from the Northern sea
Is in their clanging cry.

She hums a song, and dreams that he,

As in its romance old, Shall homeward ride with silken sails And masts of beaten gold!

O, rank is good, and gold is fair,

And high and low mate ill; But love has never known a law Beyond its own sweet will!

THE COUNTESS.

TO E. W.

I KNOW not, Time and Space so inter

vene,

Whether, still waiting with a trust se

rene,

Thou bearest up thy fourscore years and ten,

Or, called at last, art now Heaven's citizen;

But, here or there, a pleasant thought of thee,

Like an old friend, all day has been with me.

The shy, still boy, for whom thy kindly hand

Smoothed his hard pathway to the wonder-land

Of thought and fancy, in gray manhood yet

Keeps green the memory of his early debt.

To-day, when truth and falsehood speak their words

Through hot-lipped cannon and the teeth of swords,

Listening with quickened heart and ear intent

To each sharp clause of that stern argument,

I still can hear at times a softer note
Of the old pastoral music round me float,
While through the hot gleam of our
civil strife

Looms the green mirage of a simpler life.

As, at his alien post, the sentinel Drops the old bucket in the homestead well,

And hears old voices in the winds that

toss

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pine,

Of gable, roof, and porch, The tavern with its swinging sign,

The sharp horn of the church.

The river's steel-blue crescent curves
To meet, in ebb and flow,
The single broken wharf that serves
For sloop and gundelow.

With salt sea-scents along its shores
The heavy hay-boats crawl,
The long antennæ of their oars
In lazy rise and fall.

Along the gray abutment's wall

The idle shad-net dries;

The toll-man in his cobbler's stall
Sits smoking with closed eyes.

You hear the pier's low undertone
Of waves that chafe and gnaw;
You start,
a skipper's horn is blown
To raise the creaking draw.

At times a blacksmith's anvil sounds
With slow and sluggard beat,
Or stage-coach on its dusty rounds
Wakes up the staring street.

A place for idle eyes and ears,

A cobwebbed nook of dreams;

Of pomp and romance shorn,
The dry, old names that common breath
Has cheapened and outworn.

Yet pause by one low mound, and part
The wild vines o'er it laced,
And read the words by rustic art
Upon its headstone traced.

Haply yon white-haired villager
Of fourscore years can say
What means the noble name of her
Who sleeps with common clay.

An exile from the Gascon land
Found refuge here and rest,
And loved, of all the village band,
Its fairest and its best.

He knelt with her on Sabbath morns,
He worshipped through her eyes,
And on the pride that doubts and scorns
Stole in her faith's surprise.

Her simple daily life he saw

By homeliest duties tried,
In all things by an untaught law
Of fitness justified.

For her his rank aside he laid;
He took the hue and tone
Of lowly life and toil, and made
Her simple ways his own.

years

The stranded village seems.

And there, like other moss and rust,
The native dweller clings,
And keeps, in uninquiring trust,
The old, dull round of things.

The fisher drops his patient lines,
The farmer sows his grain,
Content to hear the murmuring pines
Instead of railroad-train.

Go where, along the tangled steep That slopes against the west, The hamlet's buried idlers sleep In still profounder rest.

Throw back the locust's flowery plume, The birch's pale-green scarf,

And break the web of brier and bloom From name and epitaph.

To harvest-field or dance
He brought the gentle courtesies,

The nameless grace of France.

And she who taught him love not less
From him she loved in turn
Caught in her sweet unconsciousness
What love is quick to learn.

Each grew to each in pleased accord,
Nor knew the gazing town
If she looked upward to her lord
Or he to her looked down.

How sweet, when summer's day was o'er,
His violin's mirth and wail,
The walk on pleasant Newbury's shore,
The river's moonlit sail!

Ah! life is brief, though love be long;
The altar and the bier,
The burial hymn and bridal song,
Were both in one short year!