SUMMER BY THE LAKESIDE.

I. NOON.

WHITE clouds, whose shadows haunt the deep,

Light mists, whose soft embraces keep
The sunshine on the hills asleep!

O isles of calm !-O dark, still wood!
And stiller skies that overbrood
Your rest with deeper quietude!

O shapes and hues, dim beckoning, through

Yon mountain gaps, my longing view
Beyond the purple and the blue,

To stiller sea and greener land,
And softer lights and airs more bland,
And skies, -the hollow of God's hand!

Transfused through you, O mountain friends!

With mine your solemn spirit blends, And life no more hath separate ends.

I read each misty mountain sign,
I know the voice of wave and pine,
And I am yours, and ye are mine.

Life's burdens fall, its discords cease,
I lapse into the glad release
Of nature's own exceeding peace.

O, welcome calm of heart and mind!
As falls yon fir-tree's loosened rind
To leave a tenderer growth behind,

So fall the weary years away;
A child again, my head I lay
Upon the lap of this sweet day.

This western wind hath Lethean powers,
Yon noonday cloud nepenthe showers,
The lake is white with lotus-flowers!

Even Duty's voice is faint and low, And slumberous Conscience, waking

slow,

Forgets her blotted scroll to show.

The Shadow which pursues us all, Whose ever-nearing steps appall, Whose voice we hear behind us call,

That Shadow blends with mountain gray,

It speaks but what the light waves say,-
Death walks apart from Fear to-day!

Rocked on her breast, these pines and I
Alike on Nature's love rely;
And equal seems to live or die.
Assured that He whose presence fills
With light the spaces of these hills
No evil to his creatures wills,

The simple faith remains, that He
Will do, whatever that may be,
The best alike for man and tree.

What mosses over one shall grow,
What light and life the other know,
Unanxious, leaving Him to show.

II. EVENING.

Yon mountain's side is black with night, While, broad-orbed, o'er its gleaming

crown

The moon, slow-rounding into sight, On the hushed inland sea looks down.

How start to light the clustering isles, Each silver-hemined! How sharply show

The shadows of their rocky piles,

And tree-tops in the wave below!

How far and strange the mountains

seem,

Dim-looming through the pale, still light!

The vague, vast grouping of a dream, They stretch into the solemn night.

Beneath, lake, wood, and peopled vale, Hushed by that presence grand and grave,

Are silent, save the cricket's wail, 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.

225

BURNS.

ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN BLOSSOM.

No more these simple flowers belong
To Scottish maid and lover;
Sown in the common soil of song,

They bloom the wide world over.

In smiles and tears, in sun and show

ers,

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

Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns!
The moorland flower and peasant!
Mow, 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 hear the blackbird in the corn,
The locust in the haying;
And, like the fabled hunter's horn,
Old tunes my heart is playing.

How oft that day, with fond delay,
I sought the maple's shadow,
And sang with Burns the hours away,
Forgetful of the meadow !

Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead

I heard the squirrels leaping, The good dog listened while I read, . And wagged his tail in keeping.

I watched him while in sportive mood I read "The Twa Dogs' " story,

And half believed he understood The poet's allegory.

227

Sweet day, sweet songs!- The golden hours

Grew brighter for that singing, From brook and bird and meadow flowers

A dearer welcome bringing.

New light on home-seen Nature beamed,

New glory over Woman;
And daily life and duty seemed
No longer poor and common.

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 sweet-brier 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.