And, when the second morning shone,
We looked upon a world unknown,
On nothing we could call our own.
Around the glistening wonder bent
The blue walls of the firmament,
No cloud above, no earth below,—
A universe of sky and snow!
The old familiar sights of ours

Took marvelous shapes; strange domes and towers
Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,

Or garden wall, or belt of wood;

A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,

A fenceless drift what once was road;

The bridle-post an old man sat

With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;

The well-curb had a Chinese roof;

And even the long sweep, high aloof,

In its slant splendor, seemed to tell
Of Pisa's leaning miracle.

A path to the barn is next cleared by the boys, and the reception they meet with from its brute occupants described. The storm continues throughout the day, and

As night drew on, and, from the crest
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west,
The sun, a snow-blown traveler, sank
From sight beneath the smothering bank,
We piled, with care, our nightly stack
Of wood against the chimney-back,-
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick,
And on its top the stout back-stick;
The knotty forestick laid apart,
And filled between with curious art
The ragged brush; then, hovering near,
We watched the first red blaze appear,
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,
Until the old, rude-furnished room
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom;

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MANUAL OF AMERICAN LITERATU

While radiant with a mimic flame
Outside the sparkling drift became,

And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing fre
The crane and pendent trammels showed,
The Turks' heads on the andirons glowed
While childish fancy, prompt to tell
The meaning of the miracle,

Whispered the old rhyme: "Under the tree,
When fire outdoors burns merrily,

There the witches are making tea."

(Since He who knows our need is just), That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.

Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told, Or stammered from our school-book lore, "The chief of Gambia's golden shore.”

Our mother, while she turned her wheel
Or run the new-knit stocking-heel,
Told how the Indian hordes came down
At midnight on Cochecho town,
And how her own great-uncle bore
His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore.
Recalling, in her fitting phrase,
So rich and picturesque and free,
(The common unrhymed poetry
Of simple life and country ways,)
The story of her early days,—
She made us welcome to her home;
Old hearths grew wide to give us room;
We stole with her a frightened look
At the gray wizard's conjuring-book,
The fame whereof went far and wide
Through all the simple country-side ;
We heard the hawks at twilight play,
The boat-horn on Piscataqua,
The loon's weird laughter far away;

MANUAL OF AMERICAN LITERATUR

How the time for a week or more is whiled awa described, and the poem closes musingly thus:

1867 appeared The Tent on the Beach, and Other Poems. (the main poem) is an idyl of the sea-shore, and in neral plan is similar to Longfellow's Tales of a Way

in.

When heats as of a tropic clime

Burned all our inland valleys through,

Three friends, the guests of summer-time,

Pitched their white tents where sea-winds blew.

one, whose Arab face was tanned

tropic sun and boreal frost,

aveled there was scarce a land people left him to exhaust.

rested there, escaped awhile
m cares that wear the life away,

s the lotus of the Nile

drink the poppies of Cathay,g their loads of custom down, rift-weed, on the sand-slopes brown,

à the sea-waves drown the restless pack

ies, claims, and needs that barked upon their track.