In 1852 appeared The Chapel of the Hermits, Poems. The Panorama, and other Poems, constituted volume, issued in 1856. As the most significant a tiful of the miscellaneous poems of the last-named we present, beginning with the eighth stanza,

A child, with wonder-widened eyes,
O'erawed and troubled by the sight
Of hot, red sands, and brazen skies,
And anchorite.

"What dost thou here, poor man? No shade Of cool, green doums, nor grass, nor well, Nor corn, nor vines." The hermit 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. "Does God live
Here only?-where the desert's rim
Is green with corn, at morn and eve,
We pray to Him.

"My brother tills beside the Nile'

66

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.

MANUAL OF AMERICAN LITERATU

He rose from off the desert sand,

And, leaning on his staff of thorn,
Went, with the young child, hand in han
Like night with morn.

They crossed the desert's burning line,
And heard the palm-tree's rustling fan,
The Nile-bird's cry, the low of kine,
And voice of man.

Unquestioning, his childish guide.

He followed as the small hand led
To where a woman, gentle-eyed,
Her distaff fed.

She rose, she clasped her truant boy,
She thanked the stranger with her eyes
The hermit gazed in doubt and joy
And dumb surprise.

"For, taught of him whom God hath sent,
That toil is praise, and love is prayer,
I come, life's cares and pains content
With thee to share."

Even as his foot the threshold crossed,
The hermit's better life began;

Its holiest saint the Thebaid lost,
And found a man!

The above volume was followed successively by Ballads, Later Poems, Home Ballads, and Occasional Poems. Of the "Ballads," the most eventful and poetic is

MARY GARVIN.

THE evening gun had sounded from gray Fort Mary's walls; Through the forest, like a wild beast, roared and plunged the Saco's falls.

And westward on the sea-wind, that damp and gusty grew, Over cedars darkening inland the smokes of Spurwink blew.

On the hearth of Farmer Garvin blazed the crackling walnut

log;

Right and left sat dame and goodman, and between them lay the dog,

Head on paws, and tail slow wagging, and beside him on her mat,

Sitting drowsy in the fire-light, winked and purred the mot

tled cat.

"Twenty years!" said Goodman Garvin, speaking sadly, under breath,

And his gray head slowly shaking, as one who speaks of

death.

The Goodwife dropped her needles: "It is twenty years, to

day,

Since the Indians fell on Saco, and stole our child away."

Then they sank into the silence, for each knew the other's thought,

Of a great and common sorrow, and words were needed not.