And, landing at fair isles, by stream and vale
Of sensuous blessing did we ofttimes go.
And months of dreamy joys, like joys in sleep,

Or like a clear, calm stream o'er mossy stone,
Unnoted passed our hearts with voiceless sweep,
And left us yearning still for lands unknown.
And when we found one-for 'tis soon to find

In thousand-isled Cathay another isle-
For one short noon its treasures filled the mind,
And then again we yearned, and ceased to smile.

And so it was, from isle to isle we passed,

Like wanton bees or boys on flowers or lips; And when that all was tasted, then at last

We thirsted still for draughts instead of sips.

I learned from this there is no Southern land
Can fill with love the hearts of Northern men.
Sick minds need change; but when in health they
stand

'Neath foreign skies, their love flies home again. And thus with me it was: the yearning turned

From laden airs of cinnamon away,

And stretched far westward, while the full heart burned
With love for Ireland, looking on Cathay!

My first dear love, all dearer for thy grief!
My land, that has no peer in all the sea,
For verdure, vale or river, flower or leaf-

If first to no man else, thou'rt first to me.
New loves may come with duties, but the first
Is deepest yet-the mother's breath and smiles,
Like that kind face and breast where I was nursed,
Is my poor land, the Niobe of isles.

THE PILGRIMS OF THE MAYFLOWER.

[From Poem at the Inauguration of the Plymouth Monument, Au gust 1, 1889.]

Here, where the shore was rugged as the waves,
Where frozen Nature dumb and lifeless lay,
And no rich meadows bade the Pilgrims stay,
Was spread the symbol of the life that saves:

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENCY

A

To conquer first the outer things; to make
Their own advantage, unallied, unbound;
Their blood the mortar-building from the ground;
Their cares the statutes, making all anew;
To learn to trust the many, not the few;
To bend the mind to discipline; to break
The bonds of old convention, and forget
The claims and barriers of class; to face
A desert land, a strange and hostile race,

And conquer both to friendship by the debt
That Nature pays to justice, love, and toil:
Here, on this Rock, and on this sterile soil,
Began the kingdom not of Kings, but Men,
Began the making of the world again.

Here centuries sank, and from the hither brink,
A New World reached and raised an Old World link,
When England's hands, by wider vision taught,
Threw down the feudal bars the Norman brought,
And here revived, in spite of sword and stake,
The ancient freedom of the Wapentake.

Here struck the seed-the Pilgrims' roofless town,
Where equal rights and equal bonds were set,
Where all the People equal-franchised met,

Where doom was writ of Privilege and Crown, Where human breath blew all the idols down,

Where crests were naught, where vulture flags were furled,

And Common Men began to own the world.

ORIGEN, a Father of the Church, respecting the exact place of whose birth and death there is some question. The most probable representation is that he was born at Alexandria, Egypt, in A.D. 185; and died at Tyre in 254. As he was of Greek descent, and wrote in Greek, he may properly be designated as a Grecian. He was by birth a Christian, and, his father having suffered martyrdom, he, with his mother and her seven children, was left in poverty. He in time opened a school at Alexandria, which became famous. He lived a life of the utmost austerity. After many and varied experiences, which need not here be detailed, he opened, in 231, what we may call a theological seminary at Cæsarea, in Palestine. When the Decian persecution broke out, in 251, Origen was imprisoned and put to torture; but was eventually released, and died soon afterward.

Origen has been styled "the father of Biblical criticism and exegesis." Jerome says of him: "He was a man of immortal genius, who understood logic, geometry, arithmetic, music, grammar, rhetoric, and all the sects of the philosophers." But the main subject of his labors belongs to the domain of theology, upon which he was a voluminous writer, even though the statement that he wrote 6,000 books may be set down as an exaggeration. His extant works (some of them