Long years ago a winter sun
Shone over it at setting;
up
its western window-panes,
And low eaves' icy fretting.
Still memory to a gray-hair'd man
That sweet child-face is showing,
Dear girl! the grasses on her
grave
Have forty years been growing!
He lives to learn, in life's hard school,
How few who pass above him
Lament their triumph and his loss,
Like her,—because they love him.
Born at Philadelphia 1808.
DUST on thy mantle! dust,
Bright Summer! on thy livery of green.
A tarnish, as of rust,
Dims thy late-brilliant sheen;
And thy young glories,-leaf, and bud, and flower,—
Change cometh over them with every hour.
Thee hath the August sun
Look'd on with hot and fierce and brassy face;
And still and lazily run,
Scarce whispering in their pace,
The half-dried rivulets, that lately sent
A shout of gladness up as on they went.
Flame-like the long mid-day!
With not so much of sweet air as hath stirr'd
The down upon the spray
Where rests the panting bird,
Dozing away the hot and tedious noon,
With fitful twitter, sadly out of tune.
And gossamer web-work on the sleeping trees;
E'en the tall pines, that rear
Their plumes to catch the breeze
The slightest breeze from the unfreshening west— Partake the general languor and deep rest.
Stretch'd on his back, in homely bean-vine bower, While the voluptuous bee
Robs each surrounding flower,
And prattling childhood clambers o'er his breast,— The husbandman enjoys his noonday rest.
The thin and fleecy clouds, unmoving, rest;
Beneath them far, yet high
In the dim distant west,
The vulture, scenting thence its carrion-fare,
Sails, slowly circling in the sunny air.
Repose the patient cow, and toil-worn ox,—
Or in the shoal stream wade,
Shelter'd by jutting rocks;
The fleecy flock, fly-scourged and restless, rush
Madly from fence to fence, from bush to bush.
Tediously pass the hours;
And vegetation wilts, with blister'd root,
And droop the thirsting flowers,
Where the slant sunbeams shoot:
But of each tall old tree the lengthening line,
Slow-creeping eastward, marks the day's decline.
Moves now the shade, and on the meadows' edge: The kine are forth again,
The bird flits in the hedge.
Now in the molten west sinks the hot sun.
Welcome, mild eve!--the sultry day is done.
Pleasantly comèst thou,
Dew of the evening! to the crisp'd-up grass;
And the curl'd corn-blades bow,
As the light breezes pass,
That their parch'd lips may feel thee, and expand,
Thou sweet reviver of the fever'd land!
So, to the thirsting soul,
Cometh the dew of the Almighty's love;
And the scathed heart, made whole,
Turneth in joy above,
To where the spirit freely may expand,
And rove, untrammel'd, in that "better land."
Born at Cambridge, Mass: 1809.
DOROTHY Q.
(A Family Portrait.)
GRANDMOTHER's mother! her age, I guess,
Thirteen summers, or something less;
Girlish bust, but womanly air,
Smooth, square forehead, with uproll'd hair,
Lips that lover has never kiss'd,
Taper fingers and slender wrist,
Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade,—
So they painted the little maid.
On her hand a parrot green
Sits unmoving and broods serene;
Hold up the canvas full in view!
Look! there's a rent the light shines through,
Dark with a century's fringe of dust,
That was a Red-Coat's rapier-thrust!
Such is the tale the lady old—
Dorothy's daughter's daughter-told.
Who the painter was none may tell,-
One whose best was not over well;
Hard and dry, it must be confess'd,
Flat as a rose that has long been press'd;
Yet in her cheek the hues are bright,
Dainty colours of red and white;
And in her slender shape are seen
Hint and promise of stately mien.
Look not on her with eyes of scorn!
Dorothy Q. was a lady born!
Ay! since the galloping Normans came,
England's annals have known her name :
And still to the three-hill'd rebel town
Dear is that ancient name's renown,
For many a civic wreath they own,
The youthful sire and the grayhair'd son.
O damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.!
Strange is the gift that I owe to you;
Such a gift as never a king
Save to daughter or son might bring:
All my tenure of heart and hand,
All my title to house and land,
Mother and sister, and child and wife,
And joy and sorrow, and death and life.
What if a hundred years ago
Those close-shut lips had answered-No!
When forth the tremulous question came
That cost the maiden her Norman name;
And under the folds that look so still
The bodice swell'd with the bosom's thrill?
Should I be I, or would it be
One-tenth another to nine-tenths me?
Soft is the breath of a maiden's Yes:
Not the light gossamer stirs with less;
But never a cable that holds so fast
Through all the battles of wave and blast,
And never an echo of speech or song
That lives in the babbling air so long!
There were tones in the voice that whisper'd then
You may hear to-day in a hundred men!
O lady and lover! how faint and far
Your images hover, and here we are,
Solid and stirring in flesh and bone,-
Edwards and Dorothys-all their own-
A goodly record for time to show
Of a syllable spoken so long ago!—
Shall I bless you, Dorothy! or forgive,
For the tender whisper that bade me live?
It shall be a blessing, my little maid!
I will heal the stab of the Red-Coat's blade,
And freshen the gold of the tarnish'd frame,
And gild with a rhyme your household name;
So you shall smile on us brave and bright
As first you greeted the morning's light,
And live untroubled by woes and fears
Through a second youth of a hundred years.
THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE :
OR THE WONDERFUL ONE-HOSS SHAY."
HAVE you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it
I'll tell you what happen'd without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits,-
Have you ever heard of that, I say?
Seventeen hundred and fifty-five!
Georgius Secundus was then alive,—
Snuffy old drone from the German hive.
That was the year when Lisbon-town
Saw the earth open and gulp her down,
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