Twixt the frothed gnashing tusks of some ship-crunching bay.

So, pine-like, the legend grew, stronglimbed and tall,

As the Gypsy child grows that eats crusts in the hall;

It sucked the whole strength of the earth and the sky,

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, all brought it supply;

'T was a natural growth, and stood fearlessly there,

True part of the landscape as sea, land, and air;

For it grew in good times, ere the fashion it was

To force these wild births of the woods under glass,

And so, if 't is told as it should be told, Though 't were sung under Venice's moonlight of gold,

You would hear the old voice of its

mother, the pine, Murmur sealike and northern through every line,

And the verses should grow, self-sus

tained and free,

Round the vibrating stem of the melody, Like the lithe moonlit limbs of the parent tree.

Yes, the pine is the mother of legends; what food

For their grim roots is left when the thousand-yeared wood,

The dim-aisled cathedral, whose tall arches spring

Light, sinewy, graceful, firm-set as the wing

From Michael's white shoulder, is hewn

and defaced

By iconoclast axes in desperate waste, And its wrecks seek the ocean it prophesied long, Cassandra-like, crooning its mystical song?

Then the legends go with them, even yet on the sea

A wild virtue is left in the touch of the tree,

And the sailor's night-watches are
thrilled to the core
With the lineal offspring of Odin and
Thor.

let in,

Since the day of creation, the light and

the din

Of manifold life, but has safely conveyed

From the midnight primeval its armful of shade,

And has kept the weird Past with its child faith alive

Mid the hum and the stir of To-day's busy hive,

There the legend takes root in the agegathered gloom,

And its murmurous boughs for their sagas find room.

Where Aroostook, far-heard, seems to sob as he goes

Groping down to the sea 'neath his mountainous snows;

Where the lake's frore Sahara of nevertracked white,

When the crack shoots across it, complains to the night

With a long, lonely moan, that leagues northward is lost,

As the ice shrinks away from the tread of the frost;

Where the lumberers sit by the log-fires that throw

Their own threatening shadows far round o'er the snow,

When the wolf howls aloof, and the wavering glare

Flashes out from the blackness the eyes of the bear,

When the wood's huge recesses, halflighted, supply

A canvas where Fancy her mad brush may try,

Blotting in giant Horrors that venture not down

Through the right-angled streets of the brisk, whitewashed town,

But

kulk in the depths of the measureless wood

Mid the Dark's creeping whispers that curdle the blood,

When the eye, glanced in dread o'er the shoulder, may dream,

Ere it shrinks to the camp-fire's companioning gleam,

it saw the fierce ghost of the Red Man crouch back

That

To the

shroud of the tree-trunk's invin. cible black ;

the pine-shadowed camp,

Which shun the keen gleam of the schol

arly lamp,

And the seed of the legend finds true Norland ground,

While the border-tale 's told and the canteen flits round.

young;

On this bowed head the awful Past
Once laid its consecrating hands;
The Future in its purpose vast
Paused, waiting my supreme com-
mands.

But look! whose shadows block th door?

Who are those two that stand aloof? See on my hands this freshening gore Writes o'er again its crimson proof! My looked-for death-bed guests are met;

There my dead Youth doth wring its hands,

And there, with eyes that goad me yet,

The ghost of my Ideal stands!

God bends from out the deep and says,

;

"I gave thee the great gift of life Wast thou not called in many ways? Are not my earth and heaven at strife? I gave thee of my seed to sow,

Bringest thou me my hundred-fold?" Can I look up with face aglow,

And answer, "Father, here is gold"?

I have been innocent; God knows
When first this wasted life began,
Not grape with grape more kindly grows,
Than I with every brother-man:
Now here I gasp; what lose my kind,
When this fast ebbing breath shall
part?

What bands of love and service bind
This being to a brother heart?,

Christ still was wandering o'er the earth.
Without a place to lay his head;
He found free welcome at my hearth,
He shared my cup and broke my
bread:

Now, when I hear those steps sublime,

That bring the other world to this, My snake-turned nature, sunk in slime Starts sideway with defiant hiss.

Upon the hour when I was born,

God said, "Another man shall be," And the great Maker did not scorn Out of himself to fashion me;

He sunned me with his ripening looks, And Heaven's rich instincts in me

grew,

wrong,

Much wrestling with the blessed Word To make it vield the sense of the Lord, That he might build a storm-proof creed To fold the flock in at their need.

At last he builded a perfect faith, Fenced round about with The Lord thus saith;

To himself he fitted the doorway's size, Meted the light to the need of his eyes, And knew, by a sure and inward sign, That the work of his fingers was divine.

Then Ambrose said, "All those shall die The eternal death who believe not as I"; And some were boiled, some burned in fire,

desire,

For the good of men's souls, might be satisfied

By the drawing of all to the righteous side.

One day, as Ambrose was seeking the truth

In his lonely walk, he saw a youth
Resting himself in the shade of a tree;
It had never been granted him to see
So shining a face, and the good man
thought

'T were pity he should not believe as he ought.

So he set himself by the young man's side,

And the state of his soul with questions tried;

But the heart of the stranger was hardened indeed,

Nor received the stamp of the one true creed ;

And the spirit of Ambrose waxed sore to find

Such features the porch of so narrow a mind.

weal:

"Believest thou then, most wretched youth,'

Cried he, "a dividual essence in Truth? I fear me thy heart is too cramped with sin To take the Lord in his glory in."

Now there bubbled beside them where they stood

A fountain of waters sweet and good; The youth to the streamlet's brink drew