plains 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 which 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 skulk 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,

That it saw the fierce ghost of the Red Man crouch back

To the shroud of the tree-trunk's invincible black;

There the old shapes crowd thick round the pine-shadowed camp, Which shun the keen gleam of the scholarly lamp,

And the seed of the legend finds true Norland ground,

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

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 the 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 thee of my seed to sow, gave

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 the world's sad 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,

As effortless as woodland nooks

Send violets up and paint them blue.

Yes, I who now, with angry tears,

Am exiled back to brutish clod, Have borne unquenched for fourscore years

A spark of the eternal God; And to what end? How yield I back The trust for such high uses given? Heaven's light hath but revealed a track Whereby to crawl away from heaven. Men think it is an awful sight

To see a soul just set adrift On that drear voyage from whose night The ominous shadows never lift; But 't is more awful to behold A helpless infant newly born, Whose little hands unconscious hold

The keys of darkness and of morn. Mine held them once; I flung away Those keys that might have open set The golden sluices of the day,

But clutch the keys of darkness yet ;I hear the reapers singing go

Into God's harvest; I, that might With them have chosen, here below Grope shuddering at the gates of night.

O glorious Youth, that once wast mine! O high Ideal! all in vain

Ye enter at this ruined shrine Whence worship ne'er shall rise again;

The bat and owl inhabit here,

The snake nests in the altar-stone, The sacred vessels moulder near, The image of the God is gone.

THE OAK.

WHAT gnarled stretch, what depth of shade, is his!

There needs no crown to mark the forest's king;

How in his leaves outshines full summer's bliss!

Much wrestling with the blessed Word To make it yield 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,

Some sawn in twain, that his heart's 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 given 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 face the porch of so narrow a mind.

"As each beholds in cloud and fire The shape that answers his own desire, So each," said the youth, "in the Law shall find

The figure and features of his mind; And to each in his mercy hath God allowed

His several pillar of fire and cloud."

The soul of Ambrose burned with zeal And holy wrath for the young man's 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