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Here shall the tender song be sung,
And memory's dirges soft and low,
And wit shall sparkle on the tongue,
And mirth shall overflow,

Harmless as summer lightning plays
From a low, hidden cloud by night,
A light to set the hills ablaze,
But not a bolt to smite.

In sunny South and prairied West
Are exiled hearts remembering still,
As bees their hive, as birds their nest,
The homes of Haverhill.

They join us in our rites to-day;
And, listening, we may hear, ere long,
From inland lake and ocean bay,

The echoes of our song.

Kenoza! o'er no sweeter lake

Shall morning break or noon-cloud sail,— No fairer face than thine shall take

The sunset's golden veil.

Long be it ere the tide of trade

Shall break with harsh-resounding din

The quiet of thy banks of shade,
And hills that fold thee in.

Still let thy woodlands hide the hare,
The shy loon sound his trumpet-note;
Wing-weary from his fields of air,
The wild-goose on thee float.

Thy peace rebuke our feverish stir,
Thy beauty our deforming strife;
Thy woods and waters minister
The healing of their life.

TO G. B. C.

And sinless Mirth, from care released,
Behold, unawed, thy mirrored sky,
Smiling as smiled on Cana's feast
The Master's loving eye.

And when the summer day grows dim,
And light mists walk thy mimic sea,
Revive in us the thought of Him
Who walked on Galilee!

883

TO G. B. C.

So spake Esaias: so, in words of flame,
Tekoa's prophet-herdsman smote with blame
The traffickers in men, and put to shame,
All earth and heaven before,

The sacerdotal robbers of the poor.

All the dread Scripture lives for thee again,
To smite with lightning on the hands profane
Lifted to bless the slave-whip and the chain.
Once more th' old Hebrew tongue
Bends with the shafts of God a bow new-strung!

Take up the mantle which the prophets wore; Warn with their warnings,-show the Christ once

more

Bound, scourged, and crucified in his blameless poor;

And shake above our land

The unquenched bolts that blazed in Hosea's hand!

Not vainly shalt thou cast upon our years
The soleinn burdens of the Orient seers,
And smite with truth a guilty nation's ears.
Mightier was Luther's word

Than Seckingen's mailed arm or Hutton's sword!

THE SISTERS.

A PICTURE BY BARRY.

THE shade for me, but over thee
The lingering sunshine still;
As, smiling, to the silent stream
Comes down the singing rill,

So come to me, my little one,—
My years with thee I share,
And mingle with a sister's love
A mother's tender care.

But keep the smile upon thy lip,

The trust upon thy brow;

Since for the dear one God hath called

We have an angel now.

Our mother from the fields of heaven

Shall still her ear incline;

Nor need we fear her human love
Is less for love divine.

The songs are sweet they sing beneath
The trees of life so fair,

But sweetest of the songs of heaven
Shall be her children's prayer.

Then, darling, rest upon my breast,
And teach my heart to lean
With thy sweet trust upon the arm
Which folds us both unseen!

FOR AN AGRICULTURAL EXHIBITION.

385

LINES

FOR THE AGRICULTURAL AND HORTICULTURAL EXHIBITION AT AMES-
BURY AND SALISBURY, SEPT. 28, 1858.

THIS day, two hundred years ago,
The wild grape by the river's side,
And tasteless ground-nut trailing low,
The table of the woods supplied.

Unknown the apple's red and gold,
The blushing tint of peach and pear;
The mirror of the Powow told

No tale of orchards ripe and rare.

Wild as the fruits he scorned to till,
These vales the idle Indian trod;
Nor knew the glad, creative skill,-
The joy of him who toils with God

O Painter of the fruits and flowers!
We thank thee for thy wise design
Whereby these human hands of ours
In Nature's garden work with thine.

And thanks that from our daily need
The joy of simple faith is born;
That he who smites the summer weed,
May trust thee for the autumn corn.

Give fools their gold, and knaves their power;
Let fortune's bubbles rise and fall;
Who sows a field, or trains a flower,
Or plants a tree, is more than all.

For he who blesses most is blest;

And God and man shall own his worth
Who toils to leave as his bequest
An added beauty to the earth.

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And, soon or late, to all that sow,
The time of harvest shall be given;
The flower shall bloom, the fruit shall grow,
If not on earth, at last in heaven !

THE PREACHER.

ITs windows flashing to the sky,
Beneath a thousand roofs of brown,
Far down the vale, my friend and I
Beheld the old and quiet town;
The ghostly sails that out at sea
Flapped their white wings of mystery;
The beaches glimmering in the sun,
And the low wooded capes that run
Into the sea-mist north and south;
The sand-bluffs at the river's mouth;
The swinging chain-bridge, and, afar,
The foam-line of the harbor-bar.

Over the woods and meadow-lands
A crimson-tinted shadow lay

Of clouds through which the setting day
Flung a slant glory far away.

It glittered on the wet sea-sands,

It flamed upon the city's panes, Smote the white sails of ships that wore Outward or in, and glided o'er

The steeples with their veering vanes!

Awhile my friend with rapid search
O'erran the landscape.

"Yonder spire

Over gray roofs, a shaft of fire

What is it, pray?"-" The Whitefield Church!

Walled about by its basement stones,

There rest the marvellous prophet's bones."

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