Of youth-abides, a quickening part of us:
Abides, as though it would

By some spell enchanted
Disperse this tragic mood,

By your fate implanted,

To share with you a secret brotherhood.

III

Your branches die, but not the dreams they bred: They, like immortal choirs of dawn, displace Your silent ruin with the singing dead.

Still in your shadowed walks, with shadowy pace,
The Concord poet lifts his star-pale face,

The Elmwood statesman holds his lyric tread.
Still through your silences

Float the far Hosannas

Of that undaunted press,

Brave with tattered banners,

Filing from Lexington to the Wilderness.

IV

Yes, dreams abide; yet fungus will infect
The living tissue and the limb will fall:
Alike in soaring elm and intellect

The cankering worm will bore, and spin the pall
Of aspiration; yet if this were all

Our world of dreams had long ago been wrecked.

It is not all: for growth,

Plying deep substitution, Outwears decay and sloth,

While, with sure revolution,

Youth conquers age, and life o'erlords them both.

V

Then life, give way for life! Old elms forlorn, The scion oaks supplant you, and you die; Shorn are your locks of golden days—all shorn (Save in our dreams) of glory-so, good-bye! But hail, strong-limbed in young integrity,

Hail, glory of our Harvard boys unborn!
Death is a churlish thing;

Life, life alone is royal!

Red oak, red oak, we bring

Hearts alive, hearts loyal:

The king is dead: Long live our crimson king!

Percy Mackaye.

THE CHICKAMAUGA OAK

September came with harvest sun,
The alchemist of old,

Across the fields of green to run
And turn them into gold.

But here was neither corn nor grain,
Nor need of alchemist,

For verdant vale and upland plain
No busy plow had kissed.

The men who once had turned the sod
And scattered here the seed
O'er other hills and valleys trod

To serve their dearest creed.

A hotter sun shone overhead,

The cannon's sulphur breath;

They sowed the seed whose bloom is red
And final fruit is death.

Here stood the Chickamauga oak
That cool September morn
And from its night of sleep awoke
To hear the blare of horn,

To hear the tramp of marching feet,
The steady clank of steel,
The hoofbeats of the horses fleet
And rumble of the wheel.

Around it broke the crimson gale,
Up rose the clouds of war;
Down poured the slanted sheets of hail
On Chickamauga's shore.

Red lightning flashed from barking gun
While cannon thundered by,
And son and sire and sire and son
Exchanged their battle cry.

Above them neutral still it stood,
The Chickamauga oak,

Nor questioned whose the purpose good
And whose the wrongful stroke;
And, when the line of battle passed
Where broke the storm anew,
Impartially its shade it cast
On fallen gray and blue.

The battle long is ended now,
The fife and drum are still;
Again the men of Georgia plow
The fertile field and hill.
Again the bright September sun
Turns waving grain to gold;
Again the crystal waters run
As in the days of old.

Still stands the Chickamauga oak-
But now beneath its shade

Lie those who parried stroke and stroke
And wielded blade and blade.

For north and south, for blue and gray,
Impartially it grieves,

And lays on both their graves to-day

The cerement of its leaves.

Douglas Malloch.

THE CEDAR TREE

The cedars of Lebanon are renowned in sacred and secular annals as the most magnificent trees of the East. The Psalmist calls them "the trees of the Lord." They are held in great veneration by the Syrian people to this day, a holiday being set apart by them for the Feast of the Cedars.

The cedar belongs to the family of pines, the resinous, aro

matic, needle-leafed group of trees, which, as silver fir and larches, crown the mountains, and, as spruce and hemlock, fringe the deciduous forests and winding water-courses at their base.

Did you ever wander alone into the heart of a dense pine forest in a summer day? It is one of the quietest, grandest scenes in Nature. The busy noises of the human world, and even the dreamy murmur of the woods and waters, are unheard there. No song of bird, or hum of insect, intrudes upon the solemn stillness of the place. The only sound is the plaintive whisper of the low wind sighing through the harp-like branches overhead, or the mournful coo of the dove in some distant solitude, making the aisles of the wood sacred as a sanctuary. There your soul communes with God in the sweet serenity of silence; there you breathed your inmost wants as a prayer into the ear of your listening Father; there, in the hush and calm of the ancient forest temple, you worshiped and were blest. There was a hallowed influence in the air, the scene, the hour, which puts you in communication with heaven; and precious truths were told you there in psalms of tenderness, sweeter than the melody of flute or organ to the pensive spirit. The cathedrallike quiet was balmed and holy with fragrance, as if pervaded with the incense of sacrifice; the high dome of the sky seemed to arch more closely over you with its celestial blue; and the dark green foliage about you was trembling with the harmony of vespers chanted only for your soul. Then your thoughts were called away from the fading vanities and turbulent excitements of the world, and directed to the serene and imperishable glories of the heavenly Paradise.

Alexander Clark.

TREE-BURIAL

Near our southwestern border, when a child
Dies in the cabin of an Indian wife,

She makes its funeral-couch of delicate furs,
Blankets and bark, and binds it to the bough
Of some broad branching tree with leathern thongs
And sinews of the deer. A mother once

Wrought at this tender task, and murmured thus:

Child of my love, I do not lay thee down
Among the chilly clods where never comes

The pleasant sunshine. There the greedy wolf
Might break into thy grave and tear thee thence,
And I should sorrow all my life. I make

Thy burial-place here, where the light of day
Shines round thee, and the airs that play among
The boughs shall rock thee.

"And now, oh wind, that here among the leaves
Dost softly rustle, breathe thou ever thus
Gently, and put not forth thy strength to tear
The branches and let fall their precious load,
A prey to foxes. Thou, too, ancient sun,
Beneath whose eye the seasons come and go,
And generations rise and pass away,

While thou dost never change-oh, call not up,
With thy strong heats, the dark, grim thunder-cloud,
To smite this tree with bolts of fire, and rend
Its trunk and strew the earth with splintered boughs.
Ye rains, fall softly on the couch that holds
My darling. There the panther's spotted hide
Shall turn aside the shower; and be it long,
Long after thou and I have met again,
Ere summer wind or winter rain shall waste
This couch and all that now remains of thee,
To me thy mother. Meantime, while I live,
With each returning sunrise I shall seem
To see thy waking smile, and I shall weep;
And when the sun is setting I shall think
How, as I watched thee, o'er thy sleepy eyes

Drooped the smooth lids, and laid on the round cheek
Their lashes, and my tears will flow again;

And often, at those moments, I shall seem

To hear again the sweetly prattled name

Which thou didst call me by, and it will haunt

My home till I depart to be with thee."

William Cullen Bryant.