WHEN heats as of a tropic clime Burned all our inland valleys through,

Three friends, the guests of summer time,

Pitched their white tent where seawinds blew.

Behind them, marshes, seamed and crossed

With narrow creeks, and flower-embossed,

Stretched to the dark oak wood, whose leafy arms

Screened from the stormy East the pleasant inland farms.

At full of tide their bolder shore

Of sun-bleached sand the waters beat:

At ebb, a smooth and glistening floor They touched with light, receding feet.

Northward a green bluff broke the chain

Of sand-hills; southward stretched a plain

Of salt grass, with a river winding down, Sail-whitened, and beyond the steeples of the town,

Whence sometimes, when the wind was light

And dull the thunder of the beach, They heard the bells of morn and night

Swing, miles away, their silver speech.

Above low scarp and turf-grown wall They saw the fort-flag rise and fall;

And, the first star to signal twilight's hour,

The lamp-fire glimmer down from the tall light-house tower.

They rested there, escaped awhile

From cares that wear the life away, To eat the lotus of the Nile

And drink the poppies of Cathay,To fling their loads of custom down, Like drift-weed, on the sand-slopes brown,

And in the sea waves drown the restless pack

Of duties, claims, and needs that barked upon their track.

One, with his beard scarce silvered, bore

A ready credence in his looks, A lettered magnate, lording o'er

An ever-widening realm of books. In him brain-currents, near and far, Converged as in a Leyden jar; The old, dead authors thronged him round about,

And Elzevir's gray ghosts from leathern graves looked out.

He knew each living pundit well,
Could weigh the gifts of him or her,
And well the market value tell

Of poet and philosopher.

But if he lost, the scenes behind,
Somewhat of reverence vague and

blind,

Finding the actors human at the best, No readier lips than his the good he saw confessed.

His boyhood fancies not outgrown,

He loved himself the singer's art;

Too quiet seemed the man to ride The winged Hippogriff Reform; Was his a voice from side to side

To pierce the tumult of the storm? A silent, shy, peace-loving man, He seemed no fiery partisan To hold his way against the public frown, The ban of Church and State, the fierce mob's hounding down.

For while he wrought with strenuous will

The work his hands had found to do, He heard the fitful music still

Of winds that out of dream-land blew.

The din about him could not drown What the strange voices whispered down;

He heard the plaintive Nubian songs

again,

And mule bells tinkling down the mountain-paths of Spain.