Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling, rolled,

Then toiled again the cavalcade O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine,

And woodland paths that wound be

tween

Low drooping pine-boughs winterweighed.

From every barn a team afoot,
At every house a new recruit,
Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law
Haply the watchful young men saw
Sweet doorway pictures of the curls
And curious eyes of merry girls,
Lifting their hands in mock defence
Against the snow-ball's compliments,
And reading in each missive tost
The charm with Eden never lost.

We heard once more the sleigh-bells' sound;

And, following where the teamsters
led,

The wise old Doctor went his round,
Just pausing at our door to say,
In the brief autocratic way
Of one who, prompt at Duty's call,
Was free to urge her claim on all,

That some poor neighbor sick abed At night our mother's aid would need. For, one in generous thought and deed, What mattered in the sufferer's sight The Quaker matron's inward light, The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed? All hearts confess the saints elect

Who, twain in faith, in love agree, And melt not in an acid sect

The Christian pearl of charity!

So days went on a week had passed Since the great world was heard from last.

The Almanac we studied o'er,
Read and reread our little store,
Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score ;
One harmless novel, mostly hid
From younger eyes, a book forbid,
And poetry, (or good or bad,
A single book was all we had,)
Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted
Muse,

A stranger to the heathen Nine,
Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine,
The wars of David and the Jews.
At last the floundering carrier bore
The village paper to our door.

293

Lo! broadening outward as we read,
To warmer zones the horizon spread;
In panoramic length unrolled
We saw the marvels that it told.
Before us passed the painted Creeks,
And daft McGregor on his raids
In Costa Rica's everglades.
And up Taygetos winding slow
Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks,
A Turk's head at each saddle-bow !
Welcome to us its week-old news,
Its corner for the rustic Muse,

Its monthly gauge of snow and rain,
Its record, mingling in a breath
The wedding knell and dirge of death;
Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale,
The latest culprit sent to jail;
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost,
Its vendue sales and goods at cost,

And traffic calling loud for gain.
We felt the stir of hall and street,
The pulse of life that round us beat;
The chill embargo of the snow
Was melted in the genial glow;
Wide swung again our ice-locked door,
And all the world was ours once more!

Clasp, Angel of the backward look
And folded wings of ashen gray
And voice of echoes far away,
The brazen covers of thy book;
The weird palimpsest old and vast,
Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past;
Where, closely mingling, pale and glow
The characters of joy and woe;
The monographs of outlived years,
Or smile-illumed or dim with tears,

Green hills of life that slope to death, And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees Shade off to mournful cypresses

With the white amaranths underneath. Even while I look, I can but heed

The restless sands' incessant fall, Importunate hours that hours succeed, Each clamorous with its own sharp need,

And duty keeping pace with all.
Shut down and clasp the heavy lids;
I hear again the voice that bids
The dreamer leave his dream midway
For larger hopes and graver fears:
Life greatens in these later years,
The century's aloe flowers to-day!

Yet, haply, in some lull of life,
Some Truce of God which breaks its
strife,

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 lighthouse tower.

Pleasant it was to roam about

295

The lettered world as he had done, And see the lords of song without Their singing robes and garlands

on.

With Wordsworth paddle Rydal

mere,

Taste rugged Elliott's home-brewed beer,

And with the ears of Rogers, at four

score,

Hear Garrick's buskined tread and Walpole's wit once more.

And one there was, a dreamer born,
Who, with a mission to fulfil,
Had left the Muses' haunts to turn
The crank of an opinion-mill,
Making his rustic reed of song
A weapon in the war with wrong,
Yoking his fancy to the breaking-plough
That beam-deep turned the soil for truth
to spring and grow.

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.

ne gray old shadows prompted

-moulds of rhyme he shaped ir legends grim.

ed now his weary hands, ightly moralized and laughed, ing on the shifting sands lesque of his paper-craft, the careless waves o'errun ds, as time before had done, 's tide-water washing clean y,

rs from the sand, the work of terday.

e, whose Arab face was tanned opic sun and boreal frost, lled there was scarce a land ople left him to exhaust, gmood had from him hurled or squeezed orange of the -ld,

he tent-shade, as beneath a m,

cross-legged like a Turk, in ental calm.

ry waves that washed the

d

mory round the ransacked ch

riel's girdle slid at ease; stant, to the valley's girth mountains, spice isles of the

6,

Howered in minster stones, 's guess

and beauty, found access; the while, that free cosmopo

No shingly monster, hundred-eyed, Stared its gray sand-birds out of reach ;

Unhoused, save where, at intervals, The white tents showed their canvas walls, Where brief sojourners, in the cool, soft air,

Forgot their inland heats, hard toil, and year-long care.

s, old ways, and kept his boyd's dreams in sight.

Sometimes along the wheel-deep sand A one-horse wagon slowly crawled, Deep laden with a youthful band,

Whose look some homestead old recalled;

Brother perchance, and sisters twain, And one whose blue eyes told, more plain

Than the free language of her rosy lip, Of the still dearer claim of love's relationship.

With cheeks of russet-orchard tint,

The light laugh of their native rills, The perfume of their garden's mint,

The breezy freedom of the hills, They bore, in unrestrained delight, The motto of the Garter's knight, Careless as if from every gazing thing Hid by their innocence, as Gyges by his ring.

The clanging sea-fowl came and went,
The hunter's gun in the marshes