Straight the mother stooped to see
What the Indian's gift might be.
On the braid of wampum hung,
Lo! a cross of silver swung.

Well she knew its graven sign,
Squando's bird and totem pine;
And, a mirage of the brain,

Flowed her childhood back again.

Flashed the roof the sunshine through,
Into space the walls outgrew;
On the Indian's wigwam-mat,
Blossom-crowned, again she sat.

Cool she felt the west-wind blow,
In her ear the pines sang low,
And, like links from out a chain,
Dropped the years of care and pain.

From the outward toil and din,
From the griefs that gnaw within,
To the freedom of the woods

Called the birds, and winds, and floods.

Well, O painful minister!
Watch thy flock, but blame not her,
If her ear grew sharp to hear
All their voices whispering near.

Blame her not, as to her soul
All the desert's glamour stole,
That a tear for childhood's loss
Dropped upon the Indian's cross.

When, that night, the Book was read,
And she bowed her widowed head,
And a prayer for each loved name
Rose like incense from a flame,

To the listening ear of Heaven,
Lo another name was given :
"Father, give the Indian rest!
Bless him

for his love has blest!"

MY PLAYMATE.

THE pines were dark on Ramoth hill,
Their song was soft and low;
The blossoms in the sweet May wind
Were falling like the snow.

The blossoms drifted at our feet, The orchard birds sang clear; The sweetest and the saddest day It seemed of all the year.

233

For, more to me than birds or flowers, My playmate left her home,

And took with her the laughing spring, The music and the bloom.

She kissed the lips of kith and kin,
She laid her hand in mine :
What more could ask the bashful boy
Who fed her father's kine?

She left us in the bloom of May:
The constant years told o'er
Their seasons with as sweet May morrs,
But she came back no more.

I walk, with noiseless feet, the round
Of uneventful years;

Still o'er and o'er I sow the spring
And reap the autumn ears.

She lives where all the golden year
Her summer roses blow;
The dusky children of the sun
Before her come and go.

There haply with her jewelled hands
She smooths her silken gown,
No more the homespun lap wherein
I shook the walnuts down.

The wild grapes wait us by the brook,
The brown nuts on the hill,

And still the May-day flowers make sweet

The woods of Follymill.

The lilies blossom in the pond,

The bird builds in the tree, The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill The slow song of the sea.

I wonder if she thinks of them,
And how the old time seems,
If ever the pines of Ramoth wood
Are sounding in her dreams.

I see her face, I hear her voice: Does she remember mine? And what to her is now the boy Who fed her father's kine ?

What cares she that the orioles build For other eyes than ours,

That other hands with nuts are filled, And other laps with flowers ?

O playmate in the golden time! Our mossy seat is green,

Its fringing violets blossom yet, The old trees o'er it lean.

The winds so sweet with birch and fern

A sweeter memory blow;

And there in spring the veeries sing
The song of long ago.

And still the pines of Ramoth wood
Are moaning like the sea, -
The moaning of the sea of change
Between myself and thee !

THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT.

"And I sought, whence is Evil: I set before the eye of my spirit the whole creation; whatsoever we see therein, sea, earth, air, stars, trees, moral creatures, — yea, whatsoever there is we do not see, angels and spiritual powers. Where is evil, and whence comes it, since God the Good hath created all things? Why made He anything at all of evil, and not rather by His Almightiness cause it not to be? These thoughts I turned in my miserable heart, overcharged with most gnawing cares." "And, admonished to return to myself, I entered even into my inmost soul, Thou being my guide, and beheld even beyond my soul and mind the Light unchangeable. He who knows the Truth knows what that Light is, and he that knows it knows Eternity! O Truth, who art Eternity! Love, who art Truth! Eternity, who art Love! And I beheld that Thou madest all things good, and to Thee is nothing whatsoever evil From the angel to the worm, from the first motion to the last, Thou settest each in its place, and everything is good in its kind. Woe is me how high art Thou in the highest, how deep in the deepest' and Thou never departest from us and we scarcely return to Thee." — Augustine's Solrioquies, Book VII.

THE fourteen centuries fall away

Between us and the Afric saint, And at his side we urge, to-day, The immemorial quest and old complaint. No outward sign to us is given,

From sea or earth comes no reply;

Hushed as the warm Numidian heaven He vainly questioned bends our frozen sky.

No victory comes of all our strife, —

From all we grasp the meaning slips; The Sphinx sits at the gate of life, With the old question on her awful lips. In paths unknown we hear the feet

Of fear before, and guilt behind; We pluck the wayside fruit, and eat Ashes and dust beneath its golden rind.

From age to age descends unchecked

The sad bequest of sire to son, The body's taint, the mind's defect, Through every web of life the dark threads ruu.

O, why and whither?- God knows all;

I only know that he is good, And that whatever may befall Or here or there, must be the best that could.

Between the dreadful cherubim

A Father's face I still discern, As Moses looked of old on him, And saw his glory into goodness turn!

For he is merciful as just;

And so, by faith correcting sight, I bow before his will, and trust Howe'er they seem he doeth all things right.

And dare to hope that he will make

The rugged smooth, the doubtful
plain;

His healing visit every realm of pain ;
His mercy never quite forsake ;

That suffering is not his revenge

Upon his creatures weak and frail, Sent on a pathway new and strange With feet that wander and with eyes that fail;

Our weakness is the strength of sin,

But love must needs be stronger far, Outreaching all and gathering in The erring spirit and the wandering star.

A Voice grows with the growing years; Earth, hushing down her bitter cry, Looks upward from her graves, and hears,

"The Resurrection and the Life am I."

O Love Divine !-whose constant beam

Shines on the eyes that will not see, And waits to bless us, while we dream Thou leavest us because we turn from thee!

All souls that struggle and aspire,

All hearts of prayer by thee are lit; And, dim or clear, thy tongues of fire On dusky tribes and twilight centuries sit.

Nor bounds, nor clime, nor creed thou know'st,

Wide as our need thy favors fall; The white wings of the Holy Ghost Stoop, seen or unseen, o'er the heads of

all.

O Beauty, old yet ever new! 67

Eternal Voice, and Inward Word,

235

The Logos of the Greek and Jew, The old sphere-music which the Samian heard!

Truth which the sage and prophet

saw,

Long sought without, but found within,

The Law of Love beyond all law, The Life o'erflooding mortal death and sin !

Shine on us with the light which glowed

Upon the trance-bound shepherd's

way,

Who saw the Darkness overflowed And drowned by tides of everlasting Day, 68

Shine, light of God!-make broad thy scope

To all who sin and suffer; more And better than we dare to hope With Heaven's compassion make our longings poor!

THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS.

TRITEMIUS OF HERBIPOLIS, one day, While kneeling at the altar's foot to pray,

Alone with God, as was his pious choice,
Heard from without a miserable voice,
A sound which seemed of all sad things
to tell,

As of a lost soul crying out of hell.

Thereat the Abbot paused; the chain whereby

His thoughts went upward broken by that cry;

And, looking from the casement, saw below

A wretched woman, with gray hair a-flow, And withered hands held up to him, who cried

For alms as one who might not be denied.

She cried, "For the dear love of Him who gave

His life for ours, my child from bondage

save,

My beautiful, brave first-born, chained with slaves