THE CROWDED STREET.

LET me move slowly through the street,
Filled with an ever-shifting train,

Amid the sound of steps that beat

The murmuring walks like autumn rain.

How fast the flitting figures come!

The mild, the fierce, the stony face;

Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some Where secret tears have left their trace.

They pass to toil, to strife, to rest;
To halls in which the feast is spread;

To chambers where the funeral guest
In silence sits beside the dead.

And some to happy homes repair,

Where children, pressing cheek to cheek,

With mute caresses shall declare

The tenderness they cannot speak.

And some, who walk in calmness here, Shall shudder as they reach the door Where one who made their dwelling dear, Its flower, its light, is seen no more.

Youth, with pale cheek and slender frame,
And dreams of greatness in thine eye!
Goest thou to build an early name,
Or early in the task to die?

Keen son of trade, with eager brow!
Who is now fluttering in thy snare?
Thy golden fortunes, tower they now,
Or melt the glittering spires in air?

Who of this crowd to-night shall tread
The dance till daylight gleam again?
Who sorrow o'er the untimely dead?
Who writhe in throes of mortal pain?

Some, famine-struck, shall think how long The cold dark hours, how slow the light! And some, who flaunt amid the throng, Shall hide in dens of shame to-night.

Each, where his tasks or pleasures call,
They pass, and heed each other not.

There is who heeds, who holds them all, In his large love and boundless thought.

These struggling tides of life that seem
In wayward, aimless course to tend,
Are eddies of the mighty stream

That rolls to its appointed end.

THE WHITE-FOOTED DEER.

It was a hundred years ago,

When, by the woodland ways,

The traveller saw the wild deer drink, the birchen sprays.

Or crop

Beneath a hill, whose rocky side
O'erbrowed a grassy mead,

And fenced a cottage from the wind,
A deer was wont to feed.

She only came when on the cliffs
The evening moonlight lay,

And no man knew the secret haunts

In which she walked by day.

White were her feet, her forehead showed

A spot of silvery white,

That seemed to glimmer like a star

In autumn's hazy night.

4

And here, when sang the whippoorwill,
She cropped the sprouting leaves,

And here her rustling steps were heard
On still October eves.

But when the broad midsummer moon
Rose o'er that grassy lawn,

Beside the silver-footed deer

There grazed a spotted fawn.

The cottage dame forbade her son

To aim the rifle here;

"It were a sin," she said, "to harm
Or fright that friendly deer.

"This spot has been my pleasant home
Ten peaceful years and more;
And ever, when the moonlight shines,

She feeds before our door.

A thousand moons ago;

They never raise the war-whoop here,

And never twang the bow.

"I love to watch her as she feeds,

And think that all is well