About the ancient mountain-walls
The silent wildernesses clung;
In solemn frescoes, moving slow,
The clouds their shadows flung.

Along the valley far below,
The shimmer of a forest-floor,—
A leafy brightness, like the sea
Wide twinkling o'er and o'er.

Niched in the mighty minster, we,
Beneath the dome of radiant blue :
Cathedral-hush on every side,

And worship breathing through!

There came wild music on the winds
The chanting of the forest choir
Shaken across the rangèd hills

As over a chorded lyre.

Then pauses as for quiet prayer ;
And lulls in which the listeners heard
Home-voices speak, and faces neared
Swifter than any bird.

Of Strength Eternal, by whose will
The hills their steadfast places keep,
Whose Right is like the mountains high,
Whose Judgments are a deep,—

In grand old Bible verse we spoke :
And following close, like echoes, sped
The poems best beloved. The words
Along the silence fled.

"IN THE HEART OF THINGS.” 55

The Silence, awful living Word,

Behind all sound, behind all thought,
Whose speech is Nature-yet-to-be,
The Poem yet unwrought,

To us it spake within the soul,

Through sense all strangely blent with sense;

The vision took majestic rhythm

We heard the firmaments!

And listened, time and space forgot,
As flowed the lesson for the day,-
"Order is Beauty; Law is Love;
Childlike his worlds obey."

And all the heaven seemed bending down
Above the shining earth's sweet face,
Till in our hearts they touched: we felt
The thrill of their embrace.

Then, in its peace, we wandered down
Our rocky stair-case from the height :
On dim mosaics of the wood

We met the climbing Night.

W. C. Gannett.

"IN THE HEART OF THINGS."

A TURN, and we stand in the heart of things;

The woods are round us, heaped and dim;

From slab to slab how it slips and springs,-
The thread of water single and slim,

Through the ravage some torrent brings!

Does it feed the little lake below?
That speck of white just on its marge
Is Pella; see, in the evening-glow

How sharp the silver spear-heads charge
When Alp meets Heaven in snow.

On our other side is the straight-up rock;
And a path is kept 'twixt the gorge and it
By boulder-stones, where lichens mock

The marks on a moth, and small ferns fit
Their teeth to the polished block.

And yonder, at foot of the fronting ridge
That takes the turn to a range beyond,
Is the chapel reached by the one-arched bridge
Where the water is stopped in a stagnant pond
Danced over by the midge.

Poor little place, where its one priest comes
On a festa-day, if he comes at all,

To the dozen folk from their scattered homes,
Gathered within that precinct small

By the dozen ways one roams.

And all day long a bird sings there,

And a stray sheep drinks at the pond at times;

The place is silent and aware;

It has had its scenes, its joys and crimes, But that is its own affair.

"IN THE HEART OF THINGS."

Silent the crumbling bridge we cross,

And pity and praise the chapel sweet, And care about the fresco's loss,

And wish for our souls a like retreat, And wonder at the moss.

We stoop and look in through the grate,
See the little porch and rustic door,
Read duly the dead builder's date,

Then cross the bridge we crossed before,
Take the path again—but wait!

Oh moment, one and infinite!

The water slips o'er stock and stone; The west is tender, hardly bright :

How gray at once is the evening grown One star, the chrysolite !

We two stood there with never a third,
But each by each, as each knew well.
The sights we saw and the sounds we heard,
The lights and the shades made up a spell
Till the trouble grew and stirred.

Oh, the little more, and how much it is!
And the little less, and what worlds away!
How a sound shall quicken content to bliss,
Or a breath suspend the blood's best play,
And life be a proof of this!

57

A moment after, and hands unseen

Were hanging the night around us fast;
But we knew that a bar was broken between
Life and life; we were mixed at last
In spite of the mortal screen.

The forests had done it; there they stood— We caught for a second the powers at play ; They had mingled us so, for once and for good, Their work was done-we might go or stay, They relapsed to their ancient mood.

I am named and known by that hour's feat,
There took my station and degree.
So grew my own small life complete
As Nature obtained her best of me-
One born to love you, Sweet!

Robert Browning.

ΤΗ

THE MOUNTAIN WIND.

HE mountain-wind!-most spiritual thing of all
The wide earth knows. When in the sultry
time

He stoops him from his vast cerulean hall,
He seems the breath of a celestial clime,
As if from heaven's wide-open gates did flow
Health and refreshment on the world below.

W. C. Bryant.