For his ear, the inward feeling He can see the spirit kneeling Heeding truth alone, and turning Lamp of toil or altar burning Are alike to Him. Strike, then, comrades!-Trade is waiting Far ships waiting for the freighting Ships, whose traffic links these highlands, With the citron-planted islands Of a clime of flowers; To our frosts the tribute bringing In our lap of winter flinging Cheerly, on the axe of labor, Let the sunbeams dance, And the long-hid earth to heaven Loud behind us grow the murmurs Clang of smiths, and tread of farmers, Here her virgin lap with treasures Waving wheat and golden maize-ears Keep who will the city's alleys, Take the smooth-shorn plain,— Give to us the cedar valleys, Rocks and hills of Maine! In our North-land, wild and woody, Rugged nurse and mother sturdy, O! our free hearts beat the warmer And our tread is all the firmer Lo, the day breaks! old Katahdin's While from these dim forest gardens Still renewing, bravely hewing Through the world our way! In 1852 appeared The Chapel of the Hermits, and other Poems. The Panorama, and other Poems, constituted the next volume, issued in 1856. As the most significant and beautiful of the miscellaneous poems of the last-named volume, we present, beginning with the eighth stanza,! THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID. ALONE, the Thebaid hermit leaned Was it an angel or a fiend Whose voice he heard? It broke the desert's hush of awe, A little child. A child, with wonder-widened eyes, "What dost thou here, poor man? No shade Of cool, green doums, nor grass, nor well, Nor corn, nor vines." The hermit said: "With God I dwell. "Alone with Him in this great calm, The child gazed round him. "Does God live "My brother tills beside the Nile His little field: beneath the leaves "And when the millet's ripe heads fall, "And when to share our evening meal, Adown the hermit's wasted cheeks Within his arms the child he took, And thought of home and life with men And all his pilgrim feet forsook Returned again. The palmy shadows cool and long, The eyes that smiled through lavish locks, 'O, child!" he said, "thou teachest me He rose from off the desert sand, They crossed the desert's burning line, Unquestioning, his childish guide He followed as the small hand led She rose, she clasped her truant boy, And dumb surprise. And, lo! with sudden warmth and light "O, sister of El Zara's race, Behold me!-had we not one mother?" She gazed into the stranger's face; "Thou art my brother!" "O, kin of blood!-Thy life of use And patient trust is more than mine; And wiser than the gray recluse This child of thine. "For, taught of him whom God hath sent, Even as his foot the threshold crossed, The above volume was followed successively by Ballads, Later Poems, Home Ballads, and Occasional Poems. Of the "Ballads," the most eventful and poetic is MARY GARVIN. THE evening gun had sounded from gray Fort Mary's walls; Through the forest, like a wild beast, roared and plunged the Saco's falls. And westward on the sea-wind, that damp and gusty grew, Over cedars darkening inland the smokes of Spurwink blew. On the hearth of Farmer Garvin blazed the crackling walnut log; Right and left sat dame and goodman, and between them lay the dog, Head on paws, and tail slow wagging, and beside him on her mat, Sitting drowsy in the fire-light, winked and purred the mot tled cat. "Twenty years!" said Goodman Garvin, speaking sadly, under breath, And his gray head slowly shaking, as one who speaks of death. The Goodwife dropped her needles: "It is twenty years, to day, Since the Indians fell on Saco, and stole our child away." Then they sank into the silence, for each knew the other's thought, Of a great and common sorrow, and words were needed not. |