Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade, —
So they painted the little maid.

On her hand a parrot green
Sits unmoving and broods serene;
Hold up the canvas full in view,
Look! there's a rent the light shines
through,

Dark with a century's fringe of dust, —
That was a Redcoat's rapier-thrust!
Such is the tale the lady old,
Dorothy's daughter's daughter, told.

Who the painter was none may tell,
One whose best was not over well;
Hard and dry, it must be confessed,
Flat as a rose that has long been pressed;
Yet in her cheek the hues are bright,
Dainty colors of red and white;
And in her slender shape are seen
Hint and promise of stately mien.

Look not on her with eyes of scorn,
Dorothy Q. was a lady born!

Ay! since the galloping Normans came,
England's annals have known her name;
And still to the three-hilled rebel town
Dear is that ancient name's renown,
For many a civic wreath they won,
The youthful sire and the gray-haired son.

O damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.!
Strange is the gift that I owe to you;
Such a gift as never a king
Save to daughter or son might bring,
All my tenure of heart and hand,
All my title to house and land;
Mother and sister, and child and wife,
And joy and sorrow, and death and life!

What if a hundred years ago

Those close-shut lips had answered, No, When forth the tremulous question came That cost the maiden her Norman name; And under the folds that look so still The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill? Should I be I, or would it be

One tenth another to nine tenths me?

Soft is the breath of a maiden's Yes: Not the light gossamer stirs with less; But never a cable that holds so fast Through all the battles of wave and blast, And never an echo of speech or song That lives in the babbling air so long! There were tones in the voice that whispered then

You may hear to-day in a hundred men!

O lady and lover, how faint and far
Your images hover, and here we are,
Solid and stirring in flesh and bone,—
Edward's and Dorothy's-all theirown-
A goodly record for time to show
Of a syllable spoken so long ago!—
Shall I bless you, Dorothy, or forgive,
For the tender whisper that bade me live?

It shall be a blessing, my little maid!
I will heal the stab of the Redcoat's
blade,

And freshen the gold of the tarnished frame,

And gild with a rhyme your household

ROBINSON OF LEYDEN.

HE sleeps not here; in hope and prayer His wandering flock had gone before, But he, the shepherd, might not share Their sorrows on the wintry shore.

Before the Speedwell's anchor swung, Ere yet the Mayflower's sail was spread,

221

Still cry them, and the world shall hear, Ye dwellers by the storm-swept sea! Ye have not built by Haerlem Meer, Nor on the land-locked Zuyder-Zee!

THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE;

"Men, brethren, sisters, children dear! God calls you hence from over sea; Ye may not build by Haerlem Meer, Nor yet along the Zuyder-Zee.

"Ye go to bear the saving word

To tribes unnamed and shores untrod: Heed well the lessons ye have heard From those old teachers taught of God.

"Yet think not unto them was lent

All light for all the coming days, And Heaven's eternal wisdom spent In making straight the ancient ways:

"The living fountain overflows

For every flock, for every lamb, Nor heeds, though angry creeds oppose, With Luther's dike or Calvin's dam."

He spake with lingering, long embrace, With tears of love and partings fond, They floated down the creeping Maas, Along the isle of Ysselmond.

They passed the frowning towers of Briel, The "Hook of Holland's" shelf of sand,

And grated soon with lifting keel

The sullen shores of Fatherland.

No home for these!-too well they knew The mitred king behind the throne;The sails were set, the pennons flew,

And westward ho! for worlds unknown.

-And these were they who gave us birth,

The Pilgrims of the sunset wave, Who won for us this virgin earth,

And freedom with the soil they gave.

The pastor slumbers by the Rhine,—
In alien earth the exiles lie,
Their nameless graves our holiest shrine,
His words our noblest battle-cry!

Do! I tell you, I rather guess
She was a wonder, and nothing less!
Colts grew horses, beards turned gray,
Deacon and deaconess dropped away,
Children and grandchildren,—where were
they?

Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year Without both feeling and looking queer. In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth,

So far as I know, but a tree and truth. (This is a moral that runs at large; Take it. -You 're welcome.-No extra charge.)

---

Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill.
First a shiver, and then a thrill,
Then something decidedly like a spill, -
And the parson was sitting upon a rock,
At half past nine by the meet'n'-house
clock,-

Just the hour of the Earthquake shock!

What do you think the parson found, When he got up and stared around? The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, As if it had been to the mill and ground! You see, of course, if you're not a dunce, How it went to pieces all at once, —