Thanks for the heavenly message brought
by thee,

Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed
horn!

223

While on mine ear it rings, Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more

vast,

Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

UNDER THE VIOLETS.

HER hands are cold; her face is white;
No more her pulses come and go;
Her eyes are shut to life and light;-
Fold the white vesture, snow on snow,
And lay her where the violets blow.

But not beneath a graven stone,

To plead for tears with alien eyes;

A slender cross of wood alone

Shall say, that here a maiden lies
In peace beneath the peaceful skies.

And gray old trees of hugest limb
Shall wheel their circling shadows
round

To make the scorching sunlight dim That drinks the greenness from the ground,

And drop their dead leaves on her mound.

new,

Stole with soft step its shining archway through,

Built up its idle door,

Stretched in his last-found home, and For her the morning choir shall sing knew the old no more.

Its matins from the branches high,
And every minstrel-voice of Spring,

That trills beneath the April sky,
Shall greet her with its earliest cry.

When o'er their boughs the squirrels run, And through their leaves the robins call,

And, ripening in the autumn sun,

The acorns and the chestnuts fall,
Doubt not that she will heed them all.

When, turning round their dial-track,

Eastward the lengthening shadows pass,
Her little mourners, clad in black,

The crickets, sliding through the grass,
Shall pipe for her an evening mass.

At last the rootlets of the trees
Shall find the prison where she lies,

Build thee more stately mansions, O my And bear the buried dust they seize

soul,

In leaves and blossoms to the skies.
So may the soul that warmed it rise!

As the swift seasons roll!

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

225

Thet's Northun natur', slow an' apt to | In ellum shrouds the flashin' hang-bird doubt,

But when it does git stirred, there's no gin-out!

Fust come the blackbirds clatt'rin' in tall trees,

An' settlin' things in windy Congresses, —
Queer politicians, though, for I'll be
skinned

Ef all on 'em don't head against the wind.
'Fore long the trees begin to show belief,
The maple crimsons to a coral-reef,
Then saffron swarms swing off from all
the willers,

So plump they look like yaller caterpillars, Then gray hosschesnuts leetle hands unfold

Softer 'n a baby's be a' three days old: Thet 's robin-red breast's almanick; he knows

Thet arter this ther' 's only blossom

snows;

So, choosin' out a handy crotch an' spouse,
He goes to plast'rin' his adobe house.

Then seems to come a hitch, -things lag
behind,
Till some fine mornin' Spring makes up
her mind,
An' ez, when snow-swelled rivers cresh
their dams
Heaped up with ice thet dovetails in an'
jams,

A leak comes spirtin' thru some pin-hole
cleft,
Grows stronger, fercer, tears out right an'
left,
Then all the waters bow themselves an'

come,

Suddin, in one gret slope o' shedderin
foam,

Jes' so our Spring gits everythin' in tune
An' gives one leap from April into June;
Then all comes crowdin' in; afore you
think,
Young oak-leaves mist the side-hill woods
with pink;

The cat-bird in the laylock-bush is loud;
The orchards turn to heaps o' rosy cloud;
Red-cedars blossom tu, though few folks
know it,

An' look all dipt in sunshine like a poet;
The lime-trees pile their solid stacks o'
shade
An' drows'ly simmer with the bees' sweet
trade;

clings,

An' for the summer vy'ge his hammock slings;

All down the loose-walled lanes in archin' bowers

An' she looked full ez rósy agin
Ez the apples she was peelin'.

'T was kin' o' kingdom-come to look
On sech a blessed cretur,
A dogrose blushin' to a brook
Ain't modester nor sweeter.

He was six foot o' man, A 1,

Clean grit an' human natur'; None could n't quicker pitch a ton Nor dror a furrer straighter.

He'd sparked it with full twenty gals,
Hed squired 'em, danced 'em, druv 'em,
Fust this one, an' then thet, by spells-

All is, he could n't love 'em.

But long o' her his veins 'ould run

All crinkly like curled maple,
The side she breshed felt full o' sun
Ez a south slope in Ap'il.

She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing
Ez hisn in the choir;

My when he made Ole Hunderd ring,
She knowed the Lord was nigher.

An' she'd blush scarlit, right in prayer,
When her new meetin'-bunnet
Felt somehow thru its crown a pair
O' blue eyes sot upon it.

Thet night, I tell ye, she looked some!
She seemed to 've gut a new soul,
For she felt sartin-sure he 'd come,

Down to her very shoe-sole.

She heered a foot, an' knowed it tu,
A-raspin' on the scraper,
All ways to once her feelins flew
Like sparks in burnt-up paper.

He kin' o' l'itered on the mat,
Some doubtfle o' the sekle,
His heart kep' goin' pity-pat,

But hern went pity Zekle.

An' yit she gin her cheer a jerk
Ez though she wished him furder,
An' on her apples kep' to work,
Parin' away like murder.

"You want to see my Pa, I s'pose?"
"Wal
I come da

no.

To say why gals act so or so,

Or don't, 'ould be presumin';
Mebby to mean yes an' say no
Comes nateral to women.

He stood a spell on one foot fust,
Then stood a spell on t' other,
An' on which one he felt the wust
He could n't ha' told ye nuther.

Says he, "I'd better call agin";

Says she, "Think likely, Mister";
Thet last word pricked him like a pin,
An'. ... Wal, he up an' kist her.
When Ma bimeby upon 'em slips,

Huldy sot pale ez ashes,
All kin' o' smily roun' the lips
An' teary roun' the lashes.

For she was jes' the quiet kind
Whose naturs never vary,

Like streams that keep a summer mind
Snowhid in Jenooary.

The blood clost roun' her heart felt glued
Too tight for all expressin',
Tell mother see how metters stood,
An' gin 'em both her blessin'.

Then her red come back like the tide
Down to the Bay o' Fundy,
An' all I know is they was cried
In meetin' come nex' Sunday.

AMBROSE.

NEVER, surely, was holier man
Than Ambrose, since the world began;
With diet spare and raiment thin
He shielded himself from the father of sin;
With bed of iron and scourgings oft,
His heart to God's hand as wax made soft.
Through earnest prayer and watchings
long
He sought to know 'twixt right and

wrong,

Much wrestling with the blessed Word
To make it yield the sense of the Lord,
That he might build a storm-proof creed
To fold the flock in at their need.

At last he builded a perfect faith,
Fenced round about with The Lord thus
saith;

signin''

"To see my Ma? She's sprinklin' clo'es To himself he fitted the doorway's size, Agin to-morrer's i'nin'.' Meted the light to the need of his eyes,