REAL AND IDEAL.

Agreed; and soon our faithful grays

Were plunging down the hill-side steep, Where over lichen-crinkled walls

The tangled thickets nod and creep;

And past the spring that trickles down
Through ledges thick with brush and furze,
Where aspens show their silver pomp
And chestnuts drop their prickly burrs ;

And o'er the little rattling bridge

169

That spans the pebbly, murmurous stream, And on into the land that seemed

The mystic shadow of a dream.

And what to find? The smell of hay

New-mown, and gleam of mowers' scythes, And purple milkweed hardly seen

For troops of golden butterflies;

And many a pleasant upland farm,
And many a sun-browned little maid,
And patient cattle half asleep

In many a maple's plenteous shade ;

All this and more; but here nor there
One atom of the tender mist
That, from afar, had clothed the land
With purple and with amethyst.

But, looking backward to the hills
Which we had left an hour before,
Behold, the charm we came to seek

Was there! Down-folded softly o'er

Each dear familiar place it lay,

The violet-tinted mystic haze; And there had lain, hour after hour,

Through the long, sweet, mid-summer days;

While we, in all its splendor clad,
In Tyrian dyes right royally,
Had deemed that we must seek afar

Its perfect grace and mystery.

SONG.

J. W. Chadwick.

W

E sail toward evening's lonely star,

That trembles in the tender blue;

One single cloud, a dusky bar,

Burnt with dull carmine through and through, Slow-smouldering in the summer sky, Lies low along the fading west; How sweet to watch its splendors die,

Wave-cradled thus, and wind-caressed!

The soft breeze freshens; leaps the spray
To kiss our cheeks with sudden cheer.
Upon the dark edge of the bay

Lighthouses kindle far and near,
And through the warm deeps of the sky
Steal faint star-clusters, while we rest
In deep refreshment, thou and I,

Wave-cradled thus, and wind-caressed.

How like a dream are earth and heaven,
Star-beam and darkness, sky and sea ;

AGAIN!

Thy face, pale in the shadowy even,

Thy quiet eyes that gaze on me! O realize the moment's charm,

Thou dearest! we are at life's best, Folded in God's encircling arm,

Wave-cradled thus and wind-caressed.

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Celia Thaxter.

AGAIN?

OH, sweet and fair! Oh, rich and rare!

That day so long ago.

The autumn sunshine everywhere,

The heather all aglow,

The ferns were clad in cloth of gold,
The waves sang on the shore.

Such suns will shine, such waves will sing
Forever evermore.

Oh, fit and few! Oh, tried and true!
The friends who met that day.
Each one the other's spirit knew,
And so in earnest play

The hours flew past, until at last
The twilight kissed the shore.
We said, "Such days shall come again
Forever evermore."

One day again, no cloud of pain
A shadow o'er us cast;

And yet we strove in vain, in vain,

To conjure up the past;

Like, but unlike,—the sun that shone,
The waves that beat the shore,
The words we said, the songs we sung,
Like,-unlike,—evermore.

For ghosts unseen crept in between,
And, when our songs flowed free,
Sang discords in an undertone,

And marred our harmony.

“The past is ours, not yours,” they said : "The waves that beat the shore, Though like the same, are not the same, Oh, never, never more!"

H

SONG.

Anon.

OW many times do I love thee, dear?
Tell me how many thoughts there be
In the atmosphere

Of a new-fallen year,

Whose white and sable hours appear
The latest flake of Eternity :-
So many times do I love thee, dear.

How many times do I love again?

Tell me how many beads there are
In a silver chain

Of evening rain

Unravelled from the tumbling main

And threading the eye of a yellow star :So many times do I love again.

Thomas L. Beddoes.

THE WHITE BIRCH.

173

TH

NATURE'S TEACHINGS.

HE fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean,

The winds of heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single,
All things, by a law divine,
In one another's being mingle-
Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother :

And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea-
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

Shelley.

THE WHITE BIRCH.

'HOU art the go-between of rustic lovers ;

TH

Thy white bark has their secrets in its keeping; Reuben writes here the happy name of Patience, And thy lithe boughs hang murmuring and weeping Above her, as she steals the mystery from thy keepJ. R. Lowell.

ing.