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The murmur of the stone,
With hoarse and hollow moan
Self-loosened from the height;
The waterfall's white showers
In midnight's deepest hours
Creating sound and light;

The pauses in the blowing
Of winds, when oxen lowing

Are heard from vales beneath;
The underworld of care,

Scarce burdening the air

With its poor plaintive breath ;

The fragrance of the noon;
The nearness of the moon;

The swampy mosses tingling;
The strife of peace and noise,
Like the sorrows and the joys
In earthly lots commingling.

To all such sight and sound
Is the eagle's being bound,-
A destiny of bliss:

These spells his spirit wake;
These influences make

The eagle what he is.

So I of lowly birth,

A workman on the earth,

1

MOUNTAIN TARNS.

Would cast myself apart,
That I a little time
From dreariness sublime
-Might win a royal heart.

The golden-crownèd kings
Are often abject things:

I would not be as they.
But mountain winds and waves
Teach no men to be slaves,

But with high minds obey.

Great emperors forget,
In jewelled places set,

The human heart below;
And, with no fellows near,
They often cease to hear
Its holy ebb and flow.

But I from mountain throne
Would oftentime come down,

And leave unto the breeze

And cataract to fill

With echoes at their will
My dreary royalties.

I would in mountain haunt
But quicken the sweet want
Of love and blisses mild;

And I would alternate
My pomp of regal state

With humors of a child.

85

There is a power to bless
In hillside loneliness,

In tarns and dreary places;
A virtue in the brook,

A freshness in the look

Of mountains' joyless faces.

And I would have my heart
From littleness apart,

A love-anointed thing;
Be set above my kind;
In my unfettered mind
A veritable king.

And so when life is dull,
Or when my heart is full

Because my dreams have frowned,

I wander up the rills,

To stones and tarns and hills :

I go there to be crowned.

F. IV. Faber.

THE PRESENT PAST.

OR us no Past? Nay, what is present sweet

FOR

ness

But yesterdays dissolving in to-day?

No Past? It flowers in every new completeness,

And scarce from eye and ear can hide away.

THE PRESENT PAST.

These berries, mottling blue the rocky hollow,
Still cluster with the blossom-trick of June:
The cloud-led shadows loiter there and follow
O'er crags sun-stained by centuries of noon.
Yon aged pine waves young defiant gesture
When hustling winds pant by in wild sea-mood:
The valley's grace in all its shining vesture,-
Ages have carved it from the solitude:

Low sings the stream in murmurs faint recalling
The chant of floods the solitude once heard;
And this wide quiet on the hill-tops falling
Made hush at eves that listener never stirred.

87

And as on us it falls, our laughter stilling,
Dim echoes cross it of all old delight!
The joy, along the soul's far reaches thrilling
To glory of the summer day and night,
Has been inwrought by many a summer-hour
Of past selves long forgot,-enrichment slow,
Attuning mind and heart with mystic power
To the fresh marvel of this sunset's glow.
I think we see our valley's brightness brighter
For faces that once brightened by our side;
And the peace of the eternal mountains deepens
With the peace we saw on faces that have died.

For us no Past? Nay, what is present sweetness ?
Dear yesterdays dissolving in to-day !
The Past-it flowers in every new completeness
Of thought, faith, hope; and so shall be for aye!

W. C. Gannett,

THE HILL SUMMIT.

HIS feast-day of the sun, his altar there

ΤΗ

In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song;
And I have loitered in the vale too long,

And gaze now a belated worshipper.

Yet

may

I not forget that I was 'ware,

So journeying, of his face at intervals

Transfigured where the fringed horizon falls

A fiery bush with coruscating hair.

And now that I have climbed and won this height,
I must tread downward through the sloping

shade

And travel the bewildered tracks till night.

Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed

And see the gold air and the silver fade

And the last bird fly into the last light.

D. G. Rossetti.

THE RECOLLECTION.

WE wandered to the pine-forest

That skirts the ocean's foam;

The lightest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.

The whispering waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,

And on the bosom of the deep

The smile of heaven lay;

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