Unshaded smites the summer sun,
Unchecked the winter blast;
The school-girl learns the place to shun,
With glances backward cast.
For thus our fathers testified-
That he might read who ran-
The emptiness of human pride,
The nothingness of man.
They dared not plant the grave with flowers,
Nor dress the funeral sod,
Where, with a love as deep as ours,
They left their dead with God.
The hard and thorny path they kept
From beauty turned aside;
Nor missed they over those who slept
The grace to life denied.
Yet still the wilding flowers would blow,
The golden leaves would fall,
The seasons come, the seasons go,
And God be good to all.
Above the graves the blackberry hung
In bloom and green its wreath,
And harebells swung as if they rung
The chimes of peace beneath.
The beauty Nature loves to share,
The gifts she hath for all,
The common light, the common air,
O'ercrept the graveyard's wall.
It knew the glow of eventide,
The sunrise and the noon,
And glorified and sanctified
It slept beneath the moon.
With flowers or snow-flakes for its sod,
Around the seasons ran,
And evermore the love of God
Rebuked the fear of man.
We dwell with fears on either hand,
Within a daily strife,
And spectral problems waiting stand
Before the gates of life.
The doubts we vainly seek to solve,
The truths we know, are one;
The known and nameless stars revolve
Around the Central Sun.
And if we reap as we have sown,
And take the dole we deal,
The law of pain is love alone,
The wounding is to heal.
Unharmed from change to change we glide,
We fall as in our dreams;
The far-off terror at our side
A smiling angel seems.
Secure on God's all-tender heart
Alike rest great and small;
Why fear to lose our little part,
When he is pledged for all?
O fearful heart and troubled brain!
Take hope and strength from this,--
That Nature never hints in vain,
Nor prophesies amiss.
Her wild birds sing the same sweet stave,
Her lights and airs are given
Alike to playground and the grave;
And over both is Heaven.
PIPES of the misty moorlands,
Voice of the glens and hills;
The droning of the torrents,
The treble of the rills!
Not the braes of broom and heather,
Nor the mountains dark with rain,
Nor maiden bower, nor border tower, .
Have heard your sweetest strain !
Dear to the Lowland reaper,
And plaided mountaineer,-
To the cottage and the castle
The Scottish pipes are dear;-
Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch
O'er mountain, loch, and glade ;
But the sweetest of all music
The Pipes at Lucknow played.
Day by day the Indian tiger
Louder yelled, and nearer crept; Round and round the jungle-serpent Near and nearer circles swept. "Pray for rescue, wives and mothers,— Pray to-day!" the soldier said; "To-morrow, death's between us
And the wrong and shame we dread."
Oh! they listened, looked, and waited, Till their hope became despair; And the sobs of low bewailing
Filled the pauses of their prayer. Then up spake a Scottish maiden. With her ear unto the ground: "Dinna ye hear it ?—dinna ye hear it? The pipes o' Havelock sound!"
Hushed the wounded man his groaning;
Hushed the wife her little ones;
Alone they heard the drum-roll
And the roar of Sepoy guns.
But to sounds of home and childhood
The Highland ear was true;-
As her mother's cradle-crooning
The mountain pipes she knew.
Like the march of soundless music
Through the vision of the seer,
More of feeling than of hearing,
Of the heart than of the ear,
She knew the droning pibroch,
She knew the Campbell's call:
“Hark! hear ye no' MacGregor's, —
The grandest o' them all!"
Oh! they listened, dumb and breathless,
And they caught the sound at last
Faint and far beyond the Goomtee
Rose and fell the piper's blast!
Then a burst of wild thanksgiving
Mingled woman's voice and man's;
“God be praised !—the march of Havelock!
The piping of the clans!"
Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance,
Sharp and shrill as swords at strife,
Came the wild MacGregor's clan-call,
Stinging all the air to life.
But when the far-off dust-cloud
To plaided legions grew,
Full tenderly and blithsomely
The pipes of rescue blew !
Round the silver domes of Lucknow,
Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine,
Breathed the air to Britons dearest,
The air of Auld Lang Syne. O'er the cruel roll of war-drums
Rose that sweet and homelike strain;
And the tartan clove the turban,
As the Goomtee cleaves the plain.
Dear to the corn-land reaper
And plaided mountaineer,-
To the cottage and the castle
The piper's song is dear.
Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch
J'er mountain, glen, and glade ;
But the sweetest of all music
The Pipes at Lucknow played!
I MOURN no more my vanished years:
Beneath a tender rain,
An April rain of smiles and tears,
My heart is young again.
The west winds blow, and, singing low,
I hear the glad streams run;
The windows of my soul I throw
Wide open to the sun.
No longer forward nor behind
I look in hope or fear
But, grateful, take the good I find,
The best of now and here.
I plough no more a desert land,
To harvest weed and tare;
The manna dropping from God's hand
Rebukes my painful care.
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