THE CROOKED FOOTPATH.

Aн, here it is! the sliding rail

That marks the old remembered spot, The gap that struck our schoolboy trail, The crooked path across the lot.

It left the road by school and church,
A pencilled shadow, nothing more,
That parted from the silver birch

And ended at the farm-house door.

No line or compass traced its plan;
With frequent bends to left or right,
In aimless, wayward curves it ran,
But always kept the door in sight.

THE CROOKED FOOTPATH.

The gabled porch, with woodbine green,

The broken millstone at the sill, —

Though many a rood might stretch between,

The truant child could see them still.

No fallen trunk is o'er it thrown, And yet it winds, we know not why, And turns as if for tree or stone.

Perhaps some lover trod the way
With shaking knees and leaping heart, —

And so it often runs astray

With sinuous sweep or sudden start.

Or one, perchance, with clouded brain
From some unholy banquet reeled, ·
And since, our devious steps maintain

His track across the trodden field.

Nay, deem not thus,

no earthborn will

Could ever trace a faultless line;

Our truest steps are human still,

To walk unswerving were divine !

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Truants from love, we dream of wrath; O, rather let us trust the more! Through all the wanderings of the path, We still can see our Father's door!

THE TWO STREAMS.

BEHOLD the rocky wall

That down its sloping sides

Pours the swift rain-drops, blending, as they fall,

In rushing river-tides!

Yon stream, whose sources run
Turned by a pebble's edge,

Is Athabasca, rolling toward the sun
Through the cleft mountain-ledge.

The slender rill had strayed,

But for the slanting stone,

To evening's ocean, with the tangled braid

Of foam-flecked Oregon.

So from the heights of Will
Life's parting stream descends,

And, as a moment turns its slender rill,

Each widening torrent bends,

From the same cradle's side,

From the same mother's knee,

One to long darkness and the frozen tide,

One to the Peaceful Sea!