So shall the wide earth seem our Father's temple, Each loving life a psalm of gratitude. Then shall all shackles fall; the stormy clangor Of wild war music o'er the earth shall cease; Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger, And in its ashes plant the tree of peace! THE DEMON OF THE STUDY. THE Brownie sits in the Scotchman's room, But he sweeps the floor and threshes the corn, The shade of Denmark fled from the sun, And the Cocklane ghost from the barnloft cheer, The fiend of Faust was a faithful one, Agrippa's demon wrought in fear, The Old Man of the Sea, on the neck of him But he drank of the wine, and Sinbad cast But the demon that cometh day by day No bearer of burdens like Caliban, A stout old man with a greasy hat Slouched heavily down to his dark, red nose, And two gray eyes enveloped in fat, Looking through glasses with iron bows. He comes with a careless "how d'ye do," And then he reads from paper and book, The price of stocks, the auction sales, Oh! sweet as the lapse of water at noon O'er the mossy roots of some forest tree, The sigh of the wind in the woods of June, Or sound of flutes o'er a moonlight sea, Or the low soft music, perchance which seems To float through the slumbering singer's dreams, So sweet, so dear is the silvery tone Of her in whose features I sometimes look, As I sit at eve by her side alone, And we read by turns from the self-same book – Some tale perhaps of the olden time, Some lover's romance or quaint old rhyme. Then when the story is one of woe, Some prisoner's plaint through his dungeon-bar, Her blue eye glistens with tears, and low Her voice sinks down like a moan afar; And I seem to hear that prisoner's wail, And his face looks on me worn and pale. And when she reads some merrier song, A trumpet's summons is in her words, Oh, pity me then, when, day by day, The stout fiend darkens my parlour door; I cross my floor with a nervous tread, And stir up the fire to roast him out; I've studied Glanville and James the wise, And wizard black-letter tomes which treat Of demons of every name and size, Which a Christian man is presumed to meet, But never a hint and never a line Can I find of a reading fiend like mine. I've crossed the Psalter with Brady and Tate, "Conjuro te, scleratissime, Abire ad tuum locum!"—still And I hear again in my haunted room Ah!-commend me to Mary Magdalen With her seven-fold plagues-to the wandering To the terrors which haunted Orestes when THE PUMPKIN. OH! greenly and fair in the lands of the sun, Like that which o'er Nineveh's prophet once grew, And longed for the storm-cloud, and listened in vain For the rush of the whirlwind and red fire-rain. On the banks of the Xenil the dark Spanish maiden Comes up with the fruit of the tangled vine laden; And the Creole of Cuba laughs out to behold Through orange-leaves shining the broad spheres of gold; Yet with dearer delight from his home in the North, On the fields of his harvest the Yankee looks forth, Where crook-necks are coiling and yellow fruit shines, And the sun of September melts down on his vines. Ah!-on Thanksgiving Day, when from East and from West, From North and from South come the pilgrim and guest, When the gray-haired New Englander sees round his board The old broken links of affection restored, When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more, And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before, What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye? What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie ? Oh !---fruit loved of boyhood!—the old days recalling, When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling! When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin, Glaring out through the dark with a candle within! When we laughed round the corn-heap, with hearts all in tune, Our chair a broad pumpkin-our lantern the moon, |