THE seraph Abdiel, faithful found
Among the faithless, faithful only he;
Among innumerable false, unmoved,
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified,
His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal;
Nor number, nor example with him wrought
To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind,
Though single. From amidst them forth he passed,
Long way through hostile scorn, which he sus-
tained
Superior, nor of violence feared aught;
And with retorted scorn his back he turned
On those proud towers to swift destruction doomed.
THE road was lone; the grass was dank
With night-dews on the briery bank
Whereon a weary reaper sank.
His garb was old; his visage tanned;
The rusty sickle in his hand
Could find no work in all the land.
He saw the evening's chilly star
Above his native vale afar ;
A moment on the horizon's bar
It hung, then sank, as with a sigh;
And there the crescent moon went by,
An empty sickle down the sky.
To soothe his pain, Sleep's tender palm
Laid on his brow its touch of balm ;
His brain received the slumberous calm;
And soon that angel without name,
Her robe a dream, her face the same,
The giver of sweet visions came.
She touched his eyes; no longer sealed,
They saw a troop of reapers wield
Their swift blades in a ripened field.
At each thrust of their snowy sleeves
A thrill ran through the future sheaves
Rustling like rain on forest leaves.
They were not brawny men who bowed,
With harvest-voices rough and loud,
But spirits, moving as a cloud.
Like little lightnings in their hold,
The silver sickles manifold
Slid musically through the gold.
O, bid the morning stars combine
To match the chorus clear and fine,
That rippled lightly down the line,
A cadence of celestial rhyme,
The language of that cloudless clime,
To which their shining hands kept time!
Behind them lay the gleaming rows,
Like those long clouds the sunset shows
On amber meadows of repose;
But, like a wind, the binders bright
Soon followed in their mirthful might,
And swept them into sheaves of light.
Doubling the splendor of the plain,
There rolled the great celestial wain,
To gather in the fallen grain.
Its frame was built of golden bars ;
Its glowing wheels were lit with stars;
The royal Harvest's car of cars.
The snowy yoke that drew the load,
On gleaming hoofs of silver trode
And music was its only goad.
To no command of word or beck
It moved, and felt no other check
Than one white arm laid on the neck,
The neck, whose light was overwound
With bells of lilies, ringing round
Their odors till the air was drowned:
The starry foreheads meekly borne,
With garlands looped from horn to horn,
Shone like the many-colored morn.
The field was cleared. Home went the bands,
Like children, linking happy hands,
While singing through their father's lands;
Or, arms about each other thrown,
With amber tresses backward blown,
They moved as they were music's own.
The vision brightening more and more,
He saw the garner's glowing door,
And sheaves, like sunshine, strew the floor,-
The floor was jasper, - golden flails,
Swift-sailing as a whirlwind sails,
Throbbed mellow music down the vales.
Did any great door ope or close,
It seemed the birth-time of repose,
The faint sound died where it arose ;
And they who passed from door to door,
Their soft feet on the polished floor
Met their soft shadows, -- nothing more.
Then once again the groups were drawn
Through corridors, or down the lawn,
Which bloomed in beauty like a dawn:
Where countless fountains leapt alway,
Veiling their silver heights in spray,
The choral people held their way.
There, midst the brightest, brightly shone
Dear forms he loved in years agone,
The earliest loved, - the earliest flown.
He heard a mother's sainted tongue,
A sister's voice, who vanished young,
While one still dearer sweetly sung !
No further might the scene unfold;
The gazer's voice could not withhold ;
The very rapture made him bold :
He cried aloud, with claspèd hands,
"O happy fields ! O happy bands,
Who reap the never-failing lands!
"O master of these broad estates,
Behold, before your very gates
A worn and wanting laborer waits!
Let me but toil amid your grain,
Or be a gleaner on the plain,
So I may leave these fields of pain!
"A gleaner, I will follow far,
With never look or word to mar,
Behind the Harvest's yellow car;
All day my hand shall constant be,
And every happy eve shall see
The precious burden borne to thee!"
At morn some reapers neared the place,
Strong men, whose feet recoiled apace;
Then, gathering round the upturned face,
They saw the lines of pain and care,
Yet read in the expression there
The look as of an answered prayer.
THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.
THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT.
INSCRIBED TO R, AIKEN, ESQ.
"Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys and destiny obscure; Nor grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile, The short but simple annals of the poor."- GRAY.
My loved, my honored, much-respected friend,
No mercenary bard his homage pays :
With honest pride I scorn each selfish end;
My dearest meed, a friend's esteem and praise.
To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,
The lowly train in life's sequestered scene; The native feelings strong, the guileless ways ; What Aiken in a cottage would have been ; Ah! though his worth unknown, far happier there, I ween.
November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh ; The shortening winter-day is near a close; The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh, The blackening trains o' craws to their repose; The toilworn cotter frae his labor goes,
This night his weekly moil is at an end, Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend, And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hameward bend.
At length his lonely cot appears in view,
Beneath the shelter of an aged tree;
Th' expectant wee things, toddlin', stacher through
To meet their dad, wi' flichterin' noise an❜glee. His wee bit ingle, blinking bonnily,
His clean hearthstane, his thriftie wifie's smile,
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