provide;

But chiefly in their hearts with grace divine preside.

From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs,

That makes her lov'd at home,

rever'd abroad: Princes and lords are but the breath of kings;

"An honest man's the noblest work of God:"

And certes, in fair virtue's heavenly road,

The cottage leaves the palace far behind;

What is a lordling's pomp? a cumbrous load,

Disguising oft the wretch of human kind,

Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refin'd!

Scotia! my dear, my native soil! For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent!

The bright scenes of my youth, — all gone out now.

How eagerly its flickering blaze doth catch

On every point now wrapped in time's deep shade!

Into what wild grotesqueness by its flash

And fitful checkering is the picture made!

When I am glad or gay,

Let me walk forth into the brilliant sun,

And with congenial rays be shone upon:

When I am sad, or thought-bewitched would be,

Let me glide forth in moonlight's mystery,

But never, while I live this changeful life,

This past and future with all wonders rife,

Never, bright flame, may be denied

to me

Thy dear, life-imaging, close sympathy.

What but my hopes shot upwards e'er so bright?

What but my fortunes sank so low in night?

Why art thou banished from our hearth and hall,

Thou who art welcomed and beloved by all?

Was thy existence then too fanciful For our life's common light, who are so dull?

Did thy bright gleam mysterious converse hold

With our congenial souls? secrets too bold?

Well, we are safe and strong; for now we sit

Beside a hearth where no dim shadows flit;

Where nothing cheers nor saddens, but a fire

Warms feet and hands, nor does to

more aspire;

By whose compact, utilitarian heap, The present may sit down and go to sleep,

Nor fear the ghosts who from the dim past walked,

And with us by the unequal light of the old wood-fire talked. E. S. H.

GIVE ME THE OLD.

I.

OLD wine to drink!

Ay, give the slippery juice

That drippeth from the grape thrown loose

Within the tun;

Plucked from beneath the cliff
Of sunny-sided Teneriffe,

And ripened 'neath the blink

Of India's sun!

Peat whiskey hot,

Tempered with well-boiled water! These make the long night shorter, Forgetting not

Good stout old English porter.

II.

Old wood to burn!

Ay, bring the hillside beech From where the owlets meet and screech,

And ravens croak;

The crackling pine, and cedar sweet; Bring too a clump of fragrant peat, Dug 'neath the fern;

The knotted oak, A fagot too, perhap, Whose bright flame, dancing, winking,

Shall light us at our drinking;

While the oozing sap

Shall make sweet music to our think

ing.

III.

Old books to read!

Ay, bring those nodes of wit, The brazen-clasped, the vellum-writ, Time-honored tomes!

The same my sire scanned before,
The same my grandsire thumbèd o'er,
The same his sire from college bore,
The well-earned meed

Of Oxford's domes:
Old Homer blind,

Old Horace, rake Anacreon, by
Old Tully, Plautus, Terence lie;
Mort Arthur's olden minstrelsie,
Quaint Burton, quainter Spenser, ay!
And Gervase Markham's venerie-
Nor leave behind

The Holy Book by which we live and die.

IV.

Old friends to talk!

Ay, bring those chosen few, The wise, the courtly, and the true, So rarely found;

Him for my wine, him for my stud,
Him for my easel, distich, bud

In mountain walk!
Bring Walter good:

With soulful Fred; and learned Will,
And thee, my alter ego, (dearer still
For every mood).

R. H. MESSINGER.

TO A CHILD.

I WOULD that thou might always be
As innocent as now,

That time might ever leave as free
Thy yet unwritten brow.

I would life were all poetry
To gentle measure set,

That nought but chastened melody
Might stain thine eye of jet,
Nor one discordant note be spoken,
Till God the cunning harp had broken.
I fear thy gentle loveliness,
Thy witching tone and air,
Thine eye's beseeching earnestness
May be to thee a snare.

The silver stars may purely shine,
The waters taintless flow;

But they who kneel at woman's
shrine

Breathe on it as they bow.

N. P. WILLIS.

Grave Alice and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.

A whisper, and then a silence;
Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning
together

To take me by surprise.

A sudden rush from the stairway,
A sudden raid from the hall:
By three doors left unguarded
They enter my castle wall.

They climb up into my turret

O'er the arms and back of my chair;

If I try to escape, they surround me:
They seem to be everywhere.

They almost devour me with kisses;
Their arms about me intwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine.

Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti! Because you have scaled the wall, Such an old mustache as I am

Is not a match for you all?

I have you fast in my fortress,
And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeons
In the Round Tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,

Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
And moulder in dust away.
LONGFELLOW.

WOMAN.

THERE in the fane a beauteous creature stands,

The first best work of the Creator's hands,

Whose slender limbs inadequately

bear

A full-orbed bosom and a weight of

care;

Whose teeth like pearls, whose lips like cherries, show, And fawn-like eyes still tremble as they glow.

WILSON: Translated from Calidasa.