THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID.
"And when to share our evening meal,
She calls the stranger at the door,
She says God fills the hands that deal
Food to the poor."
Adown the hermit's wasted cheeks
Glistened the flow of human tears;
"Dear Lord!" he said, "Thy angel speaks,
Thy servant hears."
Within his arms the child he took,
And thought of home and life with men;
And all his pilgrim feet forsook
The palmy shadows cool and long,
The eyes that smiled through lavish locks,
Home's cradle-hymn and harvest-song,
And bleat of flocks.
“O, child!" he said, "thou teachest me
There is no place where God is not;
That love will make, where'er it be,
A holy spot."
He rose from off the desert sand,
And, leaning on his staff of thorn,
Went, with the young child, hand in hand,
Like night with morn.
They crossed the desert's burning line,
And heard the palm-tree's rustling fan,
The Nile-bird's cry, the low of kine,
And voice of man.
Unquestioning, his childish guide
He followed as the small hand led
To where a woman, gentle-eyed,
Her distaff fed.
She rose, she clasped her truant boy,
She thanked the stranger with her eyes
The hermit gazed in doubt and joy
And dumb surprise.
And, lo !—with sudden warmth and light
A tender memory thrilled his frame;
New-born, the world-lost anchorite
A man became.
“O, sister of El Zara's race,
Behold me!-had we not one mother? She gazed into the stranger's face ;— "Thou art my brother?"
"O, kin of blood!-Thy life of use
And patient trust is more than mine;
And wiser than the gray recluse
This child of thine.
"For, taught of him whom God hath sent,
That toil is praise, and love is prayer,
I come, life's cares and pains content
With thee to share.”
Even as his foot the threshold crossed,
The hermit's better life began;
Its holiest saint the Thebaid lost,
ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN BLOSSOM
No more these simple flowers belong
To Scottish maid and lover;
Sown in the common soil of song,
They bloom the wide world over.
In smiles and tears, in sun and showers,
The minstrel and the heather,
The deathless singer and the flowers
He sang of live together.
Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns !
The moorland flower and peasant!
How, at their mention, memory turns
Her pages old and pleasant!
The gray sky wears again its gold
And purple of adorning,
And manhood's noonday shadows hold
The dews of boyhood's morning.
The dews that washed the dust and soil
From off the wings of pleasure,
The sky, that flecked the ground of toil
With golden threads of leisure.
I call to mind the summer day,
The early harvest mowing,
The sky with sun and clouds at play,
And flowers with breezes blowing.
I hear the blackbird in the corn,
The locust in the haying;
And, like the fabled hunter's horn,
Old tunes my heart is playing.
How oft that day, with fond delay,
I sought the maple's shadow,
And sang with Burns the hours away,
Forgetful of the meadow!
Bees hummed, birds twittered, over head
I heard the squirrels leaping,
The good dog listened while I read,
And wagged his tail in keeping.
I watched him while in sportive mood
I read "The Twa Dogs'" story,
And half believed he understood
The poet's allegory.
Sweet day, sweet songs!-The golden hours Grew brighter for that singing,
From brook and bird and meadow flowers
A dearer welcome bringing.
New light on home-seen Nature beamed,
New glory over Woman;
And daily life and duty seemed
No longer poor and common.
I woke to find the simple truth
Of fact and feeling better
Than all the dreams that held my youth
A still repining debtor:
That Nature gives her handmaid, Art,
The themes of sweet discoursing;
The tender idyls of the heart
In every tongue rehearsing.
Why dream of lands of gold and pearl,
Of loving knight and lady,
When farmer boy and barefoot girl
Were wandering there already?
I saw through all familiar things
The romance underlying;
The joys and griefs that plume the wings
Of Fancy skyward flying.
I saw the same blithe day return,
The same sweet fall of even,
That rose on wooded Craigie-burn,
And sank on crystal Devon.
I matched with Scotland's heathery hills
The sweet-brier and the clover;
With Ayr and Doon, my native rills,
Their wood-hymns chanting over.
O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen,
I saw the Man uprising;
No longer common or unclean,
The child of God's baptizing!
With clearer eyes I saw the worth
Of life among the lowly
The Bible at his Cotter's hearth
Had made my own more holy.
And, if at times an evil strain,
To lawless love appealing,
Broke in upon the sweet refrain
Of pure and healthful feeling,
It died upon the eye and ear,
No inward answer gaining;
No heart had I to see or hear
The discord and the staining.
Let those who never erred forget
His worth, in vain bewailings;
Sweet Soul of Song!-I own my debt
Uncancelled by his failings!
Lament who will the ribald line
Which tells his lapse from duty,
How kissed the maddening lips of wine
Or wanton ones of beauty;
But think, while falls that shade between
The erring one and Heaven,
That he who loved like Magdalen,
Like her may be forgiven.
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