125 With his boyhood's love, on his native town, Where, written, as if on its hills and plains, His burden of prophecy yet remains,

13C

For the voices of wood, and wave, and wind
To read in the ear of the musing mind:

"As long as Plum Island, to guard the coast
As God appointed, shall keep its post;
As long as salmon shall haunt the deep
Of Merrimack River, or sturgeon leap;
As long as pickerel swift and slim,

135 Or red-backed perch, in Crane Pond swim;
As long as the annual sea-fowl know
Their time to come and their time to go ;
As long as cattle shall roam at will

The green, grass meadows by Turkey Hill;
140 As long as sheep shall look from the side
Of Oldtown Hill on marishes wide,
And Parker River, and salt-sea tide;

As long as a wandering pigeon shall search
The fields below from his white-oak perch,
145 When the barley-harvest is ripe and shorn,
And the dry husks fall from the standing corn;
As long as Nature shall not grow old,
Nor drop her work from her doting hold,
And her care for the Indian corn forget,

150 And the yellow rows in pairs to set;
So long shall Christians here be born,
Grow up and ripen as God's sweet corn!-
By the beak of bird, by the breath of frost,
Shall never a holy ear be lost,

130. This prophecy in very rhythmic prose was first published in Sewall's Phænomena Quadam Apocalyptica. It will De found in Coffin's History of Newburyport and in The Bodleys on Wheels, pp. 207, 208.

155 But, husked by Death in the Planter's sight, Be sown again in the fields of light!"

The Island still is purple with plums,
Up the river the salmon comes,

The sturgeon leaps, and the wild-fowl feeds 160 On hillside berries and marish seeds, All the beautiful signs remain,

From spring-time sowing to autumn rain
The good man's vision returns again!
And let us hope, as well we can,

165 That the Silent Angel who garners man
May find some grain as of old he found
In the human cornfield ripe and sound,
And the Lord of the Harvest deign to own
The precious seed by the fathers sown!

X.

MAUD MULLER.

Maud Muller, on a summer's day,
Raked the meadow sweet with hay.

Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
Of simple beauty and rustic health.

5 Singing she wrought, and her merry glee The mock-bird echoed from his tree.

But when she glanced to the far-off town,
White from its hill-slope looking down,

OF