Your brows, and lay your cloudy mantles by! And once more, ere the eyes that seek ye fail, Uplift against the blue walls of the sky

Your mighty shapes, and let the sunshine weave Its golden network in your belting woods, Smile down in rainbows from your falling

floods,

And on your kingly brows at morn and eve

Set crowns of fire! So shall my soul receive

Haply the secret of your calm and strength,
Your unforgotten beauty interfuse

My common life, your glorious shapes and hues

And sun-dropped splendors at my bidding

come,

Loom vast through dreams, and stretch in

billowy length

From the sea-level of my lowland home!

They rise before me! Last night's thunder-gust Roared not in vain: for where its lightnings thrust

Their tongues of fire, the great peaks seem so

near,

Burned clean of mist, so starkly bold and clear, I almost pause the wind in the pines to hear, The loose rock's fall, the steps of browsing deer. The clouds that shattered on yon slide-worn walls

And splintered on the rocks their spears of

rain

Have set in play a thousand waterfalls,

Making the dusk and silence of the woods.

Glad with the laughter of the chasing floods, And luminous with blown spray and silver gleams,

While, in the vales below, the dry-lipped streams
Sing to the freshened meadow-lands again.
So, let me hope, the battle-storm that beats
The land with hail and fire may pass away
With its spent thunders at the break of day,
Like last night's clouds, and leave, as it retreats,
A greener earth and fairer sky behind,

Blown crystal-clear by Freedom's Northern

wind!

II.

MONADNOCK FROM WACHUSET.

I

WOULD I were a painter, for the sake

Of a sweet picture, and of her who led A fitting guide, with reverential tread, Into that mountain mystery. First a lake Tinted with sunset; next the wavy lines

Of far receding hills; and yet more far, Monadnock lifting from his night of pines

His rosy forehead to the evening star. Beside us, purple-zoned, Wachuset laid

His head against the West, whose warm light made

His aureole; and o'er him, sharp and clear, Like a shaft of lightning in mid-launching stayed, A single level cloud-line, shone upon

By the fierce glances of the sunken sun,

Menaced the darkness with its golden spear!

So twilight deepened round us. Still and black The great woods climbed the mountain at our back;

And on their skirts, where yet the lingering day On the shorn greenness of the clearing lay,

The brown old farm-house like a bird's nest

hung.

With home-life sounds the desert air was stirred:
The bleat of sheep along the hill we heard,
The bucket plashing in the cool, sweet well,
The pasture-bars that clattered as they fell;
Dogs barked, fowls fluttered, cattle lowed; the
gate

Of the barn-yard creaked beneath the merry

weight

Of sun-brown children, listening, while they

swung,

The welcome sound of supper-call to hear;

And down the shadowy lane, in tinklings

clear,

H