FROM "A NEW
ENGLAND LEGEND."

How has New England's romance fled,
Even as a vision of the morning!
Its rites foredone, its guardians
dead,

Its priestesses, bereft of dread,

Waking the veriest urchin's scorning! Gone like the Indian wizard's yell

And fire-dance round the magic rock, Forgotten like the Druid's spell

At moonrise by his holy oak! No more along the shadowy glen, Glide the dim ghosts of murdered men ; No more the unquiet churchyard dead Glimpse upward from their turfy bed,

Startling the traveller, late and lone; As, on some night of starless weather, They silently commune together,

Each sitting on his own head-stone! The roofless house, decayed, deserted, Its living tenants all departed,

No longer rings with midnight revel
Of witch, or ghost, or goblin evil;
No pale blue flame sends out its flashes
Through creviced roof and shattered
sashes!-

The witch grass round the hazel spring
May sharply to the night-air sing,
But there no more shall withered hags
Refresh at ease their broomstick nags,
Or taste those hazel-shadowed waters
Asbeverage meet for Satan's daughters:
No more their mimic tones be heard,
The mew of cat, the chirp of bird,
Shrill blending with the hoarser laugh-

ter

Of the fell demon following after !

The cautious goodman nails no more
A horseshoe on his outer door,
Lest some unseemly hag should fit
To his own mouth her bridle-bit, --
The goodwife's churn no more refuses
Its wonted culinary uses

Until, with heated needle burned,
The witch has to her place returned !
Our witches are no longer old
And wrinkled beldames, Satan-sold,
But young and gay and laughing crea-
tures,

With the heart's sunshine on their features,

Their sorcery - the light which dances Where the raised lid unveils its glances; Or that low-breathed and gentle tone,

The music of Love's twilight hours, Soft, dreamlike, as a fairy's moan

Above her nightly closing flowers, Sweeter than that which sighed of vore, Along the charmed Ausonian shore! Even she, our own weird heroine, Sole Pythoness of ancient Lynn,

Sleeps calmly where the living laid her; And the wide realm of sorcery, Left by its latest mistress free,

Hath found no gray and skilled invader :

So perished Albion's "glammarye,"

With him in Melrose Abbey sleeping, His charmed torch beside his knee, That even the dead himself might see

The magic scroll within his keeping.
And now our modern Yankee sees
Nor omens, spells, nor mysteries;
And naught above, below, around,
Of life or death, of sight or sound,

Whate'er its nature, form, or look,
Excites his terror or surprise,
All seeming to his knowing eyes
Familiar as his "catechize,"
Or " Webster's Spelling-Book."

HAMPTON BEACH.

THE Sunlight glitters keen and bright, Where, miles away,

Lies stretching to my dazzled sight A luminous belt, a misty light, Beyond the dark pine bluffs and wastes of sandy gray.

vain,

Pierced the sharp thrill of Freedom's cry of pain,

Man of the millions, thou art lost too soon!

Portents at which the bravest stand aghast,

The birth-throes of a Future, strange and vast,

Alarm the land; yet thou, so wise

and strong, Suddenly summoned to the burial bed, Lapped in its slumbers deep and ever long.

Hear'st not the tumult surging overhead.

Who now shall rally Freedom's scattering host?

Who wear the mantle of the leader lost?

Who stay the march of slavery? He whose voice

Hath called thee from thy task-field shall not lack

Yet bolder champions, to beat bravely back

The wrong which, through his poor ones, reaches Him:

Yet firmer hands shall Freedom's torchlights trim,

'Tis said that in the Holy Land
The angels of the place have blessed
The pilgrim's bed of desert sand,
Like Jacob's stone of rest.

That down the hush of Syrian skies Some sweet-voiced saint at twilight sings

The song whose holy symphonies
Are beat by unseen wings;

Till starting from his sandy bed,

The wayworn wanderer looks to see The halo of an angel's head

Shine through the tamarisk-tree.

So through the shadows of my way Thy smile hath fallen soft and clear, So at the weary close of day

Hath seemed thy voice of cheer.

That pilgrim pressing to his goal
May pause not for the vision's sake,
Yet all fair things within his soul

The thought of it shall wake;

The graceful palm-tree by the well,

Seen on the far horizon's rim; The dark eyes of the fleet gazelle, Bent timidly on him;

Each pictured saint, whose golden hair Streams sunlike through the convent's gloom:

Pale shrines of martyrs young and fair, And loving Mary's tomb;

And thus each tint or shade which falls, From sunset cloud or waving tree,

Along my pilgrim path, recalls

The pleasant thought of thee.

Of one in sun and shade the same,
In weal and woe my steady friend,
Whatever by that holy name
The angels comprehend.

Not blind to faults and follies, thou
Hast never failed the good to see,
Nor judged by one unseemly bough

The upward-struggling tree.

These light leaves at thy feet I lay,Poor common thoughts on common things,

Which time is shaking, day by day,
Like feathers from his wings, -

Chance shootings from a frail life-tree,
To nurturing care but little known,
Their good was partly learned of thee
Their folly is my own.

That tree still clasps the kindly mould, Its leaves still drink the twilight dew, And weaving its pale green with gold, Still shines the sunlight through.

There still the morning zephyrs play, And there at times the spring bird sings,

And mossy trunk and fading spray
Are flowered with glossy wings.

Yet, even in genial sun and rain,
Root, branch, and leaflet fail and fade;
The wanderer on its lonely plain
Erelong shall miss its shade.

O friend beloved, whose curious skill Keeps bright the last year's leaves and flowers,

With warm, glad summer thoughts to fill

The cold, dark, winter hours!

Pressed on thy heart, the leaves I bring
May well defy the wintry cold,
Until, in Heaven's eternal spring,
Life's fairer ones unfold.

And, through the shade

161

Of funeral cypress planted thick behind, Hears no reproachful whisper on the wind

From his loved dead?

He has not lived in vain, and while he gives

The praise to Him, in whom he moves and lives.

With thankful heart;

He gazes backward, and with hope before.

Knowing that from his works he never

more

Can henceforth part.