Her rest is quiet on the hill, Beneath the locust's bloom: Far off her lover sleeps as still Within his scutcheoned tomb.

The Gascon lord, the village maid, In death still clasp their hands; The love that levels rank and grade Unites their severed lands.

What matter whose the hillside grave,
Or whose the blazoned stone?
Forever to her western wave
Shall whisper blue Garonne !

O Love! so hallowing every soil
That gives thy sweet flower room,
Wherever, nursed by ease or toil,

The human heart takes bloom!

Plant of lost Eden, from the sod
Of sinful earth unriven,
White blossom of the trees of God
Dropped down to us from heaven!-

This tangled waste of mound and stone
Is holy for thy sake;

A sweetness which is all thy own

Breathes out from fern and brake.

And while ancestral pride shall twine
The Gascon's tomb with flowers,
Fall sweetly here, O song of mine,
With summer's bloom and showers!
And let the lines that severed seem
Unite again in thee,

As western wave and Gallic stream
Are mingled in one sea!

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,

The pastoral curfew of the cow-bell rung. Thus soothed and pleased, our backward path we took, Praising the farmer's home. only spake, Looking into the sunset o'er the lake, Like one to whom the far-off is most near:

He

"Yes, most folks think it has a pleasant look;

I love it for my good old mother's sake, Who lived and died here in the peace of God!"

The lesson of his words we pondered o'er,

As silently we turned the eastern flank Of the mountain, where its shadow deepest sank, Doubling the night along our rugged road:

339

We felt that man was more than his abode,

The inward life than Nature's raiment more;

And the warm sky, the sundown-tinted hill,

The forest and the lake, seemed dwarfed and dim

Before the saintly soul, whose human will

Meekly in the Eternal footsteps trod,

Making her homely toil and household

ways

An earthly echo of the song of praise Swelling from angel lips and harps of seraphim.

OUR RIVER.

FOR A SUMMER FESTIVAL AT THE LAURELS ON THE MERRIMACK.

ONCE more on yonder laurelled height
The summer flowers have budded;
Once more with summer's golden light
The vales of home are flooded;
And once more, by the grace of Him
Of every good the Giver,
We sing upon its wooded rim

The praises of our river:

Its pines above, its waves below,
The west-wind down it blowing,
As fair as when the young Brissot
Beheld it seaward flowing, -
And bore its memory o'er the deep,
To soothe a martyr's sadness,
And fresco, in his troubled sleep,

His prison-walls with gladness.

We know the world is rich with streams
Renowned in song and story,
Whose music murmurs through our
dreams

Of human love and glory:
We know that Arno's banks are fair,
And Rhine has castled shadows,
And, poet-tuned, the Doon and Ayr
Go singing down their meadows.

But while, unpictured and unsung
By painter or by poet,

ANDREW RYKMAN'S PRAYER.

ANDREW RYKMAN 's dead and gone;
You can see his leaning slate
In the graveyard, and thereon
Read his name and date.

"Trust is truer than our fears," Runs the legend through the moss, "Gain is not in added years,.

Nor in death is loss."

Still the feet that thither trod, All the friendly eyes are dim; Only Nature, now, and God Have a care for him.

There the dews of quiet fall,
Singing birds and soft winds stray;
Shall the tender Heart of all
Be less kind than they?

What he was and what he is

They who ask may haply find, If they read this prayer of his Which he left behind.

Pardon, Lord, the lips that dare
Shape in words a mortal's prayer!
Prayer, that, when my day is done,
And I see its setting sun,

Shorn and beamless, cold and dim,
Sink beneath the horizon's rim,
When this ball of rock and clay
Crumbles from my feet away,
And the solid shores of sense
Melt into the vague immense,
Father! I may come to Thee
Even with the beggar's plea,
As the poorest of Thy poor,
With my needs, and nothing more.

Not as one who seeks his home
With a step assured I come;
Still behind the tread I hear
Of my life-companion, Fear;
Still a shadow deep and vast
From my westering feet is cast,
Wavering, doubtful, undefined,
Never shapen nor outlined:
From myself the fear has grown,
And the shadow is my own.