Live, clothed with cursing like a robe of flame,

The focal point of million-fingered

shame!

Live, till the Southron, who, with all his

faults,

Has manly instincts, in his pride revolts, Dashes from off him, midst the glad world's cheers,

The hideous nightmare of his dream of

years,

And lifts, self-prompted, with his own right hand,

The vile encumbrance from his glorious land!

"So, wheresoe'er our destiny sends forth

Its widening circles to the South or North,

Where'er our banner flaunts beneath the stars

Its mimic splendors and its cloudlike bars,

There shall Free Labor's hardy children stand

The equal sovereigns of a slaveless land. And when at last the hunted bison tires, And dies o'ertaken by the squatter's fires;

And westward, wave on wave, the living flood

Breaks on the snow-line of majestic Hood;

And lonely Shasta listening hears the tread

Of Europe's fair-haired children, Hesper-led;

And, gazing downward through his hoar-locks, sees

The tawny Asian climb his giant knees, The Eastern sea shall hush his waves to hear

Pacific's surf-beat answer Freedom's cheer,

And one long rolling fire of triumph run Between the sunrise and the sunset gun!"

My task is done. The Showman and his show,

223

SUMMER BY THE LAKESIDE.

I. NOON.

WHITE clouds, whose shadows haunt the deep,

Light mists, whose soft embraces keep
The sunshine on the hills asleep!

O isles of calm!- O dark, still wood!
And stiller skies that overbrood
Your rest with deeper quietude!

O shapes and hues, dim beckoning, through

Yon mountain gaps, my longing view
Beyond the purple and the blue,

To stiller sea and greener land,
And softer lights and airs more bland,
And skies, the hollow of God's hand!

Transfused through you, O mountain friends!

With mine your solemn spirit blends,
And life no more hath separate ends.

I read each misty mountain sign,
I know the voice of wave and pine,
And I am yours, and ye are mine.

Life's burdens fall, its discords cease,
I lapse into the glad release
Of nature's own exceeding peace.

O, welcome calm of heart and mind!
As falls yon fir-tree's loosened rind
To leave a tenderer growth behind,

So fall the weary years away;
A child again, my head I lay
Upon the lap of this sweet day.

This western windhath Lethean powers,
Yon noonday cloud nepenthe showers,
The lake is white with lotus-flowers!

Even Duty's voice is faint and low, And slumberous Conscience, waking slow,

Forgets her blotted scroll to show.

BURNS.

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!
Mow, 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 with Burns the hours away,
Forgetful of the meadow !

sang

Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead

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.

227

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.