Does this wonderful toad, in his cheerful abode
In the innermost heart of that flinty old stone,
By the gray-haired moss and the lichen o'ergrown.

Down deep in a hollow some wiseacres sit,

Like the toad in his cell in the stone;

Around them in daylight the blind owlets flit,

And their creeds are with ivy o'ergrown;

*

Their streams may go dry, and the wheels cease to ply,
And their glimpses be few of the sun and the sky,
Still they hug to their breast every time-honored guest,
And slumber and doze in inglorious rest;

For no progress they find in the wide sphere of mind,
And the world's standing still with all of their kind,
Contented to dwell deep down in the well,

Or move like a snail in the crust of his shell,
Or live like the toad in his narrow abode

With their souls closely wedged in a thick wall of stone
By the gray weeds of prejudice rankly o'ergrown.

A poet whose muse is not ordinarily given to gay flights has in the following poem crossed the threshold of humor and furnished us with a very dainty compound of sentimentality and agriculture.

VESTA.

When skies are starless yet when day is done,
When odors of the freshened sward are sweeter,
When light is dreamy round the sunken sun,
At limit of the grassy lane I meet her.

She steals a gracious hand across the gate;
My own its timid touch an instant flatters;
Below the glooming leaves we linger late,

And gossip of a thousand airy matters.

I gladden that the hay is stored with luck;
I smile to hear the pumpkin-bed is turning;
I mourn the lameness of her speckled duck;

I marvel at the triumphs of her churning.

From cow to cabbage, and from horse to hen,
I treat bucolics with my rustic charmer,
At heart the most unpastoral of men,
Converted by this dainty little farmer.

And yet if one soft syllable I chance,

As late below the glooming leaves we linger,
The pretty veto sparkles in her glance,

And cautions in her brown uplifted finger.

O happy trysts at blossom-time of stars!

O moments when the glad blood thrills and quickens!

O all-inviolable gateway-bars!

O Vesta of the milking-pails and chickens!

EDGAR FAWCETT.

Bret Harte's fame with many readers rests upon his poetic rendition of the trickiness of the "Heathen Chinee." This poem certainly lacks elevation of sentiment and deals with very common people, but it is incontestably amusing, and for this virtue we forgive all its shortcomings.

PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES.

Which I wish to remark,

And my language is plain,

That for ways that are dark,

And for tricks that are vain,

The heathen Chinee is peculiar.

Which the same I would rise to explain.

Ah Sin was his name;

And I shall not deny

In regard to the same

What that name might imply,

But his smile it was pensive and childlike,
As I frequent remarked to Bill Nye.

It was August the third,

And quite soft was the skies; Which it might be inferred

That Ah Sin was likewise;

Yet he played it that day upon William
And me in a way I despise.

Which we had a small game,
And Ah Sin took a hand:
It was Euchre. The same

He did not understand;

But he smiled as he sat by the table,

With the smile that was childlike and bland.

Yet the cards they were stocked

In a way that I grieve,

And my feelings were shocked

At the state of Nye's sleeve;

Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers,
And the same with intent to deceive.

But the hands that were played

By that heathen Chinee, And the points that he made,

Were quite frightful to see,

Till at last he put down a right bower,

Which the same Nye had dealt unto me.

Then I looked up at Nye,

And he gazed upon me;
And he rose with a sigh,

And said, "Can this be?

We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor,"-
And he went for that heathen Chinee.

In the scene that ensued

I did not take a hand,

But the floor it was strewed

Like the leaves on the strand

With the cards that Ah Sin had been hiding
In the game "he did not understand."

In his sleeves, which were long,
He had twenty-four packs,-
Which was coming it strong, .

Yet I state but the facts;

And we found on his nails, which were taper,
What is frequent in tapers,-that's wax.

Which is why I remark,

And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark,

And for tricks that are vain,

The heathen Chinee is peculiar,

Which the same I am free to maintain.

From "Mr. Sparrowgrass" we borrow the following ditty, funnily made up of mirth and melancholy.

A BABYLONISH DITTY.

More than several years have faded
Since my heart was first invaded

By a brown-skinned, gray-eyed siren
On the merry old "South-side,"
Where the mill-flume cataracts glisten,
And the agile blue-fish listen
To the fleet of phantom schooners
Floating on the weedy tide. . .

There, amid the sandy reaches,
In among the pines and beeches,
Oaks, and various other kinds of
Old primeval forest trees,
Did we wander in the noonlight,
Or beneath the silver moonlight,
While in ledges sighed the sedges
To the salt salubrious breeze.

Oh, I loved her as a sister,
Often, oftentimes I kissed her,
Holding prest against my breast

Her slender, soft, seductive hand;

Often by my midnight taper
Filled at least a quire of paper
With some graphic ode or sapphic

"To the nymph of Baby-Land.”

Oft we saw the dim blue highlands,
Coney, Oak, and other islands
(Motes that dot the dimpled bosom

Of the sunny summer sea),
Or, 'mid polished leaves of lotus,
Wheresoe'er our skiff would float us,
Anywhere, where none could note us,
There we sought alone to be.