But diverse: could we make her as the man,
Sweet love were slain: his dearest bond is this,

Not like to like, but like in difference.

Yet in the long years liker must they grow;
The man be more of woman, she of man;

He gain in sweetness and in moral height,

Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;
She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care,
Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind;
Till at the last she set herself to man,

Like perfect music unto noble words;

And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time,
Sit side by side, full-summ'd in all their powers,
Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be,
Self-reverent each and reverencing each,

Distinct in individualities,

But like each other ev'n as those who love.

Then comes the statelier Eden back to men;

Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm: Then springs the crowning race of human-kind. May these things be!"

BURNS

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

John Greenleaf Whittier was born near Haverhill, Mass., December 17, 1807, and died at Hampton Falls, N. H., September 7, 1892.

N

O more the 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!
How, 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 cloud 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

sang

with Burns the hours away,

Forgetful of the meadow!

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.

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-scene 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 plumed 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-briar 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.

Sweet Soul of Song! I own my debt Uncancelled by his failings!