His sword, that dripped by me and swung,
A little shifted in its belt, -

For he began to say the while

How South our home lay many a mile.

So 'mid the shouting multitude

We two walked forth to never more Return. My cousins have pursued Their life, untroubled as before

I vexed them.

Gauthier's dwelling-place

God lighten! May his soul find grace!

Our elder boy has got the clear

Great brow; tho' when his brother's black
Full eye shows scorn, it . . . Gismond here?
And have you brought my tercel back?
I just was telling Adela

How many birds it struck since May.

J.

THE LOST LEADER.

UST for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a ribbon to stick in his coat,
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote;
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
So much was their's who so little allowed:
How all our copper had gone for his service!

Rags,

were they purple, his heart had been proud! We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him, Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,

Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,
Made him our pattern to live and to die!

Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,

Burns, Shelley, were with us, they watch from their graves!

He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,

He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!

We shall march prospering, —not through his presence;

Songs may inspirit us, - not from his lyre;

Deeds will be done, while he boasts his quiescence,
Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire:

THE LOST MISTRESS.

Blot out his name, then, - record one lost soul more,
One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,
One more triumph for devils, and sorrow for angels,
One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!
Life's night begins: let him never come back to us!
There would be doubt, hesitation, and pain,
Forced praise on our part, the glimmer of twilight,
Never glad confident morning again!

Best fight on well, for we taught him, — strike gallantly,
Aim at our heart ere we pierce through his own;
Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us,
Pardoned in Heaven, the first by the throne!

THE LOST MISTRESS.

LL'S over, then, - does truth sound bitter

A1 As one at first believes?

Hark, 't is the sparrows' good-night twitter
About your cottage eaves!

And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly,
I noticed that, to-day;

One day more bursts them open fully,

You know the red turns gray.

To-morrow we meet the same then, dearest ?

May I take your hand in mine?

Mere friends are we,

Keep much that I'll resign:

For each glance of that eye so bright and black,
Though I keep with heart's endeavor, ·
Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back,
Though it stays in my soul forever!

27

- Yet I will but say what mere friends say,
Or only a thought stronger;

I will hold your hand but as long as all may,
Or so very little longer!

HOME THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD.

O

H, to be in England

Now that April's there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England - now!

And after April, when May follows,

And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows, -
Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops, - at the bent spray's edge,
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture

The first fine, careless rapture!

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew

The buttercups, the little children's dower,
-Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

THE FLOWER'S NAME.

29

N°

HOME THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA.

OBLY, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the northwest died
away;

Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;
Bluish mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;

In the dimmest northeast distance, dawned Gibraltar grand and gray;

"Here and here did England help me, - how can I help England?"—say,

Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray, While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.

H

THE FLOWER'S NAME.

ERE 'S the garden she walked across,

Arm in my arm, such a short while since :
Hark, now I push its wicket, the moss

Hinders the hinges and makes them wince!
She must have reached this shrub ere she turned,
As back with that murmur the wicket swung;
For she laid the poor snail, my chance foot spurned,
To feed and forget it the leaves among.

Down this side of the gravel-walk

She went while her robe's edge brushed the box:
And here she paused in her gracious talk

To point me a moth on the milk-white flox.
Roses, ranged in valiant row,

I will never think that she passed you by!
She loves you noble roses, I know;

But yonder see, where the rock-plants lie!