Held his head high, and cared for no man, he."

Slowly and sadly Enoch answer'd her; "His head is low, and no man cares for him.

I think I have not three days more to live; I am the man." At which the woman gave A half-incredulous, half-hysterical cry. "You Arden, you! nay, -sure he was a foot Higher than you be." Enoch said again "My God has bow'd me down to what

I am; My grief and solitude have broken me; Nevertheless, know you that I am he

8!

Eh, let me fetch 'em, Arden," and arose Eager to bring them down, for Enoch hung A moment on her words, but then replied.

"Woman, disturb me not now at the last,

But let me hold my purpose till I die. Sit down again; mark me and understand, While I have power to speak. I charge you now,

When you shall see her, tell her that I died

Blessing her, praying for her, loving her; Save for the bar between us, loving her As when she laid her head beside my own. And tell my daughter Annie, whom I saw So like her mother, that my latest breath Was spent in blessing her and praying for her.

And tell my son that I died blessing him. And say to Philip that I blest him too; He never meant us anything but good. But if my children care to see me dead, Who hardly knew me living, let them come,

I am their father; but she must not come, For my dead face would vex her afterlife.

And now there is but one of all my blood, Who will embrace me in the world-to-be : This hair is his: she cut it off and gave it, And I have borne it with me all these

vals,

There came so loud a calling of the sea, That all the houses in the haven rang. He woke, he rose, he spread his arms abroad

Crying with a loud voice "a sail! a sail! I am saved"; and so fell back and spoke

no more.

So past the strong heroic soul away. And when they buried him the little port Had seldom seen a costlier funeral.

AYLMER'S FIELD.

1793.

DUST are our frames; and, gilded dust. our pride

Looks only for a moment whole and sound; Like that long-buried body of the king, Found lying with his urns and ornaments, Which at a touch of light, an air of heaven,

Slipt into ashes and was found no more.

Here is a story which in rougher shape Came from a grizzled cripple, whom I saw Sunning himself in a waste field alone -Old, and a mine of memories- who had served,

Long since, a bygone Rector of the place, And been himself a part of what he told.

SIR AYLMER AYLMER that almighty

prick'd to death.

"Not proven" Averill said, or laughingly "Some other race of Averills"-prov'n

Sanguine he was a but less vivid hue Than of that islet in the chestnut-bloom Flamed in his cheek; and eager eyes, that still

Took joyful note of all things joyful, beam'd,

Beneath a manelike mass of rolling gold, Their best and brightest, when they dwelt on hers,

Edith, whose pensive beauty, perfect else, But subject to the season or the mood, Shone like a mystic star between the less And greater glory varying to and fro, We know not wherefore; bounteously made,

And yet so finely, that a troublous touch Thinn'd, or would seem to thin her in a day,

A joyous to dilate, as toward the light. And these had been together from the first.

Leolin's first nurse was, five years after, hers:

So much the boy foreran; but when his date

Doubled her own, for want of playmates, he

(Since Averill was a decade and a half His elder, and their parents underground) Had tost his ball and flown his kite, and roll'd

His hoop to pleasure Edith, with her dipt Against the rush of the air in the prone swing,

Made blossom-ball or daisy-chain, arranged

Her garden, sow'd her name and kept it

grass,

The little dells of cowslip, fairy palms,
The petty marestail forest, fairy pines,
Or from the tiny pitted target blew
What look'd a flight of fairy arrows aim'd
All at one mark, all hitting: make-
believes

For Edith and himself: or else he forged,
But that was later, boyish histories
Of battle, bold adventure, dungeon, wreck,
Flights, terrors, sudden rescues, and true
love

Crown'd after trial; sketches rude and faint,

But where a passion yet unborn perhaps
Lay hidden as the music of the moon
Sleeps in the plain eggs of the nightin
gale.

And thus together, save for college-times
Or Temple-eaten terms, a couple, fair
As ever painter painted, poet sang,
Or Heav'n in lavish bounty moulded,

grew.

And more and more, the maiden womangrown,

He wasted hours with Averill; there, when first

The tented winter-field was broken up Into that phalanx of the summer spear That soon should wear the garland; there again

When burr and bine were gather'd; lastly there

At Christmas; ever welcome at the Hall, On whose dull sameness his full tide of youth

Broke with a phosphorescence cheering

even

My lady; and the Baronet yet had laid No bar between them: dull and selfinvolved,

Tall and erect, but bending from his height With half-allowing smiles for all the world,

And mighty courteous in the main --- his pride

Lay deeper than to wear it as his ringHe, like an Aylmer in his Aylmerism, Would care no more for Leolin's walking

with her

Than for his old Newfoundland's, when they ran

To loose him at the stables, for he rose Twofooted at the limit of his chain, Roaring to make a third: and how should Love,