The sand is so smooth, the yellow sand,
That thy keel will not grate, as it touches the

land;
All around, with a slumberous sound,
The singing waves slide up the strand,
And there, where the smooth, wet pebbles be,
The waters gurgle longingly,
As if they fain would seek the shore,
To be at rest from the ceaseless roar,
To be at rest for evermore,

For evermore.

Thus, on Life's gloomy sea,
Heareth the marinere
Voices sweet, from far and near,
Ever singing in his ear,
“Here is rest and peace for thee!”

James R. Lowell.-Born 1819.

And Echo half wakes in the woode i hill,

And, to her heart so calm and deep,

Murmurs over in her sleep,
Doubtfully pausing and murmuring still,
“ Evermore!”

Thus, on Life's weary sea,
Heareth the marinere
Voices sweet, from far and near,
Ever singing low and clear,

Ever singing longingly.
Is it not better here to be,
Than to be toiling late and soon ?
In the dreary night to see
Nothing but the

blood-red moon Go up and down into the sea ; Or, in the loneliness of day,

To see the still seals only
Solemnly lift their faces grey,

Making it yet more lonely?
Is it not better, than to hear
Only the sliding of the wave
Beneath the plank, and feel so near
A cold and lonely grave,
A restless grave, where thou chalt lie
Even in death unquietly?
Look down beneath thy wave-worn bark,

Lean over the side and see
The leaden eye of the side-long shark

Upturned patiently,
Ever waiting there for thee :
Look down and see those, shapeless forms,

Which ever keep their dreamless sleep

Far down within the gloomy deep,
And only stir themselves in storms,
Rising like islands from beneath,
And snorting through the angry spray,
As the frail vessel perisheth
In the whirls of their unwieldy play:

Look down ! Look down!
Upon the seaweed, slimy and dark,
That waves its arms so lank and brown,

Beckoning for thee!
Look down beneath thy wave-worn bark
Into the cold depth of the sea !
Look down ! Look down!

Thus, on Life's lonely sea,
Heareth the marinere
Voices sad, from far and near,
Ever singing full of fear,

Ever singing drearfully.
Here all is pleasant as a dream ;
The wind scarce shaketh down the dew,
The green grass floweth like a stream

Into the ocean's blue :

Listen! O listen!
Here is a gush of many streams,

A song of many birds,
And every wish and longing seems
Lull'd to a number'd flow of words,

Listen! O listen !
Here ever hum the golden bees
Underneath full-blossom'd trees,
At once with glowing fruit and flowers

crown'd;

1914.-AN INCIDENT IN A RAILROAD

CAR.
He spoke of Burns : men rude and rough

Press'd round to hear the praise of one Whose heart was made of manly, simple stuff,

As homespun as their own. And, when he read, they forward lean'd,

Drinking, with thirsty hearts and ears, IIis brook-like songs whom glory never

wean'd From humble smiles and tears. Slowly there grew a tender awe,

Sun-like, o'er faces brown and hard,
As if in him who read they felt and saw

Some presence of the bard.
It was a sight for sin and wrong

And slavish tyranny to see,
A sight to make our faith more pure and

strong
In high humanity,
I thought, these men will carry hence

Promptings their former life above,
And something of a finer reverence

For beauty, truth, and love.
God scatters love on every side,

Freely among his children all,
And always hearts are lying open wide,

Wherein some grains may fall.
There is no wind but soweth seeds

Of a more true and open life,
Which burst, unlook'd-for, into high-soul'a

deeds
With wayside beauty rife.
We find within these souls of ours

Some wild germs of a higher birth,
Which in the poet's tropic heart bear flowers

Whose fragrance fills the earth.

0, poor man's son, scorn not thy state ;

There is worse weariness than thine, In merely being rich and great ;

Toil only gives the soul to shine,

And makes rest fragrant and benign;
A heritage, it seems to me,
Worth being poor to hold in fee.
Both heirs to some six feet of sod,

Are equal in the earth at last;
Both, children of the same dear God,

Prove title to your heirship vajt

By record of a well-fill'd past;
A heritage, it seems to me.
Well worth a life to hold in fee.

J. R. Lowell.-Born 1819.

Shadows his heart with perilous fore

boding,
And he can see the grim-eyed Doom

From out the trembling gloom
Its silent-footed steeds toward his palace

goading. What promises hast thou for Poets' eyes,

Aweary of the turmoil and the wrong! To all their hopes what overjoy'd replies ! What undrsam'd ecstasies for blissful

song! Thy happy plains no war-trumps brawling

clangour Disturbs, and fools the poor to hate the

poor ; The humble glares not on the high with

anger; Love leaves no gradge at less, no greed

for more ;
In vain strives self the godlike sense to

smother;
From the soul's deeps

It throbs and leaps ;
The noble 'neath foul rags beholds his long-

lost brother.
To thee the Martyr looketh, and his fires
Unlock their fangs and leave his spirit

free;
To thee the Poet 'mid his toil aspires,

And grief and hunger climb about his knee
Welcome as children: thou upholdest

The lone Inventor by his demon haunted; The prophet cries to thee when hearts are

coldest, And gazing o'er the midnight's bleak

abyss, Sees the drowsed soul awaken at thy kiss, And stretch its happy arms and leap up disen

chanted.

1916.-TO THE FUTURE. 0, Land of Promise! from what Pisgah's

height Can I behold thy stretch of peaceful

bowers ? Thy golden harvests flowing out of sight, Thy nestled homes and sun-illumined

towers ?
Gazing upon the sunset's high-heap'd gold,

Its crags of opal and of chrysolite,
Its deeps

on deeps of glory that unfold
Still brightening abysses,

And blazing precipices,
Whence but a scanty leap it seems to

heaven,

Sometimes a glimpse is given,
Of thy more gorgeous realm, thy more un-

stinted blisses.
O, Land of Quiet! to thy shore the surf

Of the perturbed Present rolls and sleeps; Our storms breathe soft as June upon thy

turf And lure out blossoms: to thy bosom

leaps,
As to a mother's, the o'erwearied heart,
Hearing far off and dim the toiling mart,
The hurrying feet, the curses without

number,
And circled with the glow Elysian,

Of thine exulting vision,
Out of its very cares woos charms for peace

and slumber.

fear;

Thou bringest vengeance, but so loving

kindly The guilty thinks it pity; taught by thee, Fierce tyrants drop the scourges wherewith

blindly Their own souls they were scarring ; con

querors see With horror in their hands the accursèd

spear That tore the meek One's side on Calvary, And from their trophies shrink with ghastly

Thou, too, art the Forgiver,
The beauty of man's soul to man reveal.

ing;

The arrows from thy quiver Tierce error's guilty heart, but only pierce for

healing. O, whither, whither, glory-winged dreams, From out Life's sweat and turmoil would

ye bear me ? Shut, gates of Fancy, on your golden gleams,

This agony of hopeless contrast spare me!

To thee the Earth lifts up her fetter'd hands And cries for vengeance; with a pitying

smile Thou blessest her, and she forgets her bands,

And her old woe-worn face a little while Grows young and noble ; unto thee the

Oppressor
Looks, and is dumb with awe;

The eternal law
Which makes the crime its own blindfold

redresser,

Fade, cheating glow, and leave me to my

night!
He is a coward who would borrow

A charm against the present sorrow From the vague Future's promise of delight :

As life's alarums nearer roll,

The ancestral buckler calls,

Self-clanging, from the walls

In the high temple of the soul ;
Where are most sorrows, there the poet's

sphere is,
To feed the soul with patience,

To heal its desolations
With words of unshorn truth, with love that

never wearies.

J. R. Lowell.-Born 1819.

1917.—THE FOUNTAIN. Into the sunshine,

Full of light, Leaping and flashing

From morn to night! Into the moonlight,

Whiter than snow, Waving so flower-like

When the winds blow! Into the starlight,

Rushing in spray, Happy at midnight,

Happy by day! Ever in motion,

Blithesome and cheery, Still climbing heavenward

Never a-weary ! Glad of all weathers,

Still seeming best, Upward or downward

Motion thy rest; Full of a nature

Nothing can tame, Changed every moment,

Ever the same ;-Ceaseless, aspiring ;

Ceaseless, content; Darkness or sunshine

Thy element.
Glorious fountain !

Let my heart be
Fresh, changeful, constant,
Upward, like thee !

J. R. Lowell.-Born 1819.

In the old churchyard in the valley, Ben Bolt,

In a corner obscure and alone, They have fitted a slab of the granite so grey,

And Alice lies under the stone. Under the hickory tree, Ben Bolt,

Which stood at the foot of the hill, Together we've lain in the noonday shade,

And listen'd to Appleton's mill: The mill-wheel has fallen to pieces, Ben Bolt.

The rafters have tumbled in, And a quiet which crawls round the walls as

you gaze, Has follow'd the olden din. Do you mind the cabin of logs, Ben Bolt,

At the edge of the pathless wood, And the button-ball tree with its motley limbs,

Which nigh by the door-step stood ? The cabin to ruin has gone, Ben Bolt,

The tree you would seek in vain; And where once the lords of the forest waved,

Grows grass and the golden grain. And don't you remember the school, Ben Bolt,

With the master so cruel and grim, And the shaded nook in the running brook,

Where the children went to swim ? Grass grows on the master's grave, Ben Bolt,

The spring of the brook is dry, And of all the boys who were schoolmates

then, There are only you and I. There is change in the things I loved, Ben

Bolt, They have changed from the old to the

new; But I feel inthedeeps of my spirit the truth,

There never was change in you. Twelvemonths twenty have past, Ben Bolt,

Since first we were friends--yet I hail Thy presence a blessing, thy friendship a

truth, Ben Bolt, of the salt-sea gale.

Thomas Dunn English.-Born 1819.

1919.--THE BRICKMAKER.

I.

Let the blinded morse go round
Till the yellow clay be ground,
And no weary arms be folded
Till the mass to brick be moulded.
In no stately structures skill'd,
What the temple we would build ?
Now the massive kiln is risen-
Call it palace_call it prison ;
View it well: from end to end
Narrow corridors extend-
Long, and dark, and smother'd aisles :
Choke its earthy vaults with piles

Of the resinous yellow pine ;

1918.-BEN BOLT. Don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt ?

Sweet Alice whose hair was so brown, Who wept with delight when you gave her a

smile, And trembled with fear at your frown ?

Deck'd in garments richly glistening,

Rustling wealth shall walk the aisle ; And the poor without stand listening,

Praying in their hearts the while. There the veteran shall come weekly

With his cane, oppress'd and poor, 'Mid the horses standing meekly,

Gazing through the open door. But these wrongs not long shall linger-

The presumptuous pile must fall; For, behold! the fiery finger

Flames along the fated wall.

Now thrust in the fetter'd Fire-
Hearken! how he stamps with ire,

Treading out the pitchy wine ;
Wronght anon to wilder spells,

Hear him shout his loud alarms;

See him thrust his glowing arms
Through the windows of his cells.
But his chains at last shall sever;
Slavery lives not for ever;
And the thickest prison wall
Into ruin yet must fall.
Whatsoever falls away
Springeth up again, they say;
Then, when this shall break asunder,
And the fire be freed from under,
Tell us what imperial thing

From the ruin shall upspring ?
There shall grow a stately building.

Airy dome and column'd walls ;
Mottoes writ in richest gilding

Blazing through its pillar'd halls.
In those chambers, stern and dreaded,

They, the mighty ones, shall stand;
There shall sit the hoary-headed

Old defenders of the land.
There shall mighty words be spoken,

Which shall thrill a wondering world ;
Then shall ancient bonds be broken,

And new banners be unfurl'd. But anon those glorious uses

In these chambers shall lie dead,
And the world's antique abuses,

Hydra-headed, rise instead.
But this wrong not long shall linger-

The old capitol must fall;
For, behold! the fiery finger
Flames along the fated wall.

II.
Let the blinded horse go round
Till the yellow clay be ground,
And no weary arms be folded
Till the mass to brick be moulded-
Till the heavy walls be risen,
And the fire is in his prison :
But when break the walls asunder,
And the fire is freed from under,
Say again what stately thing

From the ruin shall apspring ?
There shall grow a church whose steeple

To the heavens shall aspire ;
And shall come the mighty people

To the music of the choir.
On the infant, robed in whiteness,

Shall baptismal waters fall,
While the child's angelic brightness

Sheds a halo over all.
There shall stand enwreath'd in marriage

Forms that tremble-hearts that thrillTo the door Death's sable carriage

Shall bring forms and hearts grown still!

III.
Let the blinded horse go round
Till the yellow clay be ground,
And no weary arms be folded
Till the mass to brick be moulded :
Say again what stately thing

From the ruin shall upspring ?
Not the hall with column'd chambers,

Starr'd with words of liberty,
Where the freedom-canting members

Feel no impulse of the free : Not the pile where souls in error

Hear the words, “ Go, sin no more !" But a dusky thing of terror,

With its cells and grated door. To its inmates each to-morrow

Shall bring in no tide of joy. Born in darkness and in sorrow,

There shall stand the fated boy. With a grief too loud to smother,

With a throbbing, burning head, There shall groan some desperate mother,

Nor deny the stolen bread! There the veteran, a poor debtor,

Mark'd with honourable scars, Listening to some clanking fetter,

Shall gaze idly through the bars : Shall gaze idly not demurring,

Though with thick oppression bow'd, While the many, doubly erring,

Shall walk honour'd through the crowd. Yet these wrongs not long shall linger

The benighted pile must fall; For, behold! the fiery finger

Flames along the fated wall.

IV.

Let the blinded horse go round
Till the yellow clay be ground,
And no weary arms be folded
Till the mass to brick be moulded-
Till the heavy wall be risen
And the fire is in his prison.
Capitol, and church, and jail,
Like our kiln at last shall fail;