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THE WHITTIER YEAR BOOK 
 
 PASSAGES FROM THE VERSE AND PROSE 
 
 OF JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 
 
 CHOSEN FOR THE DAILY 
 
 FOOD OF THE LOVER 
 
 OF THOUGHT AND 
 
 BEAUTY 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 \V 
 
 \ 
 
?£ 
 
 
 Copyright, 1895, 
 By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
 
 All rights resej'ved. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co- 
 

 Hu. lr^^fu^-&Uf--p^. 
 
 Jd^f^.^cUZ^ 
 
3[anuatp 
 
 THE PAGEANT 
 
 A SOUND as if from bells of silver, 
 Or elfin cymbals smitten clear, 
 Through the frost-pictured panes I hear. 
 
 ^6» 
 
 A brightness which outshines the mornin 
 A splendor brooking no delay. 
 Beckons and tempts my feet away. 
 
 I leave the trodden village highway 
 
 For virgin snow-paths glimmering through 
 A jewelled elm-tree avenue ; 
 
 I tread in Orient halls enchanted, 
 
 I dream the Saga's dream of caves 
 Gem-lit beneath the North Sea waves! 
 
 I walk the land of Eldorado, 
 
 I touch its mimic garden bowers, 
 
 Its silver leaves and diamond flowers ! 
 
 What miracle of weird transforming 
 
 In this wild work of frost and light, 
 This glimpse of glory infinite ! 
 
 This foregleam of the Holy City, 
 
 Like that to him of Patmos given. 
 
 The white bride coming down from heaven ! 
 
JANUARY 
 
 Emancipation proclamation, 1863; Maria Edgeworth, 1767; 
 Arthur Hugh Clough, 1819. 
 
 Not unto us who did but seek 
 The word that burned within to speak, 
 Not unto us this day belong 
 The triumph and exultant song. 
 
 Upon us fell in early youth 
 The burden of unwelcome truth, 
 And left us, weak and frail and few, 
 The censor's painful work to do. 
 
 Thenceforth our life a fight became, 
 The air we breathed was hot with blame ; 
 For not with gauged and softened tone 
 We made the bondman's cause our own. 
 Hymn for the Celebration of Emancipation. 
 
 James Wolfe, 1726; Justin Winsor, 1831. 
 
 Drearily blows the north-wind 
 
 From the land of ice and snow ; 
 The eyes that look are weary, 
 
 And heavy the hands that row. 
 And with one foot on the water. 
 
 And one upon the shore. 
 The Angel of Shadow gives warning 
 
 That day shall be no more. 
 
 The Red River Voyageur. 
 2 
 
JANUARY 
 3 
 
 Lucretia Mott, 1793. 
 
 Only in the gathered silence 
 Of a calm and waiting frame, 
 
 Light and wisdom as from Heaven 
 To the seeker came. 
 
 Not to ease and aimless quiet 
 Doth that inward answer tend, 
 
 But to works of love and duty 
 As our being's end, — 
 
 Not to idle dreams and trances, 
 Length of face, and solemn tone, 
 
 But to Faith, in daily striving 
 And performance shown. 
 
 To 
 
 4 
 
 Jakob Ludwig Grimm, 1785. 
 
 Still linger in our noon of time 
 
 And on our Saxon tongue 
 The echoes of the home-born hymns 
 
 The Aryan mothers sung. 
 
 And childhood had its litanies 
 
 In every age and chme ; 
 The earliest cradles of the rade 
 ' Were rocked to poet's rhyme. 
 
 Child-Songs. 
 
 3 
 
JANUARY 
 
 Stephen Decatur, 1779. 
 
 Shut in from all the world without, 
 We sat the clean-winged hearth about, 
 Content to let the north-wind roar 
 In baffled rage at pane and door. 
 While the red logs before us beat 
 The frost-line back with tropic heat ; 
 And ever, when a louder blast 
 Shook beam and rafter as it passed, 
 The merrier up its roaring draught 
 The great throat of the chimney laughed. 
 
 What matter how the night behaved ? 
 What matter how the north-wind raved ? 
 Blow high, blow low, not all its snow 
 Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow. 
 
 Snow-Bound. 
 
 Epiphany; Charles Sumner, 181 1. 
 
 Yet, weak and blinded though we be, 
 Thou dost our service own ; 
 
 We bring our varying gifts to Thee, 
 And Thou rejectest none. 
 
 O Love ! O Life ! Our faith and sight 
 Thy presence maketh one, 
 4 
 
JANUARY 
 
 As through transfigured clouds of white 
 We trace the noon-day sun. 
 
 So, to our mortal eyes subdued, 
 Flesh-veiled, but not concealed. 
 
 We know in Thee the fatherhood 
 And heart of God revealed. 
 
 Our Master. 
 
 One language held his heart and lip. 
 Straight onward to his goal he trod. 
 
 And proved the highest statesmanship 
 Obedience to the voice of God. 
 
 Sumner. 
 
 7 
 
 Israel Putnam, 1718. 
 
 At times I long for gentler skies. 
 
 And bathe in dreams of softer air, 
 But homesick tears would fill the eyes 
 
 That saw the Cross without the Bear. 
 The pine must whisper to the palm, 
 The north-wind break the tropic calm; 
 And with the dreamy languor of the Line, 
 The North's keen virtue blend, and strength to 
 beauty join. 
 
 The Last Walk in Autumn. 
 
 Robert Schumann, 1810; L. Alma Tadema, 1836. 
 
 Like warp and woof all destinies 
 Are woven fast, 
 5 
 
^ JANUARY 
 
 Linked in sympathy like the keys 
 Of an organ vast. 
 
 Pluck one thread, and the web ye mar ; 
 
 Break but one 
 Of a thousand keys, and the paining jar 
 
 Through all will run. 
 
 My Soul and I. 
 
 9 
 
 John K. Paine, 1839. 
 
 We looked upon a world unknown, 
 
 On nothing we could call our own. 
 
 Around the glistening wonder bent 
 
 The blue walls of the firmament, 
 
 No cloud above, no earth below, — 
 
 A universe of sky and snow ! 
 
 The old familiar sights of ours 
 
 Took marvellous shapes ; strange domes and 
 
 towers 
 Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood. 
 Or garden wall, or belt of wood ; 
 A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed, 
 A fenceless drift w^hat once was road ; 
 The bridle-post an old man sat 
 With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat ; 
 The well-curb had a Chinese roof ; 
 And even the long sweep, high aloof, 
 In its slant splendor, seemed to tell 
 Of Pisa's leaning miracle. 
 
 Snow-Bound. 
 
 6 
 
JANUARY 
 
 10 
 
 Ethan Allen, 1737 ; Aubrey de Vere, 1814, 
 
 The threads our hands in blindness spin 
 No self-determined plan weaves in ; 
 The shuttle of the unseen powers 
 Works out a pattern not as ours. 
 
 Ah ! small the choice of him who sings 
 What sound shall leave the smitten strings ; 
 Fate holds and guides the hand of art ; 
 The singer's is the servant's part. 
 
 Overruled. 
 
 II 
 
 Alexander Hamilton, 1757; Bayard Taylor, 1825. 
 
 He brought us wonders of the new and old ; 
 
 We shared all climes with him. The Arab's tent 
 
 To him its story-telling secret lent. 
 And, pleased, we listened to the tales he told. 
 His task, beguiled with songs that shall endure, 
 
 In manly, honest thoroughness he wrought; 
 
 From humble home-lays to the heights of thought 
 Slowly he climbed, but every step was sure. 
 
 Bayard Taylor. 
 
 12 
 
 John Winthrop, 1588; John Hancock, 1737. 
 
 Sternly faithful to duty, in peril, and suffering, 
 and self-denial, they wrought out the noblest of 
 
JANUARY 
 
 historical epics on the rough soil of New England. 
 They lived a truer poetry than Homer or Virgil 
 wrote. 
 
 Pawtuckei Falls. 
 
 13 
 
 S. P. Chase, 1808. 
 
 The joy that comes in sorrow's guise, 
 The sweet pains of self-sacrifice, 
 I would not have them otherwise. 
 
 I suffer with no vain pretence 
 Of triumph over flesh and sense, 
 Yet trust the grievous providence, 
 
 How dark soe'er it seems, may tend. 
 By ways I cannot comprehend, 
 To some unguessed benignant end ; 
 
 That every loss and lapse may gain 
 The clear-aired heights by steps of pain, 
 And never cross is borne in vain. 
 
 My Trust. 
 
 14 
 
 What matter though we seek with pain 
 The garden of the gods in vain. 
 If lured thereby we climb to greet 
 Some wayside blossom Eden-sweet? 
 8 
 
JANUARY 
 
 To seek is better than to gain, 
 The fond hope dies as we attain ; 
 Life's fairest things are those which seem, 
 The best is that of which we dream. 
 
 Seeking of the Waterfall. 
 
 15 
 
 Moliere, 1622; Marjorie Fleming, 1803. 
 
 Nor sky, nor wave, nor tree, nor flower. 
 
 Nor green earth's virgin sod, 
 So moved the singer's heart of old 
 
 As these small ones of God. 
 
 The mystery of unfolding life 
 
 Was more than dawning morn, 
 Than opening flower or crescent moon 
 
 The human soul new-born ! 
 
 And still to childhood's sweet appeal 
 
 The heart of genius turns, 
 And more than all the sages teach 
 
 From lisping voices learns. 
 
 Child-Songs. 
 
 16 
 
 Edmund Spenser, died 1599. 
 
 I LOVE the old melodious lays 
 Which softly melt the ages through, 
 
 The songs of Spenser's golden days, 
 9 
 
JANUARY 
 
 Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase, 
 Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning 
 dew. 
 
 Yet vainly in my quiet hours 
 To breathe their marvellous notes I try ; 
 I feel them, as the leaves and flowers 
 In silence feel the dewy showers, 
 And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of the 
 sky. 
 
 Proem. 
 
 Benjamin Franklin, 1706; George Fuller, 1822. 
 
 The riches of the Commonwealth 
 
 Are free, strong minds, and hearts of health ; 
 
 And more to her than gold or grain, 
 
 The cunning hand and cultured brain. 
 
 Our State. 
 
 Haunted of Beauty, like the marvellous youth 
 Who sang Saint Agnes' Eve ! How passing fair 
 Her shapes took color in thy homestead air ! 
 How on thy canvas even her dreams were truth ! 
 Magician! who from commonest elements 
 Called up divine ideals, clothed upon 
 By mystic lights soft blending into one 
 Womanly grace and child-like innocence. 
 Teacher ! thy lesson was not given in vain. 
 Beauty is goodness ; ugliness is sin : 
 Art's place is sacred : nothing foul therein 
 May crawl or tread with bestial feet profane. 
 10 
 
JANUARY 
 
 If rightly choosing is the painter's test, 
 Thy choice, O master, ever was the best. 
 
 An Artist of the Beautiful. 
 
 Montesquieu, 1689; Daniel Webster, 1782. 
 
 Thou, 
 Whom the rich heavens did so endow 
 With eyes of power and Jove's own brow, 
 With all the massive strength that fills 
 Thy home-horizon's granite hills, 
 New England's stateliest type of man, 
 In port and speech Olympian ; 
 Whom no one met, at first, but took 
 A second awed and wondering look. 
 Whose words in simplest homespun clad, 
 The Saxon strength of Caedmon's had. 
 With power reserved at need to reach 
 The Roman forum's loftiest speech. 
 Sweet with persuasion, eloquent 
 In passion, cool in argument. 
 Or, ponderous, falling on thy foes 
 As fell the Norse god's hammer blows. 
 And failing only when they tried 
 The adamant of the righteous side. 
 
 The Lost Occasion. 
 James Watt, 1736; Bernardin St. Pierre, 1737. 
 
 All who, by skill and patience, anyhow 
 Make service noble, and the earth redeem 
 II 
 
JANUARY 
 
 From savageness. By kingly accolade 
 
 Than theirs was never worthier knighthood made. 
 
 The Problem. 
 
 His simple tale of love and woe 
 All hearts had melted, high or low ; — 
 A blissful pain, a sweet distress, 
 Immortal in its tenderness. 
 
 Chapel of the Hermits, 
 
 20 
 
 N P. Willis, 1807. 
 
 He comes, — he comes, — the Frost Spirit comes! 
 — from the frozen Labrador, — 
 
 From the icy bridge of the Northern seas, which 
 the white bear wanders o'er, — 
 
 Where the fisherman's sail is stiff with ice, and the 
 luckless forms below 
 
 In the sunless cold of the lingering night into mar- 
 ble statues grow ! 
 
 He comes, — he comes, — the Frost Spirit comes ! 
 
 and the quiet lake shall feel 
 The torpid touch of his glazing breath, and ring to 
 
 the skater's heel ; 
 And the streams which danced on the broken 
 
 rocks, or sang to the leaning grass, 
 Shall bow again to their winter chain, and in 
 
 mournful silence pass. 
 
 The Frost Spirit. 
 12 
 
JANUARY 
 
 21 
 
 Oscar II. of Sweden, 1829. 
 
 The pause before the breaking seals 
 
 Of mystery is this ; 
 Yon miracle-play of night and day 
 
 Makes dumb its witnesses. 
 What unseen altar crowns the hills 
 
 That reach up stair on stair ? 
 What eyes look through, what white wings fan 
 
 These purple veils of air ? 
 What Presence from the heavenly heights 
 
 To those of earth stoops down? 
 Not vainly Hellas dreamed of gods 
 
 On Ida's snowy crown ! 
 
 Sunset on the Bearcamp. 
 
 22 
 Bacon, 1561 ; Lessing, 1729; Byron, 1788. 
 
 What lack of goodly company, 
 
 When masters of the ancient lyre 
 Obey my call, and trace for me 
 
 Their words of mingled tears and fire ! 
 I talk with Bacon, grave and wise, 
 I read the world with Pascal's eyes ; 
 And priest and sage, 'with solemn brows austere, 
 And poets, garland-bound, the Lords of Thought, 
 draw near. 
 
 The Last Walk in Autumn. 
 13 
 
JANUARY 
 
 William Page, 181 1, 
 
 Wisely and well said the Eastern bard ; 
 Fear is easy, but love is hard ; 
 Easy to glow with the Santon's rage, 
 And walk on the Meccan pilgrimage ; 
 But he is greatest and best who can 
 Worship Allah by loving man. 
 
 The Preacher. 
 
 24 
 
 Frederick the Great, 1712 ; Charles James Fox, 1749. 
 
 Is there, then, no death for a w^ord once spoken ? 
 Was never a deed but left its token 
 Written on tables never broken ? 
 
 Do the elements subtle reflections give ? 
 Do pictures of all the ages live 
 On Nature's infinite negative ? 
 
 The Palatine. 
 
 25 
 
 Robert Burns, 1759, 
 
 I MATCHED with Scotland's heathery hills 
 The sweetbrier and the clover ; 
 
 With Ayr and Doon, my native rills, 
 Their wood hymns chanting over. 
 14 
 
JANUARY 
 
 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 ! 
 
 With clearer eyes I saw the worth 
 
 Of hf e among the lowly ; 
 The Bible at his Cotter's hearth 
 
 Had made my own more holy. 
 
 Burns. 
 
 26 
 
 B. R. Haydon, 1786; Thomas Noon Talfourd, 1795. 
 
 Yet do thy work ; it shall succeed 
 
 In thine or in another's day ; 
 And, if denied the victor's meed, 
 
 Thou shalt not lack the toiler's pay. 
 
 Faith shares the future's promise ; Love's 
 
 Self-offering is a triumph won ; 
 And each good thought or action moves 
 
 The dark world nearer to the sun. 
 
 The Voices. 
 
 27 
 
 Mozart, 1756; Emperor William II., 1859. 
 
 Folly and Fear are sisters twain : 
 
 One closing her eyes, 
 The other peopling the dark inane 
 
 With spectral hes. 
 15 
 
JANUARY 
 
 Know well, my soul, God's hand controls 
 
 Whate'er thou fearest ; 
 Round Him in calmest music rolls 
 
 Whate'er thou hearest. 
 
 What to thee is shadow, to Him is day, 
 
 And the end He knoweth, 
 And not on a blind and aimless way 
 
 The spirit goeth. 
 
 My Soul and I. 
 
 28 
 
 Charles George Gordon, 1833. 
 
 O HEART of mine, keep patience ! — Looking forth, 
 As from the Mount of Vision, I behold. 
 
 Pure, just, and free, the Church of Christ on 
 earth, — 
 The martyr's dream, the golden age foretold ! 
 
 And found, at last, the mystic Grail I see, 
 
 Brimmed with His blessing, pass from lip to lip 
 In sacred pledge of human fellowship ; 
 And over all the songs of angels hear, — 
 Songs of the love that casteth out all fear, — 
 Songs of the Gospel of Humanity ! 
 
 On a Prayer-Book. 
 
 29 
 
 Emanuel Swedenborg, 1688, 
 
 A MAN remarkable for his practical activities, an 
 ardent scholar of the exact sciences, versed in all 
 16 
 
JANUARY 
 
 the arcana of physics, a skilful and inventive 
 mechanician, he has evolved from the hard and 
 gross materialism of his studies a system of tran- 
 scendent spiritualism. From his aggregation of 
 cold and apparently lifeless practical facts beauti- 
 ful and wonderful abstractions start forth like blos- 
 soms on the rod of the Levite. 
 
 Sweden BORG, 
 
 30 
 
 Walter Savage Landor, 1775. 
 
 To be saved is only this, — 
 Salvation from our selfishness; 
 From more than elemental fire, — 
 The soul's unsanctified desire; — 
 From sin itself, and not the pain 
 That warns us of its chafing chain. 
 
 The Meeting. 
 
 3^ 
 
 Franz Schubert, 1797. 
 
 Better to stem with heart and hand 
 
 The roaring tide of Hfe, than lie, 
 Unmindful, on its flowery strand, 
 Of God's occasions drifting by ! 
 Better with naked nerve to bear 
 The needles of this goading air, 
 Than, in the lap of sensual ease, forego 
 The godlike power to do, the godlike aim to know. 
 
 The Last Walk in Autumn. 
 17 
 
fefiruatp 
 
 THE CLEAR VISION. 
 
 I DID but dream. I never knew 
 
 What charms our sternest season wore. 
 Was never yet the sky so blue, 
 
 Was never earth so white before. 
 Till now I never saw the glow 
 Of sunset on yon hills of snow, 
 And never learned the bough's designs 
 Of beauty in its leafless lines. 
 
 Did ever such a morning break 
 
 As that my eastern windows see ? 
 Did ever such a moonlight take 
 
 Weird photographs of shrub and tree ? 
 Rang ever bells so wild and fleet 
 The music of the winter street ? 
 Was ever yet a sound by half 
 So merry as yon school-boy's laugh ? 
 
 O Earth ! with gladness overfraught, 
 
 No added charm thy face hath found; 
 Within my heart the change is wrought, 
 My footsteps make enchanted ground. 
 From couch of pain and curtained room 
 Forth to thy light and air I come, 
 To find in all that meets my eyes 
 The freshness of a glad surprise. 
 i8 
 
FEBRUARY 
 
 Break forth, my lips, in praise, and own 
 
 The wiser love severely kind ; 
 Since, richer for its chastening grown, 
 
 I see, whereas I once was bhnd. 
 The world, O Father ! hath not wronged 
 With loss the life by Thee prolonged ; 
 But still, with every added year. 
 More beautiful Thy works appear ! 
 
 As Thou hast made thy world without, 
 
 Make Thou more fair my world within; 
 Shine through its lingering clouds of doubt 
 
 Rebuke its haunting shapes of sin; 
 Fill, brief or long, my granted span 
 Of life with love to thee and man ; 
 Strike when thou wilt the hour of rest, 
 But let my last days be my best ! 
 19 
 
FEBRUARY 
 I 
 
 Edmund Quincy, i8oS. 
 
 Better than self-indulgent years 
 The outfiung heart of youth, 
 
 Than pleasant songs in idle years 
 The tumult of the truth. 
 
 Rest for the weary hands is good, 
 And love for hearts that pine, 
 
 But let the manly habitude 
 Of upright souls be mine. 
 
 My Birthday. 
 
 Candlemas; Hannah More 1745. 
 
 Whatever in love's name is truly done 
 To free the bound and lift the fallen one 
 Is done to Christ. Whoso in deed and word 
 Is not against Him labors for our Lord. 
 When He, who, sad and weary, longing sore 
 For love's sweet service, sought the sisters' door. 
 One saw the heavenly, one the human guest, 
 But who shall say which loved the Master best .'* 
 
 By Their Works. 
 
 3 
 
 Mendelssohn, 1809; F. W. Robertson, 1816; Sidney Lanier, 1842. 
 
 A LIFE of beauty lends to all it sees 
 The beauty of its thought ; 
 20 
 
FEBRUARY 
 
 And fairest forms and sweetest harmonies 
 Make glad its way, unsought. 
 
 Sure stands the promise, — ever to the meek 
 
 A heritage is given ; 
 Nor lose they Earth who, single-hearted, seek 
 
 The righteousness of Heaven! 
 
 The Christian Tourists. 
 
 4 
 
 Josiah Quincy, 1772. 
 
 The moon above the eastern wood 
 Shone at its full ; the hill-range stood 
 Transfigured in the silver flood, 
 Its blown snows flashing cold and keen, 
 Dead white, save where some sharp ravine 
 Took shadow, or the sombre green 
 Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black 
 Against the whiteness at their back. 
 For such a world and such a night 
 Most fitting that unwarming light, 
 Which only seemed where'er it fell 
 To make the coldness visible. 
 
 Snow-Bound. 
 
 5 
 
 James Otis, 1725 ; Sir Robert Peel, 1788. 
 
 Our fathers to their graves have gone ; 
 Their strife is past, — their triumph won ; 
 21 
 
FEBRUARY 
 
 But sterner trials wait the race 
 Which rises in their honored place, — 
 A moral warfare with the crime 
 And folly of an evil time. 
 
 The Moral Warfare. 
 
 6 
 
 Madame de Sevigne, 1626; Queen Anne, 1665. 
 
 We shape ourselves the joy or fear 
 Of which the coming life is made, 
 
 And fill our Future's atmosphere 
 With sunshine or with shade. 
 
 The tissue of the Life to be 
 We weave with colors all our own, 
 
 And in the field of Destiny 
 We reap as we have sown. 
 
 Still shall the soul around it call 
 
 The shadows which it gathered here, 
 
 And, painted on the eternal wall, 
 The Past shall reappear. 
 
 Raphael. 
 
 7 
 
 Charles Dickens, 1812. 
 
 Sometimes glimpses on my sight, 
 Through present wrong, the eternal right ; 
 And, step by step, since time began, 
 I see the steady gain of man ; 
 22 
 
FEBRUARY 
 
 That all of good the past hath had 
 Remains to make our own time glad, 
 Our common daily life divine, 
 And every land a Palestine. 
 
 The Chapel of the Hermits. 
 
 Robert Burton, 1577; John Ruskin, 1819. 
 
 The airs of heaven blow o'er me ; 
 A glory shines before me 
 Of what mankind shall be, — 
 Pure, generous, brave, and free. 
 
 A dream of man and woman 
 Diviner but still human, 
 Solving the riddle old. 
 Shaping the Age of Gold ! 
 
 The love of God and neighbor ; 
 An equal-handed labor ; 
 The richer life, where beauty 
 Walks hand in hand with duty. 
 
 My Triumph, 
 
 9 
 
 James Parton, 1822. 
 
 We dwell with fears on either hand, 
 Within a daily strife, 
 23 
 
FEBRUARY 
 
 And spectral problems waiting stand 
 Before the gates of life. 
 
 The doubts we vainly seek to solve, 
 
 The truths we know, are one ; 
 The known and nameless stars revolve 
 
 Around the Central Sun. 
 
 And if we reap as we have sown. 
 
 And take the dole we deal, 
 The law of pain is love alone. 
 
 The wounding is to heal. 
 
 The Old Burying-Ground. 
 
 lO 
 
 Charles Lamb, 1775 ; Ary Scheffer, 1795. 
 
 Lo ! in the midst, with the same look he wore, 
 Healing and blessing on Gennesaret's shore, 
 Folding together, with the all-tender might 
 
 Of his great love, the dark hands and the white, 
 Stands the Consoler, soothing every pain. 
 
 Making all burdens light, and breaking every chain. 
 
 On a Prayer-Book. 
 
 II 
 
 Lydia Maria Child, 1802 ; T. A. Edison, 1847. 
 
 And, hushed to silence by a reverent awe, 
 
 Methought, O friend, I saw 
 In thy true life of word and work and thought 
 
 The proof of all we sought. 
 24 
 
FEBRUARY 
 
 Did we not witness in the life of thee 
 
 Immortal prophecy ? 
 And feel, when with thee, that thy footsteps trod 
 
 An everlasting road ? 
 
 Not for brief days thy generous sympathies, 
 
 Thy scorn of selfish ease ; 
 Not for the poor prize of an earthly goal 
 
 Thy strong uplift of soul. 
 
 Within the Gate. 
 
 12 
 
 Cotton Mather, 1663; Abraham Lincoln, 1809; Charles Robert 
 Darwin, 1809; W. W. Story, 1819; George Meredith, 1828. 
 
 That quaint Magnalia Christi, with all strange 
 
 and marvellous things. 
 Heaped up huge and undigested, like the chaos 
 
 Ovid sings. 
 
 The Garrison of Cape Ann. 
 
 The cloudy sign, the fiery guide. 
 
 Along his pathway ran, 
 And Nature, through his voice, denied 
 
 The ownership of man. 
 
 We rest in peace where these sad eyes 
 
 Saw peril, strife, and pain ; 
 His was the nation's sacrifice, 
 And ours the priceless gain. 
 
 The Emancipation Group. 
 25 
 
FEBRUARY 
 
 John Hunter, 1728. 
 
 Doubts to the world's child-heart unknown 
 Question us now from star and stone ; 
 Too little or too much we know, 
 And sight is swift and faith is slow ; 
 The power is lost to self-deceive 
 With shallow forms of make-believe. 
 We walk at high noon, and the bells 
 Call to a thousand oracles. 
 
 The Meeting. 
 Edmond About, 1828. 
 
 We share our primal parents' fate, 
 
 And, in our turn and day, 
 Look back on Eden's sworded gate 
 
 As sad and lost as they. 
 
 But still for us his native skies 
 
 The pitying Angel leaves, 
 And leads through Toil to Paradise 
 
 New Adams and new Eves ! 
 
 A Lay of Old Time. 
 S. Weir Mitchell, 1829. 
 
 Not mine to look where cherubim 
 And seraphs may not see, 
 26 
 
FEBRUARY 
 
 But nothing can be good in Him 
 Which evil is in me. 
 
 The wrong that pains my soul below 
 
 I dare not throne above, 
 I know not of His hate, — I know 
 
 His goodness and His love. 
 
 The Eternal Goodness. 
 
 i6 
 
 Philip Melanchthon, 1497; Gaspard de Coligni, 1517. 
 
 Immortal Love, forever full, 
 
 Forever flowing free, 
 Forever shared, forever whole, 
 
 A never-ebbing sea ! 
 
 Our outward lips confess the name 
 
 All other names above ; 
 Love only knoweth whence it came 
 
 And comprehendeth love. 
 
 Blow, winds of God, awake and blow 
 
 The mists of earth away ! 
 Shine out, O Light Divine, and show 
 
 How wide and far we stray ! 
 
 Our Master. 
 
 17 
 
 A MIND rejoicing in the light 
 
 Which melted through its graceful bower, 
 27 
 
FEBRUARY 
 
 Leaf after leaf, dew-moist and bright, 
 And stainless in its holy white, 
 
 Unfolding like a morning flower: 
 A heart, which, like a fine-toned lute, 
 
 With every breath of feeling woke, 
 And, even when the tongue was mute, 
 
 From eye and lip in music spoke. 
 
 Memories. 
 
 Galileo, 1564; George Peabody, 1795. 
 
 No gain is lost ; the clear-eyed saints look down 
 
 Untroubled on the wreck of schemes and creeds ; 
 
 Love yet remains, its rosary of good deeds 
 Counting in task-field and o'erpeopled town. 
 Truth has charmed life ; the Inward Word survives, 
 
 And, day by day, its revelation brings ; 
 
 Faith, hope, and charity, whatsoever things 
 Which cannot be shaken, stand. Still holy lives 
 
 Reveal the Christ of whom the letter told, 
 
 And the new gospel verifies the old. 
 
 Adjustment. 
 
 19 
 
 Copernicus, 1473. 
 
 As night drew on, and, from the crest 
 Of wooded knolls that ridged the west, 
 The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank 
 From sight beneath the smothering bank, 
 28 
 
FEBRUARY 
 
 We piled, with care, our nightly stack 
 Of wood against the chimney-back, — 
 The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, 
 And on its top the stout back-stick ; 
 The knotty forestick laid apart. 
 And filled between with curious art 
 The ragged brush ; then, hovering near. 
 We watched the first red blaze appear. 
 Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam 
 On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, 
 Until the old, rude-furnished room 
 Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom. 
 
 Snow-Bound. 
 
 20 
 David Garrick, 1716; Joseph Jefferson, 1829. 
 
 When snow-flakes o'er the frozen earth, 
 
 Instead of birds, are flitting. 
 When children throng the glowing hearth, 
 
 And quiet wives are knitting ; 
 While in the firelight strong and clear 
 
 Young eyes of pleasure glisten, 
 To tales of all we see and hear 
 
 The ears of home shall Hsten. 
 
 Thb Drovers. 
 
 21 
 
 John Henry Newman, 1801. 
 
 By inward sense, by outward signs, 
 God's presence still the heart divines ; 
 29 
 
FEBRUARY 
 
 Through deepest joy of Him we learn, 
 In sorest grief to Him we turn, 
 And reason stoops its pride to share 
 The child-hke instinct of a prayer. 
 
 Miriam. 
 
 22 
 Washington, 1732; James Russell Lowell, 1819. 
 
 Thank God ! the people's choice was just, 
 
 The one man equal to his trust, 
 Wise beyond lore, and without weakness good, 
 Calm in the strength of flawless rectitude ! 
 
 The Vow of Washington. 
 
 From purest wells of English undefiled 
 None deeper drank than he, the New World's child, 
 Who in the language of their farm-fields spoke 
 The wit and wisdom of New England folk, 
 Shaming a monstrous wrong. The world-wide 
 
 laugh 
 Provoked thereby might well have shaken half 
 The walls of Slavery down, ere yet the ball 
 And mine of battle overthrew them all. 
 
 James Russell Lowell. 
 
 23 
 
 G. F. Handel, 1685 ; Josiah Quincy, Jr., 1744. 
 
 Hast thou not, on some week of storm. 
 Seen the sweet Sabbath breaking fair, 
 
 And cloud and shadow, sunlit, form 
 The curtains of its tent of prayer ? 
 
 30 
 
FEBRUARY 
 
 So, haply, when thy task shall end. 
 The wrong shall lose itself in right. 
 
 And all thy week-day darkness blend 
 With the long Sabbath of the light ! 
 
 The Voices. 
 
 24 
 
 George William Curtis, 1824. 
 
 The jewels loosen on the branches, 
 
 And lightly, as the soft winds blow, 
 Fall, tinkling, on the ice below. 
 
 And through the clashing of their cymbals 
 I hear the old familiar fall 
 Of water down the rocky wall. 
 
 Where, from its wintry prison breaking. 
 In dark and silence hidden long, 
 The brook repeats its summer song ; 
 
 One instant flashing in the sunshine, 
 Keen as a sabre from its sheath. 
 Then lost again the ice beneath. 
 
 The Pageant. 
 
 25 
 
 And if her life small leisure found 
 For feasting ear and eye, 
 
 And Pleasure, on her daily round, 
 She passed unpausing by, 
 31 
 
FEBRUARY 
 
 Yet with her went a secret sense 
 
 Of all things sweet and fair, 
 And Beauty's gracious providence 
 
 Refreshed her unaware. 
 
 An inborn charm of graciousness 
 Made sweet her smile and tone, 
 
 And glorified her farm-wife dress 
 With beauty not its own. 
 
 Thh Friend's Burial. 
 
 26 
 
 Arago, 1786 ; Victor Hugo, 1802. 
 
 The mystery dimly understood, 
 
 That love of God is love of good, 
 
 That Book and Church and Day are given 
 
 For man, not God, — for earth, not heaven,— 
 
 The blessed means to holiest ends, 
 
 Not masters, but benignant friends. 
 
 The Meeting. 
 
 27 
 
 H. W. Longfellow, 1807; J. E. Renan, 1823. 
 
 Thy greeting smile was pledge and prelude 
 Of generous deeds and kindly words ; 
 
 In thy large heart were fair guest-chambers, 
 Open to sunrise and the birds ! 
 
 A Memorial. 
 32 
 
FEBRUARY 
 28 
 
 Montaigne, 1533. 
 
 Slow passed that vision from my view, 
 But not the lesson which it taught ; 
 
 The soft, calm shadows which it threw 
 Still rested on my thought: 
 
 The truth, that painter, bard, and sage, 
 Even in Earth's cold and changeful clime, 
 
 Plant for their deathless heritage 
 The fruits and flowers of time. 
 
 Raphael. 
 
 29 
 
 Rossini, 1792. 
 
 Bland as the morning breath of June 
 
 The southwest breezes play ; 
 And, through its haze, the winter noon 
 
 Seems warm as summer's day. 
 The snow-plumed Angel of the North 
 
 Has dropped his icy spear ; 
 Again the mossy earth looks forth, 
 
 Again the streams gush clear. 
 
 A Dream of Summer. 
 
 33 
 
THE WIND OF MARCH. 
 
 Up from the sea the wild north wind is blowing 
 
 Under the sky's gray arch ; 
 Smiling, I watch the shaken elm-boughs, knowing 
 
 It is the wind of March. 
 
 Between the passing and the coming season, 
 
 This stormy interlude 
 Gives to our winter-wearied hearts a reason 
 
 For trustful gratitude. 
 
 Welcome to waiting ears its harsh forewarning 
 
 Of light and warmth to come. 
 The longed-for joy of Nature's Easter morning, 
 
 The earth arisen in bloom ! 
 
 In the loud tumult winter's strength is breaking; 
 
 I listen to the sound, 
 As to a voice of resurrection, waking 
 
 To life the dead, cold ground. 
 
 Between these gusts, to the soft lapse I hearken 
 
 Of rivulets on their way ; 
 I see these tossed and naked treetops darken 
 
 With the fresh leaves of May. 
 34 
 
MARCH 
 
 This roar of storm, this sky so gray and lowering, 
 
 Invite the airs of Spring, 
 A warmer sunshine over fields of flowering. 
 
 The bluebird's song and wing. 
 
 Closely behind, the Gulf's warm breezes follow 
 
 This northern hurricane, 
 And, borne thereon, the bobolink and swallow 
 
 Shall visit us again. 
 
 And, in green wood-paths, in the kine-fed pasture, 
 
 And by the whispering rills. 
 Shall flowers repeat the lesson of the Master 
 
 Taught on his Syrian hills. 
 
 Blow, then, wild wind ! thy roar shall end in 
 singing, 
 Thy chill in blossoming ; 
 Come, like Bethesda's troubling angel, bringing 
 The healing of the Spring. 
 35 
 
MARCH 
 
 Frederic Chopin, 1809 ; W. D. Howells, 1837. 
 
 The Night is mother of the Day, 
 
 The Winter of the Spring, 
 And ever upon old Decay 
 
 The greenest mosses cling. 
 Behind the cloud the starlight lurks, 
 
 Through showers the sunbeams fall ; 
 For God, who loveth all His works. 
 
 Has left His hope with all ! 
 
 A Dream of Summer. 
 
 Sir Thomas Bodley, 1544. 
 
 Never on custom's oiled grooves 
 The world to a higher level moves. 
 But grates and grinds with friction hard 
 On granite boulder and flinty shard. 
 The heart must bleed before it feels. 
 The pool be troubled before it heals. 
 
 The Preacher. 
 
 Edmund Waller, 1606; William Godwin, 1756. 
 
 He prayeth best who leaves unguessed 
 The mystery of another's breast. 
 36 
 
MARCH 
 
 Why cheeks grow pale, why eyes o'erflow, 
 Or heads are white, thou need'st not know. 
 Enough to note by many a sign 
 That every heart hatli needs Hke thine. 
 Pray for its / 
 
 The Prayer-Seeker. 
 
 T. S. King, died 1864. 
 
 The great work laid upon his twoscore years 
 Is done, and well done. If we drop our tears, 
 Who loved him as few men were ever loved, 
 We mourn no blighted hope nor broken plan 
 With him whose life stands rounded and approved 
 In the full growth and stature of a man. 
 Mingle, O bells, along the Western slope, 
 W^ith your deep toll a sound of faith and hope! 
 Wave cheerily still, O banner half-way down, 
 From thousand-masted bay and steepled town ! 
 Let the strong organ with its loftiest swell 
 Lift the proud sorrow of the land, and tell 
 That the brave sower saw his ripened grain. 
 O East and West ! O morn and sunset twain 
 No more forever! — has he lived in vain 
 Who, priest of Freedom, made ye one, and told 
 Your bridal service from his lips of gold ? 
 
 Thomas Starr King. 
 
 37 
 
MARCH 
 5 
 
 James Madison, 1751. 
 
 With smoking axle hot with speed, with steeds of 
 
 fire and steam, 
 Wide-waked To-day leaves Yesterday behind him 
 
 like a dream. 
 Still, from the hurrying train of Life, fly backward 
 
 far and fast 
 The milestones of the fathers, the landmarks of the 
 
 past. 
 
 Mary Garvin. 
 
 Michelangelo, 1475; Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1S06; George du 
 JMaurier, 1S34. 
 
 I KNOW not how, in other lands. 
 
 The changing seasons come and go ; 
 What splendors fall on Syrian sands. 
 
 What purple lights on Alpine snow! 
 Nor how the pomp of sunrise waits 
 On Venice at her watery gates ; 
 A dream alone to me is Arno's vale, 
 And the Alhambra's halls are but a traveller's tale. 
 
 The Last Walk in Autumn. 
 
 7 
 
 Sir John Herschel, 1792; Sir Edwin Landseer, 1802. 
 
 Enough for me to feel and know 
 That He in whom the cause and end. 
 
MARCH 
 
 The past and future, meet and blend, — 
 Who, girt with his Immensities, 
 Our vast and star-hung system sees, 
 Small as the clustered Pleiades, — 
 Moves not alone the heavenly quires. 
 But waves the spring-time's grassy spires. 
 Guards not archangel feet alone, 
 But deigns to guide and keep my own ; 
 Speaks not alone the words of fate 
 Which worlds destroy and worlds create, 
 But whispers in my spirit's ear. 
 In tones of love, or warning fear, 
 A language none beside may hear. 
 
 Questions of Life. 
 
 Sir William Hamilton, 1788. 
 
 So welcome I from every source 
 The tokens of that primal Force, 
 Older than heaven itself, yet new 
 As the young heart it reaches to, 
 Beneath whose steady impulse rolls 
 The tidal wave of human souls ; 
 Guide, comforter, and inward word. 
 The eternal spirit of the Lord ! 
 
 Miriam. 
 
 9 
 
 Mirabeau, 1749; William Cobbett, 1762. 
 
 The wild March rains had fallen fast and long 
 The snowy mountains of the North among, 
 39 
 
MARCH 
 
 Making each vale a watercourse, — each hill 
 Bright with the cascade of some new-made rill. 
 
 Gnawed by the sunbeams, softened by the rain. 
 Heaved underneath by the swollen current's strain, 
 The ice-bridge yielded, and the Merrimack 
 Bore the huge ruin crashing down its track. 
 
 The Bridal of Pennacook. 
 
 10 
 
 F, von Schlegel, 1772 ; William Etty, 1787. 
 
 Falsehoods which we spurn to-day 
 Were the truths of long ago ; 
 
 Let the dead boughs fall away, 
 Fresher shall the living grow. 
 
 Calef in Boston. 
 
 II 
 
 ' Charles Sumner, died 1874. 
 
 The old traditions of his State, 
 
 The memories of her great and good. 
 
 Took from his life a fresher date. 
 And in himself embodied stood. 
 
 Safely his dearest friends may own 
 The slight defects he never hid, 
 
 The surface-blemish in the stone 
 Of the tall, stately pyramid. 
 40 
 
MARCH 
 
 Suffice it that he never brought 
 His conscience to the public mart ; 
 
 But Hved himself the truth he taught, 
 
 White-souled, clean-handed, pure of heart. 
 
 Sumner. 
 
 12 
 
 Richard Steele, 1672 ; Bishop Berkeley, 1684; Mary Howitt, 1799. 
 
 Three shades at this moment seem walking her 
 
 strand, 
 Each with head halo-crowned, and with palms in 
 
 his hand, — 
 Wise Berkeley, grave Hopkins, and, smihng 
 
 serene 
 On prelate and puritan, Channing is seen. 
 
 One holy name bearing, no longer they need 
 Credentials of party, and passwords of creed : 
 The new song they sing hath a threefold accord. 
 And they own one baptism, one faith, and one 
 Lord! 
 
 The Quaker Alumni. 
 
 13 
 
 Joseph Priestley, 1733. 
 
 The wind-harp chooses not the tone 
 That through its trembling threads is blown ; 
 The patient organ cannot guess 
 What hand its passive keys shall press. 
 41 
 
MARCH 
 
 Through wish, resolve, and act, our will 
 Is moved by undreamed forces still ; 
 And no man measures in advance 
 His strength with untried circumstance. 
 
 Overruled. 
 
 14 
 
 Victor Emanuel, 1820; Humbert, 1844. 
 
 As yonder tower outstretches to the earth 
 The dark triangle of its shade alone 
 When the clear day is shining on its top, 
 So, darkness in the pathway of Man's life 
 Is but the shadow of God's providence, 
 By the great Sun of Wisdom cast thereon ; 
 And what is dark below is light in Heaven. 
 
 Tauler. 
 
 15 
 
 John Endicott, died 1665 ; Andrew Jackson, 1767. 
 
 A GRAVE, strong man, who knew no peer 
 In the pilgrim land, where he ruled in fear 
 Of God, not man, and for good or ill 
 Held his trust with an iron will. 
 
 The King's Missive. 
 
 16 
 
 Caroline Herschel, 1750. 
 
 For ages on our river borders, 
 
 These tassels in their tawny bloom, 
 42 
 
MARCH 
 
 And willowy studs of downy silver, 
 Have prophesied of Spring to come. 
 
 For ages have the unbound waters 
 
 Smiled on them from their pebbly hem, 
 
 And the clear carol of the robin 
 
 And song of bluebird welcomed them. 
 
 The First Flowers. 
 
 17 
 
 Madame Roland, 1754. 
 
 I AM: how little more I know! 
 Whence came I ? Whither do I go .? 
 A centred self, which feels and is ; 
 A cry between the silences ; 
 A shadow-birth of clouds at strife 
 With sunshine on the hills of life ; 
 A shaft from Nature's quiver cast 
 Into the Future from the Past; 
 Between the cradle and the shroud, 
 A meteor's flight from cloud to cloud. 
 
 Questions of Lj.fe. 
 
 18 
 
 Francis Lieber, 1800. 
 
 Heed how thou livest. Do no act by day 
 Which from the night shall drive thy peace away. 
 In months of sun so live that months of rain 
 Shall still be happy. Evermore restrain 
 43 
 
MARCH 
 
 Evil and cherish good, so shall there be 
 Another and a happier life for thee. 
 
 Conduct. 
 
 19 
 
 A. P. Peabody, 181 1 ; David Livingstone, 1813. 
 
 No fable old, nor mythic lore, 
 Nor dream of bards and seers, 
 
 No dead fact stranded on the shore 
 Of the oblivious years ; — 
 
 But warm, sweet, tender, even yet 
 
 A present help is He ; 
 And faith has still its Olivet, 
 
 And love is Galilee. 
 
 Our Master. 
 
 20 
 
 Henrik Ibsen, 1828; Charles William Eliot, 1834. 
 
 Fresh and green from the rotting roots 
 Of primal forests the young growth shoots ; . . 
 On the ladder of God, which upward leads. 
 The step of progress are human needs. 
 For his judgments still are a mighty deep, 
 And the eyes of his providence never sleep. 
 
 The Preacher. 
 
 44 
 
MARCH 
 
 21 
 
 J. S. Bach, 1685; Jean Paul Richter, 1763. 
 
 The sweet persuasion of His voice 
 
 Respects thy sanctity of will. 
 He giveth day : thou hast thy choice 
 
 To walk in darkness still ; 
 
 As one who, turning from the light, 
 Watches his own gray shadow fall, 
 
 Doubting, upon his path of night, 
 If there be day at all ! 
 
 No word of doom may shut thee out, 
 No wind of wrath may downward whirl, 
 
 No swords of fire keep watch about 
 The open gates of pearl. 
 
 The Answer, 
 
 22 
 
 Van Dyck, 1599; Rosa Bonheur, 1822; Randolph Caldecott, 1846. 
 
 The Traveller said : "If songs have creeds. 
 
 Their choice of them let singers make ; 
 But Art no other sanction needs 
 
 Than beauty for its own fair sake. 
 It grinds not in the mill of use, 
 Nor asks for leave, nor begs excuse; 
 It makes the flexile laws it deigns to own, 
 And gives its atmosphere its color and its tone." 
 
 The Tent on the Beach. 
 
 45 
 
MARCH 
 23 
 
 p. L. de Laplace, 1749. 
 
 Above, below, in sky and sod, 
 In leaf and spar, in star and man, 
 Well might the wise Athenian scan 
 
 The geometric signs of God, 
 
 The measured order of His plan. 
 
 And India's mystics sang aright 
 Of the One Life pervading all, — 
 One Being's tidal rise and fall 
 
 In soul and form, in sound and sight, — 
 Eternal outjfiow and recall. 
 
 The Over-Heart. 
 
 24 
 
 Joel Barlow, 1755 ; William Morris, 1S34. 
 
 Still, in perpetual judgment, 
 
 I hold assize within, 
 With sure reward of holiness, 
 
 And dread rebuke of sin. 
 
 A light, a guide, a warning, 
 
 A presence ever near, 
 Through the deep silence of the flesh 
 
 I reach the inward ear. 
 
 My Gerizim and Ebal 
 Are in each human soul, 
 46 
 
MARCH 
 
 The still, small voice of blessing, 
 And Sinai's thunder-roll. 
 
 The Vision of Echard. 
 
 25 
 
 Antonio Rosmini, 1797. 
 
 It is not ours to separate 
 
 The tangled skein of will and fate, 
 
 To show what metes and bounds should stand 
 
 Upon the soul's debatable land, 
 
 And between choice and Providence 
 
 Divide the circle of events ; 
 
 But He who knows our frame is just, 
 Merciful and compassionate. 
 And full of sweet assurances 
 And hope for all the language is. 
 
 That He remembereth we are dust ! 
 
 Snow- Bound, 
 
 26 
 
 Count Rumford, 1753 ; Nathaniel Bowditch, 1773. 
 
 Nor fear I aught that science brings 
 From searching through material things ; 
 Content to let its glasses prove. 
 Not by the letter's oldness move, 
 The myriad worlds on worlds that course 
 The spaces of the universe ; 
 Since everywhere the Spirit walks 
 The garden of the heart, and talks 
 With man, as under Eden's trees. 
 In all his varied languages. 
 
 Miriam. 
 
 47 
 
MARCH 
 
 27 
 
 Ah, well ! — The world is discreet ; 
 
 There are plenty to pause and wait ; 
 But here was a man who set his feet 
 
 Sometimes in advance of fate, — 
 
 Plucked off tlie old bark when the inner 
 
 Was slow to renew it, 
 And put to the Lord's work the sinner 
 
 When saints failed to do it. 
 
 To G. L. S. 
 
 28 
 
 Samuel Sewall, 1652 ; Thomas Clarkson, 1760. 
 
 Stately and slow, with thoughtful air, 
 His black cap hiding his whitened hair, 
 Walks the Judge of the great Assize, 
 Samuel Sewall the good and wise. 
 His face with lines of firmness wrought, 
 He wears the look of a man unbought, 
 Who swears to his hurt and changes not ; 
 Yet touched and softened, nevertheless, 
 With the grace of Christian gentleness, . 
 True and tender and brave and just, 
 That man might honor and woman trust. 
 
 Green forever the memory be 
 Of the Judge of the old Theocracy, 
 48 
 
MARCH 
 
 Whom even his errors glorified, 
 
 Like a far-seen, sunht mountain-side 
 
 By the cloudy shadows which o'er it glide ! 
 
 The Prophecy of Samuel Sevvall. 
 
 29 
 
 Over the roofs of the pioneers 
 
 Gathers the moss of a hundred years ; 
 
 On man and his works has passed the change 
 
 Which needs must be in a century's range. 
 
 The land lies open and warm in the sun, 
 
 Anvils clamor and mill-wheels run, — 
 
 Flocks on the hillsides, herds on the plain, 
 
 The wilderness gladdened with fruit and grain ! 
 
 But the living faith of the settlers old 
 
 A dead profession their children hold ; . . . 
 
 And earth, which seemed to the fathers meant 
 
 But as a pilgrim's wayside tent, — 
 
 A nightly shelter to fold away 
 
 When the Lord should call at the break of day, - 
 
 Solid and steadfast seems to be, 
 
 And Time has forgotten Eternity ! 
 
 The Preacher. 
 
 30 
 
 F. A. G. Tholuck, 1799; John Fiske, 1842. 
 
 Nothing fails of its end. Out of sight sinks the 
 
 stone 
 In the deep sea of time, but the circles sweep on, 
 49 
 
MARCH 
 
 Till the low-rippled murmurs along the shores run, 
 And the dark and dead waters leap glad in the sun. 
 
 The Quaker Alumni. 
 
 31 
 
 Andrew Marvell, 1621 ; Joseph Haydn, 1732 ; Edward Fitzgerald, 
 1809. 
 
 Yet here at least an earnest sense 
 Of human right and weal is shown ; 
 
 A hate of tyranny intense, 
 
 And hearty in its vehemence, 
 As if my brother's pain and sorrow were my own. 
 
 O Freedom ! if to me belong 
 Nor mighty Milton's gift divine, 
 
 Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song, 
 
 Still with a love as deep and strong 
 As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy 
 
 shrine ! 
 
 Proem. 
 50 
 
%m\ 
 
 **The spring comes slowly up this way." 
 
 Christabel. 
 
 'T IS the noon of the springtime, yet never a bird 
 In the wind-shaken elm or the maple is heard; 
 For green meadow-grasses wide levels of snow, 
 And blowing of drifts where the crocus should 
 
 blow; 
 Where wind-flower and violet, amber and white, 
 On south-sloping brooksides should smile in the 
 
 light. 
 O'er the cold winter-beds of their late-waking roots 
 The frosty flake eddies, the ice-crystal shoots ; 
 And, longing for light, under wind-driven heaps. 
 Round the boles of the pine-wood the ground-laurel 
 
 creeps, 
 Unkissed of the sunshine, unbaptized of showers. 
 With buds scarcely swelled, which should burst 
 
 into flowers ! 
 We wait for thy coming, sweet wind of the south ! 
 For the touch of thy light wings, the kiss of thy 
 
 mouth ; 
 For the yearly evangel thou bearest from God, 
 Resurrection and life to the graves of the sod ! 
 51 
 
APRIL 
 I 
 
 Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, 1786 ; Bismarck, 1815. 
 
 Thanks, Mary ! for this wild-wood token 
 Of Freya's footsteps drawing near ; 
 
 Almost, as in the rune of Asgard, 
 The growing of the grass I hear. 
 
 It is as if the pine-trees called me 
 From ceiled room and silent books, 
 
 To see the dance of woodland shadows, 
 And hear the song of April brooks ! 
 
 The First Flowers. 
 
 H. C. Andersen. 1805. 
 
 O Thou, who in the garden's shade 
 Didst wake Thy weary ones again, 
 
 Who slumbered at that fearful hour 
 Forgetful of Thy pain. 
 
 Bend o'er us now, as over them. 
 
 And set our sleep-bound spirits free ; 
 
 Nor leave us slumbering in the watch 
 Our souls should keep with Thee ! 
 
 The Cypress-Tree of Ceylon. 
 52 
 
APRIL 
 3 
 
 George Herbert, 1593; Washington Irving, 1783. 
 
 We faintly hear, we dimly see, 
 
 In differing phrase we pray; 
 But, dim or clear, we own in Thee 
 
 The Light, the Truth, the Way ! 
 
 No pride of self Thy service hath, 
 
 No place for me and mine ; 
 Our human strength is weakness, death 
 
 Our life, apart from Thine. 
 
 Apart from Thee all gain is loss, 
 
 All labor vainly done ; 
 The solemn shadow of Thy Cross 
 
 Is better than the sun. 
 
 Our Master. 
 
 Benjamin Peirce, 1809; James Freeman Clarke, 18 10. 
 
 Alas for him who never sees 
 The stars shine through his cypress-trees ! 
 Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 
 Nor looks to see the breaking day 
 Aross the mournful marbles play ! 
 Who hath not learned, in hours of faith. 
 
 The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
 That Life is ever lord of Death, 
 
 And Love can never lose its own ! 
 
 Snow-Bouptd. 
 
 53 
 
APRIL 
 
 F. R. Stockton, 1834; A. C. Swinburne, 1837. 
 
 O SOUL of the springtime, its light and its breath, 
 Bring warmth to this coldness, bring life to this 
 
 death ; 
 Renew the great miracle ; let us behold 
 The stone from the mouth of the sepulchre rolled. 
 Let our faith, which in darkness and coldness has 
 
 lain, 
 Revive with the warmth and the brightness again, 
 And in blooming of flower and budding of tree 
 The symbols and types of our destiny see. 
 
 April. 
 
 6 
 
 Raphael, 1483, and died 1520. 
 
 Around the mighty master came 
 
 The marvels which his pencil wrought, 
 
 Those miracles of power whose fame 
 Is wide as human thought. 
 
 There drooped thy more than mortal face, 
 
 O Mother, beautiful and mild ! 
 Enfolding in one dear embrace 
 
 Thy Saviour and thy Child ! 
 
 The rapt brow of the Desert John; 
 
 The awful glory of that day 
 When all the Father's brightness shone 
 
 Through manhood's veil of clay. 
 
 Raphael. 
 
 54 
 
APRIL 
 
 7 
 
 William Wordsworth, 1770; W. E. Channing, 1780. 
 
 The violet by its mossy stone, 
 The primrose by the river's brim, 
 
 And chance-sown daffodil, have found 
 Immortal life through him. 
 
 The sunrise on his breezy lake, 
 The rosy tints his sunset brought, 
 
 World-seen, are gladdening all the vales 
 And mountain-peaks of thought. 
 
 Art builds on sand ; the works of pride 
 And human passion change and fall ; 
 
 But that which shares the life of God 
 With Him surviveth all. 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 David Rittenhouse, 1732. 
 
 A CHARMED life unknown to death. 
 Immortal freshness Nature hath ; 
 
 Her fabled fount and glen 
 Are now and here : Dodona's shrine 
 Still murmurs in the wind-swept pine. 
 All is that e'er hath been. 
 
 To- 
 ss 
 
APRIL 
 9 
 
 Fisher Ames, 1758. 
 
 I WANDERED lonely where the pine-trees made 
 Against the bitter East their barricade, 
 
 And, guided by its sweet 
 Perfume, I found, within a narrow dell, 
 The trailing spring flower tinted like a shell 
 
 Amid dry leaves and mosses at my feet. 
 
 From under dead boughs, for whose loss the pines 
 Moaned ceaseless overhead, the blossoming vines 
 
 Lifted their glad surprise. 
 While yet the bluebird smoothed in leafless trees 
 His feathers ruffled by the chill sea-breeze, 
 
 And snowdrifts lingered under April skies. 
 
 The Trailing Arbutus. 
 
 10 
 
 C. F. S. Hahnemann, 1755. 
 
 God pity them both ! and pity us all, 
 Who vainly the dreams of youth recall. 
 
 For, of all sad words of tongue or pen, 
 
 The saddest are these : "It might have been ! " 
 
 Ah, well ! for us all some sweet hope lies 
 Deeply buried from human eyes ; 
 
 And, in the hereafter, angels may 
 Roll the stone from its grave away ! 
 
 Maud Muller. 
 56 
 
APRIL 
 II 
 
 George Canning, 1770; Edward Everett, 1794. 
 
 We have seen, in these years of trial, very great 
 sacrifices offered upon the altar of patriotism, — 
 wealth, ease, home-love, life itself. But Edward 
 Everett did more than this : he laid on that altar 
 not only his time, talents, and culture, but his pride 
 of opinion, his long-cherished views of policy, his 
 personal and political predilections, and his con- 
 stitutional fastidiousness of conservatism. With 
 a rare and noble magnanimity, he met, without 
 hesitation, the demand of the great occasion. All 
 honor to him ! 
 
 Edward Everett. 
 
 12 
 
 Henry Clay, 1777. 
 
 Man, who walketh in a show, 
 Sees before him, to and fro. 
 Shadow and illusion go; 
 All things flow and fluctuate, 
 Now contract and now dilate ; 
 In the welter of this sea, 
 Nothing stable is but Thee ! 
 
 Andrew Rykman's Prayer. 
 
 SI 
 
APRIL 
 13 
 
 Madame Guyon, 1648, 
 
 Not with hatred's undertow 
 Doth the Love Eternal flow ; 
 Every chain that spirits wear 
 Crumbles in the breath of prayer ; 
 And the penitent's desire 
 Opens every gate of fire. 
 
 Still Thy love, O Christ arisen, 
 Yearns to reach these souls in prison ! 
 Through all depths of sin and loss 
 Drops the plummet of Thy cross ! 
 Never yet abyss was found 
 Deeper than that cross could sound ! 
 
 The Grave by the Lake. 
 
 14 
 
 Horace Bushnell, 1802. 
 
 And all about the softening air 
 Of new-born sweetness tells ; 
 
 And the ungathered Mayflowers wear 
 The tints of ocean shells. 
 
 The old, assuring miracle 
 
 Is fresh as heretofore; 
 And earth takes up its parable 
 
 Of life from death once more. 
 
 The Friend's Burial. 
 58 
 
APRIL 
 
 L. A. Thiers, 1797; J. L. Motley, 1S14; Henry James, 1843. 
 
 Death called him from a need as imminent 
 As that from which the Silent William went 
 When powers of evil, like the smiting seas 
 On Holland's dikes, assailed her Hberties. 
 Sadly, while yet in doubtful balance hung 
 The weal and woe of France, the bells were rung 
 For her lost leader. Paralyzed of will. 
 Above his bier the hearts of men stood still. 
 Then, as if set to his dead hps, the horn 
 Of Roland wound once more to rouse and warn. 
 The old voice filled the air ! His last brave word 
 Not vainly France to all her boundaries stirred. 
 Strong as in life, he still for Freedom wrought, 
 As the dead Cid at red Toloso fought. 
 
 Thiers. 
 
 16 
 
 Sir John Franklin, 17S6; William Chambers, 1800. 
 
 Sad it is the mournful yew-tree 
 O'er his slumbers may not wave ; 
 
 Sad it is the English daisy 
 
 May not blossom on his grave. 
 
 But his tomb shall storm and winter 
 Shape and fashion year by year, 
 
 Pile his mighty mausoleum, 
 
 Block by block, and tier on tier. 
 
 Lady Franklin. 
 
 59 
 
APRIL 
 17 
 
 William Gilmore Simms, 1806. 
 
 Light, warmth, and sprouting greenness, and o'er 
 all 
 Blue, stainless, steel-bright ether, raining down 
 Tranquillity upon the deep-hushed town, 
 The freshening meadows, and the hillsides 
 brown ; 
 Voice of the west-wind from the hills of 
 pine, 
 And the brimmed river from its distant fall, 
 Low hum of bees, and joyous interlude 
 Of bird-songs in the streamlet-skirting wood, — 
 Heralds and prophecies of sound and sight, . . . 
 Once more, through God's great love, with you I 
 
 share 
 A morn of resurrection sweet and fair 
 
 As that which saw, of old, in Palestine, 
 Immortal Love uprising in fresh bloom 
 From the dark night and winter of the tomb ! 
 
 Pictures. 
 
 18 
 
 I MOURN no more my vanished years : 
 
 Beneath a tender rain, 
 An April rain of smiles and tears. 
 
 My heart is young again. 
 60 
 
APRIL 
 
 The west-winds blow, and, singing low, 
 I hear the glad streams run ; 
 
 The windows of my soul I throw 
 Wide open to the sun. 
 
 My Psalm. 
 
 19 
 
 Lexington and Concord, 1775. 
 
 They went where duty seemed to call, 
 They scarcely asked the reason why ; 
 They only knew they could but die, 
 
 And death was not the worst of all ! 
 
 Of man for man the sacrifice, 
 All that was theirs to give, they gave. 
 The flowers that blossomed from their grave 
 
 Have sown themselves beneath all skies. 
 
 Their death-shot shook the feudal tower, 
 And shattered slavery's chain as well ; 
 On the sky's dome, as on a bell, 
 
 Its echo struck the world's great hour. 
 
 Lexington. 
 
 20 
 
 W. H. Furness, 1802. 
 
 No offering of my own I have. 
 Nor works my faith to prove ; 
 6i 
 
APRIL 
 
 I can but give the gifts He gave. 
 And plead His love for love. 
 
 And so beside the Silent Sea 
 
 I wait the muffled oar ; 
 Nor harm from Him can come to me 
 
 On ocean or on shore. 
 
 I know not where His islands lift 
 
 Their fronded palms in air ; 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 
 Beyond His love and care. 
 
 The Eternal Goodness. 
 
 21 
 
 Reginald Heber, 1783; James Martineau, 1805 ; Charlotte Bronte, 
 1816 ; H. A. Taine, 1828. 
 
 Give human nature reverence for the sake 
 Of One who bore it, making it divine 
 With the ineffable tenderness of God ! 
 Let common need, the brotherhood of prayer, 
 The heirship of an unknown destiny, 
 The unsolved mystery round about us, make 
 A man more precious than the Gold of Ophir ! 
 
 Among the Hills. 
 
 22 
 Henry Fielding, 1707 ; Madame de Stael, 1766. 
 
 The stream is brightest at its spring. 
 And blood is not like wine : 
 62 
 
APRIL 
 
 Nor honored less than he who heirs 
 Is he who founds a line. 
 
 Full lightly shall the prize be won, 
 
 If Love be Fortune's spur ; 
 And never maiden stoops to him 
 
 Who lifts himself to her. 
 
 Oh, rank is good, and gold is fair, 
 
 And high and low mate ill ; 
 But love has never known a law 
 
 Beyond its own sweet will ! 
 
 Amy Wentworth. 
 
 23 
 
 St. George ; Shakespeare, 1564, and died i6i6. 
 
 And here, to-day, the dead look down. 
 The kings of mind again we crown ; 
 We hear the voices lost so long-, 
 The sage's word, the sibyl's song. 
 
 Here Greek and Roman find themselves 
 Alive along these crowded shelves ; 
 And Shakespeare treads again his stage, 
 And Chaucer paints anew his age. 
 
 As if some Pantheon's marbles broke 
 Their stony trance, and lived and spoke. 
 Life thrills along the alcoved hall, 
 The lords of thought await our call ! 
 
 The Library. 
 63 
 
APRIL 
 
 24 
 
 Anthony Trollope, 1815 ; J. T. Fields, died 1881. 
 
 Keep for us, O friend, where'er 
 Thou art waiting, all that here 
 Made thy earthly presence dear ; 
 
 Something of thy pleasant past 
 On a ground of wonder cast, 
 In the stiller waters glassed! 
 
 Keep the human heart of thee ; 
 Let the mortal only be 
 Clothed in immortality. 
 
 And when fall our feet as fell 
 
 Thine upon the asphodel, 
 
 Let thy old smile greet us well ; 
 
 Proving in a world of bliss 
 What we fondly dream in this, — 
 Love is one with holiness ! 
 
 In Memory. 
 
 25 
 
 Oliver Cromwell, 1599 ; John Keble, 1792. 
 
 Not untrue that tale of old ! 
 Now, as then, the wise and bold 
 All the powers of Nature hold 
 Subject to their kingly will ; 
 64 
 
APRIL 
 
 From the wondering crowds ashore, 
 Treading life's wild waters o'er, 
 As upon a marble floor, 
 Moves the strong man still. 
 
 The Bridal of Pennacook. 
 
 26 
 David Hume, 171 1 ; Uhland, 17S7; Alice Carj', 1820. 
 
 Her dark, dilating eyes expressed 
 
 The broad horizons of the west ; 
 
 Her speech dropped prairie flowers ; the gold 
 
 Of harvest wheat about her rolled. 
 
 Again the blackbirds sing ; the streams 
 Wake, laughing, from their winter dreams, 
 And tremble in the April showers 
 The tassels of the maple flowers. 
 
 But not for her has spring renewed 
 
 The sweet surprises of the wood ; 
 
 And bird and flower are lost to her 
 
 Who was their best interpreter ! 
 
 The Singer, 
 
 27 
 S. F. B. Morse, 1791 ; Louis Kossuth, 1806; Herbert Spencer, 1820. 
 
 Type of two mighty continents ! — combining 
 The strength of Europe with the warmth and 
 glow 
 
 65 
 
APRIL 
 
 Of Asian song and prophecy, — the shining 
 Of Orient splendors over Northern snowl 
 
 To Kossuth. 
 
 From clime to clime, from shore to shore, 
 
 Shall thrill the magic thread ; 
 The new Prometheus steals once more 
 
 The fire that wakes the dead. 
 
 The Cable Hymn. 
 
 28 
 
 Earl of Shaftesbury, i8or. 
 
 There are, who, like the Seer of old, 
 Can see the helpers God has sent. 
 
 And how hfe's rugged mountain-side 
 Is white with many an angel tent! 
 
 They hear the heralds whom our Lord 
 Sends down his pathway to prepare ; 
 
 And light, from others hidden, shines 
 On their high place of faith and prayer. 
 
 Let such, for earth's despairing ones. 
 Hopeless, yet longing to be free. 
 
 Breathe once again the Prophet's prayer : 
 " Lord, ope their eyes, that they may see ! " 
 
 The Legend of St. Mark. 
 
 66 
 
APRIL 
 29 
 
 Oliver Ellsworth, 1745. 
 
 Somewhat of goodness, something true 
 From sun and spirit shining through 
 All faiths, all worlds, as through the dark 
 Of ocean shines the lighthouse spark, 
 Attests the presence everywhere 
 Of love and providential care. 
 
 Miriam. 
 
 30 
 
 First Inauguration of Washington, 1789. 
 
 O City sitting by the Sea ! 
 
 How proud the day that dawned on thee, 
 When the new era. long desired, began. 
 And, in its need, the hour had found the man ! 
 
 How felt the land in every part 
 The strong throb of a nation's heart, 
 As its great leader gave, with reverent awe, 
 His pledge to Union, Liberty, and Law! 
 
 Lo ! where with patient toil he nursed 
 And trained the new-set plant at first, 
 The widening branches of a stately tree 
 Stretch from the sunrise to the sunset sea. 
 ^1 
 
APRIL 
 
 One people now, all doubt beyond, 
 His name shall be our Union-bond; 
 We lift our hands to Heaven, and here and now 
 Take on our lips the old Centennial vow. 
 
 The Vow of Washington. 
 
 68 
 
MY PLAYMATE 
 
 The pines were dark on Ramoth hill, 
 Their song was soft and low ; 
 
 The blossoms in the sweet May wind 
 Were falling like the snow. 
 
 The blossoms drifted at our feet, 
 The orchard birds sang clear ; 
 
 The sweetest and the saddest day 
 It seemed of all the year. 
 
 For, more to me than birds or flowers, 
 
 My playmate left her home, 
 And took with her the laughing spring, 
 
 The music and the bloom. 
 
 She kissed the lips of kith and kin. 
 
 She laid her hand in mine ; 
 What more could ask the bashful boy 
 
 Who fed her father's kine ? 
 
 She left us in the bloom of May: 
 The constant years told o'er 
 
 Their seasons with as sweet May morns, 
 But she came back no more. 
 
 69 
 
MAY 
 
 The wild grapes wait us by the brook, 
 
 The brown nuts on the hill, 
 And still the May-day flowers make sweet 
 
 The woods of Follymill. 
 
 The lilies blossom in the pond, 
 
 The bird builds in the tree, 
 The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill 
 
 The slow song of the sea. 
 
 O playmate in the golden time ! 
 
 Our mossy seat is green, 
 Its fringing violets blossom yet, 
 
 The old trees o'er it lean. 
 
 The winds so sweet with birch and fern 
 
 A sweeter memory blow ; 
 And there in spring the veeries sing 
 
 The song of long ago. 
 
 And still the pines of Ramoth wood 
 
 Are moaning like the sea, — 
 The moaning of the sea of change 
 
 Between myself and thee ! 
 70 
 
MAY 
 
 I 
 
 Joseph Addison, 1672 ; Wellington, 1769. 
 
 Nature's mighty miracle is still over and around 
 us ; and hence awe, wonder, and reverence remain 
 to be the inheritance of humanity. 
 
 The Agency of Evil. 
 
 The vales shall laugh in flowers, the woods 
 Grow misty green with leafing buds. 
 And violets and wind-flowers sway, 
 Against the throbbing heart of May. 
 
 The Clear Vision. 
 
 2 
 J. G. Palfrey, 1796. 
 
 The seasons went 
 Their rounds, and somewhat to his spirit lent 
 Of their own calm and measureless content. 
 
 Glad even to tears, he heard the robin sing 
 His song of welcome to the Western spring, 
 And bluebird borrowing from the sky his wing. 
 
 The Pennsylvania Pilgrim. 
 
 3 
 
 Nicol6 Macchiavelli, 1469. 
 
 The harp at Nature's advent strung 
 Has never ceased to play; 
 71 
 
MAY 
 
 The song the stars of morning sung 
 Has never died away. 
 
 The green earth sends her incense up 
 
 From many a mountain shrine ; 
 From folded leaf and dewy cup 
 
 She pours her sacred wine. 
 
 The blue sky is the temple's arch, 
 
 Its transept earth and air, 
 The music of its starry march 
 
 The chorus of a prayer. 
 
 So Nature keeps the reverent frame 
 
 With which her years began. 
 And all her signs and voices shame 
 
 The prayerless heart of man. 
 
 The Worship of Nature. 
 
 4 
 
 J. J. Audubon, 1780; W. H. Prescott, 1796; T. H. Huxley, 1825. 
 
 I DIMLY guess from blessings known 
 
 Of greater out of sight. 
 And, with the chastened Psalmist, own 
 
 His judgments too are right. 
 
 I know not what the future hath 
 
 Of marvel or surprise, 
 Assured alone that life and death 
 
 His mercy underlies. 
 
 The Eternal Goodness. 
 72 
 
MAY 
 
 5 
 
 Empress Eugenie, 1826. 
 
 Let me find in Thy employ- 
 Peace that clearer is than joy ; 
 Out of self to love be led 
 And to heaven acclimated, 
 Until all things sweet and good 
 Seem my natural habitude ! 
 
 Andrew Rykman's Prayer. 
 
 His light shines on me from above, 
 His low voice speaks within, — 
 
 The patience of immortal love 
 Outwearying mortal sin. 
 
 Not mindless of the growing years 
 
 Of care and loss and pain. 
 My eyes are wet with thankful tears 
 
 For blessings which remain. 
 
 If dim the gold of life has grown, 
 
 I will not count it dross, 
 Nor turn from treasures still my own 
 
 To sigh for lack and loss. 
 
 My Birthday. 
 
 73 
 
MAY 
 7 
 
 Robert Browning, 1812; Johannes Brahms, 1833. 
 
 Not by the page word-painted 
 Let life be banned or sainted : 
 Deeper than written scroll 
 The colors of the soul. 
 
 Sweeter than any sung 
 
 My songs that found no tongue ; 
 
 Nobler than any fact 
 
 My wish that failed of act. 
 
 My Triumph. 
 
 8 
 
 O Golden Age, whose light is of the dawn, 
 
 And not of sunset, forward, not behind. 
 
 Flood the new heavens and earth, and with thee 
 
 bring 
 All the old virtues, whatsoever things 
 Are pure and honest and of good repute. 
 But add thereto whatever bard has sung 
 Or seer has told of when in trance and dream 
 They saw the Happy Isles of prophecy ! 
 Let Justice hold her scale, and Truth divide 
 Between the right and wrong ; but give the heart 
 The freedom of its fair inheritance. 
 
 Prelude to Among the Hills. 
 
 74 
 
MAY 
 9 
 
 John Brown, 1800. 
 
 Perish with him the folly that seeks through evil 
 good! 
 
 Long live the generous purpose unstained with hu- 
 man blood ! 
 
 Not the raid of midnight terror, but the thought 
 which underlies ; 
 
 Not the borderer's pride of daring, but the Chris- 
 tian's sacrifice. 
 
 Brown of Ossawatomie. 
 
 Jared Sparks, 1789. 
 
 Why idly seek from outward things, 
 
 The answer inward silence brings ? 
 
 Why stretch beyond our proper sphere 
 
 And age, for that which Hes so near? 
 
 Why climb the far-off hills with pain, 
 
 A nearer view of heaven to gain ? 
 
 In lowliest depths of bosky dells 
 
 The hermit Contemplation dwells. 
 
 A fountain's pine-hung slope his seat. 
 
 And lotus-twined his silent feet, 
 
 Whence, piercing heaven, with screened sight, 
 
 He sees at noon the stars, whose light 
 
 Shall glorify the coming night. 
 
 Questions of Life, 
 
 75 
 
MAY 
 II 
 
 J. L. Gerome, 1824. 
 
 However full, with something more 
 We fain the bag would cram ; 
 
 We sigh above our crowded nets 
 For fish that never swam. 
 
 No bounty of indulgent Heaven 
 
 The vague desire can stay ; 
 Self-love is still a Tartar mill 
 
 For grinding prayers alway. 
 
 The Common Question. 
 
 12 
 
 Justus von Liebig, 1803 ; D. G. Rossetti, 1828. 
 
 No perfect whole can our nature make ; 
 Here or there the circle will break ; 
 The orb of life as it takes the light 
 On one side, leaves the other in night. 
 Never was saint so good and great 
 As to give no chance at St. Peter's gate 
 For the plea of the Devil's advocate. 
 
 The Preachi 
 Alphonse Daudet, 1S40 ; Arthur Sullivan, 1842. 
 
 We gird us bravely to rebuke 
 
 Our erring brother in. the wrong, — 
 76 
 
MAY 
 
 And in the ear of Pride and Power 
 Our warning voice is strong. 
 
 Easier to smite with Peter's sword 
 
 Than "watch one hour " in humbling prayer. 
 Life's " great things," Hke the Syrian lord, 
 
 Our hearts can do and dare. 
 
 The Cypress-Tree of Ceylon, 
 
 14 
 
 Dante, 1265. 
 
 The song whose thunderous chime 
 Eternal echoes render, — 
 The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme, 
 And Milton's starry splendor ! 
 
 Burns. 
 
 Thou hast midst Life's empty noises 
 Heard the solemn steps of Time, 
 
 And the low mysterious voices 
 Of another chme. 
 
 All the mystery of Being 
 
 Hath upon thy spirit pressed, — 
 
 Thoughts which, like the Deluge wanderer, 
 Find no place of rest. 
 
 To — 
 
MAY 
 
 M. W. Balfe, 1808; Montalembert, 1810. 
 
 Sweet in the fresh green meadows 
 Sparrow and blackbird sung; 
 
 Above him their tinted petals 
 The blossoming orchards hung. 
 
 Around on the wonderful glory 
 The minister looked and smiled ; 
 " How good is the Lord who gives us 
 
 These gifts from His hand, my child ! 
 
 " Behold in the bloom of apples 
 And the violets in the sward 
 A hint of the old, lost beauty 
 Of the Garden of the Lord ! " 
 
 The Minister's Daughter. 
 
 16 
 
 W. H. Seward, iSoi. 
 
 Nature is not solitude : 
 She crowds us with her thronging wood ; 
 Her many hands reach out to us, 
 Her many tongues are garrulous ; 
 Perpetual riddles of surprise 
 She offers to our ears and eyes. 
 
 The Meeting. 
 78 
 
MAY 
 
 Edward Jenner, 1749. 
 
 Over the woods and meadow-lands 
 
 A crimson-tinted shadow lay 
 
 Of clouds through which the setting day 
 
 Flung a slant glory far away. 
 It glittered on the wet sea-sands, 
 
 It flamed upon the city's panes, 
 Smote the white sails of ships that wore 
 Outward or in, and glided o'er 
 
 The steeples with their veering vanes ! 
 
 The Preacher. 
 
 18 
 
 John Wilson, 1785. 
 
 Still sits the school-house by the road, 
 
 A ragged beggar sleeping ; 
 Around it still the sumachs grow. 
 
 And blackberry-vines are creeping. 
 
 Within, the master's desk is seen. 
 
 Deep scarred by raps official; 
 The warping floor, the battered seats, 
 
 The jack-knife's carved initial ; 
 
 The charcoal frescos on its wall ; 
 
 Its door's worn sill, betraying 
 The feet that, creeping slow to school, 
 
 Went storming out to playing ! 
 
 In School-Days. 
 
 79 
 
MAY 
 
 19 
 
 O FOR boyhood's painless play, 
 Sleep that wakes in laughing day, 
 Health that mocks the doctor's rules. 
 Knowledge never learned of schools, 
 Of the wild bee's morning chase, 
 Of the wild-flower's time and place, 
 Flight of fowl and habitude 
 Of the tenants of the wood ; 
 How the tortoise bears his shell, 
 How the woodchuck digs his cell. 
 And the ground-mole sinks his well; 
 How the robin feeds her young. 
 How the oriole's nest is hung; 
 Where the whitest lilies blow, 
 Where the freshest berries grow ! 
 
 The Barefoot Boy. 
 
 20 
 
 Balzac, 1799; John Stuart Mill, 1806. 
 
 The years no charm from Nature take ; 
 
 As sweet her voices call, 
 As beautiful her mornings break. 
 
 As fair her evenings fall. 
 
 Love watches o'er my quiet ways, 
 Kind voices speak my name, 
 
 And lips that find it hard to praise 
 Are slow, at least, to blame. 
 
 80 
 
MAY 
 
 How softly ebb the tides of will ! 
 
 How fields, once lost or won, 
 Now lie behind me green and still 
 
 Beneath a level sun ! 
 
 My Birthday. 
 
 21 
 
 Elizabeth Fry, 1780. 
 
 To melt the hearts that harshness turned to stone 
 The sweet persuasion of her lips sufficed. 
 
 And guilt, which only hate and fear had known, 
 Saw in her own the pitying love of Christ. 
 
 So wheresoe'er the guiding Spirit went 
 She followed, finding every prison cell 
 
 It opened for her sacred as a tent 
 
 Pitched by Gennesaret or by Jacob's well. 
 
 And Pride and Fashion felt her strong appeal, 
 And priest and ruler marvelled as they saw 
 
 How hand in hand went wisdom with her zeal. 
 And woman's pity kept the bounds of law. 
 
 The Two Elizabeths. 
 
 22 
 Richard Wagner, 1813. 
 
 What sings the brook ? What oracle 
 Is in the pine-tree's organ swell .'* 
 81 
 
MAY 
 
 What may the wind's low burden be ? 
 The meaning of the moaning sea ? 
 The hieroglyphics of the stars ? 
 'Or clouded sunset's crimson bars? 
 I vainly ask, for mocks my skill 
 The trick of Nature's cipher still. 
 
 Questions of Life. 
 
 23 
 
 Thomas Hood, 1799 ; Margaret Fuller, 1810. 
 
 Hood, under all his whims and oddities, conceals 
 the vehement intensity of a reformer. The iron of 
 the world's wrongs had entered into his soul ; there 
 is an undertone of sorrow in his lyrics. 
 
 Mirth and Medicine. 
 
 24 
 
 Queen Victoria, 1819. 
 
 Thicker than water," in one rill 
 
 Through centuries of story 
 Our Saxon blood has flowed, and still 
 We share with you its good and ill. 
 
 The shadow and the glory. 
 
 To Englishmen. 
 82 
 
MAY 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803. 
 
 The mists above the morning rills 
 
 Rise white as wings of prayer ; 
 The altar-curtains of the hills 
 
 Are sunset's purple air. 
 
 The winds with hymns of praise are loud, 
 
 Or low with sobs of pain, — 
 The thunder-organ of the cloud, 
 
 The dropping tears of rain. 
 
 With drooping head and branches crossed 
 
 The twilight forest grieves, 
 Or speaks with tongues of Pentecost 
 
 From all its sunlit leaves. 
 
 The Worship of Nature. 
 
 26 
 
 He findeth not who seeks his own, 
 The soul is lost that 's saved alone. 
 Not on one favored forehead fell 
 Of old the fire-tongued miracle. 
 But flamed o'er all the thronging host 
 The baptism of the Holy Ghost ; 
 Heart answers heart: in one desire 
 The blending lines of prayer aspire. 
 " Where in my name, meet two or three," 
 Our Lord hath said, " I there will be ! " 
 
 The Meeting. 
 83 
 
MAY 
 
 27 
 
 Julia Ward Howe, 18 19. 
 
 If it is not permitted us to believe all things, 
 we can at least hope them. Despair is infidelity 
 and death. Temporally and spiritually, the declara- 
 tion of inspiration holds good, — ''We are saved by 
 hope:' 
 
 Utopian Schemes. 
 
 Rejoice in hope ! The day and night 
 Are one with God, and one with them 
 Who see by faith the cloudy hem 
 
 Of Judgment fringed with Mercy's light! 
 
 ASTR^A AT THE CaPITOL. 
 
 28 
 
 Thomas Moore, 1779; Louis Agassiz, 1807. 
 
 Said the Master to the youth : 
 ' We have come in search of truth, 
 Trying with uncertain key 
 Door by door of mystery ; 
 We are reaching, through His laws, 
 To the garment-hem of Cause. . . . 
 As with fingers of the blind. 
 We are groping here to find 
 What the hieroglyphics mean 
 Of the Unseen in the seen. 
 What the Thought which underlies 
 84 
 
MAY 
 
 Nature's masking and disguise, 
 
 What it is that hides beneath 
 
 Blight and bloom and birth and death. 
 
 The Prayer of Agassiz. 
 
 29 
 
 Patrick Henry, 1736. 
 
 Dear friends still toiling in the sun, — 
 Ye dearer ones who, gone before, 
 Are watching from the eternal shore 
 
 The slow work by your hands begun, — 
 
 Rejoice with me ! The chastening rod 
 Blossoms with love ; the furnace heat 
 Grows cool beneath His blessed feet 
 
 Whose form is as the Son of God ! 
 
 ASTR^A AT THE CaPITOL. 
 
 30 
 
 Decoration Day. 
 
 Our voices take a sober tone, . . . 
 And innocent mirth is chastened for the sake 
 Of the brave hearts that never more shall beat. 
 The eyes that smile no more, the unreturning feet ! 
 
 To S. E. S. AND H. W. S. 
 
 85 
 
MAY 
 
 If, for the age to come, this hour 
 Of trial hath vicarious power, 
 And, blest by Thee, our present pain 
 Be liberty's eternal gain, 
 Thy will be done ! 
 
 Thy Will be done. 
 
 31 
 
 John A. Andrew, 1818. 
 
 He has done the work of a true man, — 
 Crown him, honor him, love him. 
 
 Weep over him, tears of woman, 
 Stoop manliest brows above him ! 
 
 No duty could overtask him. 
 
 No need his will outrun; 
 Or ever our lips could ask him. 
 
 His hands the work had done. 
 
 To G. L. S. 
 
 86 
 
Sunt 
 
 JUNE ON THE MERRIMAC 
 
 O DWELLERS in the stately towns, 
 
 What come ye out to see ? 
 This common earth, this common sky. 
 
 This water flowing free ? 
 
 As gayly as these kalmia flowers 
 Your door-yard blossoms spring ; 
 
 As sweetly as these wild wood birds 
 Your caged minstrels sing. 
 
 You find but common bloom and green. 
 
 The rippling river's rune, 
 The beauty which is everywhere 
 
 Beneath the skies of June. 
 
 From ceiled rooms, from silent books, 
 From crowded car and town, 
 
 Dear Mother Earth, upon thy lap, 
 We lay our tired heads down. 
 
 Cool, summer wind, our heated brows; 
 
 Blue river, through the green 
 Of clustering pines, refresh the eyes 
 
 Which all too much have seen. 
 
 87 
 
JUNE 
 
 For us these pleasant woodland ways 
 Are thronged with memories old, 
 
 Have felt the grasp of friendly hands 
 And heard love's story told. 
 
 A sacred presence overbroods 
 The earth whereon we meet ; 
 
 These winding forest-paths are trod 
 By more than mortal feet. 
 
 Old friends called from us by the voice 
 Which they alone could hear, 
 
 From mystery to mystery, 
 From life to life, draw near. 
 
 More closely for the sake of them 
 Each other's hands we press ; 
 
 Our voices take from them a tone 
 Of deeper tenderness. 
 
 Our joy is theirs, their trust is ours, 
 
 Alike below, above, 
 Or here or there, about us fold 
 
 The arms of one great love ! 
 
JUNE 
 
 A YEAR has gone, as the tortoise goes, 
 
 Heavy and slow; 
 And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows, 
 
 And the same brook sings of a year ago. 
 
 There 's the same sweet-clover smell in the breeze ; 
 
 And the June sun warm 
 Tangles his wings of fire in the trees. 
 
 Setting, as then, over Fernside farm. 
 
 Telling the Bees. 
 
 John Randolph, 1773 ; Thomas Hardy, 1840. 
 
 Bard, Sage, and Tribune ! in himself 
 
 All moods of mind contrasting, — 
 The tenderest wail of human woe, 
 
 The scorn like lightning blasting; 
 The pathos which from rival eyes 
 
 Unwilling tears could summon, 
 The stinging taunt, the fiery burst 
 
 Of hatred scarcely human ! 
 
 Mirth, sparkling like a diamond shower, 
 From lips of life-long sadness ; 
 
 Clear picturings of majestic thought 
 Upon a ground of madness ; 
 
 And over all Romance and Song 
 A classic beauty throwing, 
 89 
 
JUNE 
 
 And laurelled Clio at his side 
 Her storied pages showing. 
 
 Randolph of Roanoke. 
 
 3 
 
 Richard Cobden, 1804; Henry James, Sr. , i8ir. 
 
 Where our duty's task is wrought 
 In unison with God's great thought, 
 The near and future blend in one, 
 And whatsoe'er is willed, is done ! 
 
 And ours the grateful service whence 
 Comes, day by day, the recompense ; 
 The hope, the trust, the purpose stayed, 
 The fountain and the noonday shade. 
 
 Seed-Time and Harvest. 
 
 FOR boyhood's time of June, 
 Crowding years in one brief moon. 
 When all things I heard or saw, 
 Me, their master, waited for. 
 
 1 was rich in flowers and trees. 
 Humming-birds and honey-bees. . . . 
 Laughed the brook for my delight 
 Through the day and through the night. 
 Whispering at the garden wall. 
 Talked with me from fall to fall ; 
 
 90 
 
JUNE 
 
 Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond, 
 Mine the walnut slopes beyond, 
 Mine, on bending orchard trees, 
 Apples of Hesperides ! 
 
 The Barefoot Boy. 
 
 5 
 
 Adam Smith, 1723. 
 
 O, WELCOME calm of heart and mind ! 
 As falls yon fir-tree's loosened rind 
 To leave a tenderer growth behind, 
 
 So fall the weary years away; 
 A child again, my head I lay 
 Upon the lap of this sweet day. 
 
 Summer by the Lakeside. 
 
 6 
 
 Nathan Hale, 1755; William Francis Bartlett, 1840. 
 
 As Galahad pure, as Merlin sage. 
 What worthier knight was found 
 
 To grace in Arthur's golden age 
 The fabled Table Round ? 
 
 A voice, the battle's trumpet-note, 
 
 To welcome and restore ; 
 A hand, that all unwilling smote, 
 
 To heal and build once more ! 
 91 
 
JUNE 
 
 A soul of fire, a tender heart 
 
 Too warm for hate, he knew 
 The generous victor's graceful part 
 
 To sheathe the sword he drew. 
 
 William Francis Bartlett. 
 
 Care, that kills the cat, may plough 
 Wrinkles in the miser's brow, 
 Deepen envy's spiteful frown, 
 Draw the mouths of bigots down, 
 Plague ambition's dream, and sit 
 Heavy on the hypocrite. 
 Seldom comes that evil guest 
 Where the conscience lies at rest, 
 And brown health and quiet wit 
 Smihng on the threshold sit. 
 
 To My Old Schoolmaster. 
 
 8 
 
 Charles Reade, 1814; J. E. Millais, 1829. 
 
 " More wise," she said, " than those who swarm 
 Our hills in middle summer. 
 She came, when June's first roses blow, 
 To greet the early comer, 
 
 " Her step grew firmer on the hills 
 That watch our homesteads over ; 
 On cheek and lip, from summer fields, 
 She caught the bloom of clover. 
 92 
 
JUNE 
 
 " For health comes sparkling in the streams 
 From cool Chocorua stealing : 
 There 's iron in our Northern winds; 
 Our pines are trees of healing." 
 
 Among the Hills. 
 
 9 
 
 George Stephenson, 1781 ; John Howard Payne, 1791. 
 
 The hills are dearest which our childish feet 
 Have climbed the earliest; and the streams most 
 
 sweet 
 Are ever those at which our young lips drank, 
 Stooped to their waters o'er the grassy bank : 
 
 Midst the cold dreary sea-watch, Home's hearth- 
 light 
 
 Shines round the helmsman plunging through the 
 night ; 
 
 And still, with inward eye, the traveller sees 
 
 In close, dark, stranger streets his native trees. 
 
 The Bridal of Pennacook. 
 
 10 
 
 Sing soft, sing low, our lowland river, 
 Under thy banks of laurel bloom ; 
 
 Softly and sweet, as the hour beseemeth, 
 
 Sing us the songs of peace and home. 
 
 93 
 
JUNE 
 
 But to Him who gives us beauty for ashes, 
 And the oil of joy for mourning long, 
 
 Let thy hills give thanks, and all thy waters 
 Break into jubilant waves of song ! 
 
 Bring us the air of hills and forests, 
 The sweet aroma of birch and pine. 
 
 Give us a waft of the north-wind laden 
 With sweetbrier odors and breath of kine ! 
 
 Revisited (1865), 
 
 II 
 
 Ben Jonson, 1574 ; George Wither, 1588. 
 
 O POET rare and old ! 
 
 Thy words are prophecies ; 
 Forward the age of gold, 
 
 The new Saturnian lies. 
 
 The universal prayer 
 
 And hope are not in vain ; 
 Rise, brothers ! and prepare 
 
 The way for Saturn's reign. 
 
 ASTK^A. 
 
 12 
 
 Charles Kingsley, i8ig. 
 
 Ring, bells in unreared steeples 
 The joy of unborn peoples ! 
 94 
 
JUNE 
 
 Sound, trumpets far off blown, 
 Your triumph is my own ! 
 
 Parcel and part of all, 
 I keep the festival, 
 Fore-reach the good to be. 
 And share the victory. 
 
 My Triumph. 
 
 13 
 
 Madame d'Arblay, 1752 ; Thomas Arnold, 1795. 
 
 No longer forward nor behind 
 
 I look in hope or fear ; 
 But, grateful, take the good I find, 
 
 The best of now and here. 
 
 I plough no more a desert land. 
 
 To harvest weed and tare ; 
 The manna dropping from God's hand 
 
 Rebukes my painful care. 
 
 I break my pilgrim staff, I lay 
 
 Aside the toiling oar ; 
 The angel sought so far away 
 
 I welcome at my door. 
 
 My Psalm. 
 
 95 
 
JUNE 
 
 Harriet Beecher Stowe, 181 1. 
 
 To her whose vigorous pencil-strokes 
 Sketched into life her Oldtown Folks ; 
 Whose fireside stories, grave or gay, 
 In quaint Sam Lawson's vagrant way, 
 With old New England's flavor rife, 
 Waifs from her rude idyllic life, 
 Are racy as the legends old 
 By Chaucer or Boccaccio told ; . . 
 To her, who world-wide entrance gave 
 To the log-cabin of the slave, 
 Made all his want and sorrow known, 
 And all earth's languages his own. 
 
 A Greeting, 
 
 15 
 
 Magna Charta, signed 1215. 
 
 O Englishmen ! — in hope and creed, 
 In blood and tongue our brothers ! 
 
 We, too, are heirs of Runnymede ; 
 
 And Shakespeare's fame and Cromwell's deed 
 Are not alone our mother's. 
 
 To Englishmen. 
 
 16 
 
 The birds are glad ; the brier-rose fills 
 The air with sweetness ; all the hills 
 96 
 
JUNE 
 
 Stretch green to June's unclouded sky ; 
 
 But still I wait with ear and eye 
 
 For something gone which should be nigh, 
 
 A loss in all familiar things, 
 
 In flower that blooms, and bird that sings. 
 
 And yet, dear heart ! remembering thee, 
 
 Am I not richer than of old ? 
 Safe in thy immortality, 
 
 What change can reach the wealth I hold ? 
 
 What chance can mar the pearl and gold 
 Thy love hath left in trust with me ? 
 
 Snow-Bound. 
 
 17 
 
 John Wesley, 1703 ; Battle of Bunker Hill, 1775. 
 
 No Berserk thirst of blood had they. 
 No battle-joy was theirs, who set 
 Against the alien bayonet 
 
 Their homespun breasts in that old day. 
 
 Their feet had trodden peaceful ways ; 
 
 They loved not strife, they dreaded pain ; 
 
 They saw not, what to us is plain, 
 That God would make man's wrath His praise. 
 
 No seers were they, but simple men; 
 Its vast results the future hid : 
 The meaning of the work they did 
 
 W^as strange and dark and doubtful then. 
 
 Lexington. 
 
 97 
 
JUNE 
 i8 
 
 Battle of Waterloo, 1815. 
 
 Still, when the sun of summer burns, 
 My longing for the hills returns ; 
 And northward, leaving at my back 
 The warm vale of the Merrimac, 
 I go to meet the winds of morn. 
 Blown down the hill-gaps, mountain-born, 
 Breathe scent of pines, and satisfy 
 The hunger of a lowland eye. 
 
 A Summer Pilgrimage. 
 
 19 
 
 Confucius, 551 B. c. ; Pascal, 1623. 
 
 Truth is one ; 
 And, in all lands beneath the sun, 
 Whoso hath eyes to see may see 
 The tokens of its unity. . . 
 The angels to our Aryan sires 
 Talked by the earliest household fires : 
 The prophets of the elder day. 
 The slant-eyed sages of Cathay, 
 Read not the riddle all amiss 
 
 Of higher life evolved from this. 
 
 Miriam. 
 
 98 
 
JUNE 
 20 
 
 Anna Letitia Barbauld, 1743. 
 
 And not in vain in this soft air 
 Shall hard-strung nerves relax, 
 
 Not all in vain the o'erworn brain 
 Forego its daily tax. 
 
 Unheeded let the newsboy call, 
 
 Aside the ledger lay : 
 The world will keep its treadmill step 
 
 Though we fall out to-day. 
 
 The truants of life's weary school, 
 
 Without excuse from thrift 
 We change for once the gains of toil 
 
 For God's unpurchased gift. 
 
 June on the Merrimac. 
 
 21 
 
 Bishop Stubbs, 1825. 
 
 O FEARFUL heart and troubled brain ! 
 
 Take hope and strength from this, 
 That Nature never hints in vain, 
 
 Nor prophesies amiss. 
 
 Her wild birds sing the same sweet stave. 
 
 Her lights and airs are given 
 Alike to playground and the grave ; 
 
 And over both is Heaven. 
 
 The Old Burying-Gkound. 
 
 99 
 
JUNE 
 
 22 
 Thomas Day, 1748; Giuseppe Mazzini, 1805. 
 
 O Youth and Beauty, loved of all! 
 
 Ye pass from girlhood's gate of dreams ; 
 In broader ways your footsteps fall, 
 
 Ye test the truth of all that seems. 
 
 Give and receive ; go forth and bless 
 
 The world that needs the hand and heart 
 
 Of Martha's helpful carefulness 
 No less than Mary's better part. 
 
 At School-Close. 
 
 23 
 
 Midsummer Eve; F. O. C. Darley, 1822. 
 
 Away with weary cares and themes ! 
 Swing wide the moonlit gate of dreams ! 
 Leave free once more the land which teems 
 
 With wonders and romances ! 
 Where thou, with clear discerning eyes, 
 Shalt rightly read the truth which Hes 
 Beneath the quaintly masking guise 
 
 Of wild and wizard fancies. 
 
 Lo ! once again our feet we set 
 On still green wood-paths, twilight wet, 
 By lonely brooks, whose waters fret 
 The roots of spectral beeches ; 
 100 
 
JUNE 
 
 Again the hearth-fire glimmers o'er 
 Home's whitewashed wall and painted floor, 
 And young eyes widening to the lore 
 Of faery-folks and witches. 
 
 To My Sister. 
 
 24 
 
 St. John Baptist; John Hampden died, 1643. 
 
 The English revolution of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury was prodigal in the development of the real no- 
 bility of the mind and heart. Its history is bright 
 with the footprints of men whose very names still 
 stir the hearts of freemen, the world over, like a 
 trumpet peal. Say what we may of its fanaticism, 
 laugh as we may at its extravagant enjoyment of 
 newly acquired religious and civil liberty, who shall 
 now venture to deny that it was the golden age 
 of England ? 
 
 John Bunyan. 
 
 25 
 
 O FOR festal dainties spread, 
 Like my bowl of milk and bread ; 
 Pewter spoon and bowl of wood, 
 On the doorstone, gray and rude ! 
 O'er me, Hke a regal tent, 
 Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent, 
 Purple-curtained, fringed with gold. 
 Looped in many a wind-swung fold ; 
 
 lOI 
 
JUNE 
 
 While for music came the play 
 Of the pied frogs' orchestra ; 
 And, to light the noisy choir, 
 Lit the fly his lamp of fire. 
 I was monarch : pomp and joy 
 Waited on the barefoot boy ! 
 
 The Barefoot Boy. 
 
 26 
 
 Philip Doddridge, 1702. 
 
 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. 
 
 Burns. 
 
 27 
 
 Sir William Pepperrell, 1696. 
 
 Still waits kind Nature to impart 
 Her choicest gifts to such as gain 
 
 An entrance to her loving heart 
 
 Through the sharp discipline of pain. 
 102 
 
JUNE 
 
 Forever from the Hand that takes 
 One blessing from us others fall ; 
 
 And, soon or late, our Father makes 
 His perfect recompense to all ! 
 
 Summer by the Lakeside. 
 
 28 
 
 Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1712. 
 
 Untrod by him the path he showed, 
 Sweet pictures on his easel glowed 
 Of simple faith, and loves of home, 
 And virtue's golden days to come. 
 
 But weakness, shame, and folly made 
 The foil to all his pen portrayed ; 
 Still, where his dreamy splendors shone. 
 The shadow of himself was thrown. 
 
 The Chapel of the Hermits. 
 
 29 
 
 St. Peter; Rubens, 1577; Celia Thaxter, 1835. 
 
 The letter fails, and systems fall, 
 And every symbol wanes ; 
 
 The Spirit over-brooding all 
 Eternal Love remains. 
 
 And not for signs in heaven above 
 Or earth below they look, 
 103 
 
JUNE 
 
 Who know with John His smile of love, 
 With Peter His rebuke. 
 
 In joy of inward peace, or sense 
 
 Of sorrow over sin, 
 He is His own best evidence, 
 
 His witness is within. 
 
 Our Master. 
 
 Horace Vernet, 1789. 
 
 Did not the gifts of sun and air 
 
 To good and ill alike declare 
 
 The all-compassionate Father's care ? 
 
 In the white soul that stooped to raise 
 
 The lost one from her evil ways. 
 
 Thou saw'st the Christ, whom angels praise ! 
 
 A bodiless Divinity, 
 
 The still small Voice that spake to thee 
 
 Was the Holy Spirit's mystery ! 
 
 Revealed in love and sacrifice. 
 
 The Holiest passed before thine eyes. 
 
 One and the same, in threefold guise. 
 
 The equal Father in rain and sun. 
 
 His Christ in the good to evil done. 
 
 His Voice in thy soul; — and the Three are One ! 
 
 Trinitas. 
 
 104 
 
3(ulp 
 
 SUMMER BY THE LAKESIDE 
 
 White clouds, whose shadows haunt the deep, 
 Light mists, whose soft embraces keep 
 The sunshine on the hills asleep ! 
 
 O isles of calm ! O dark, still wood ! 
 And stiller skies that overbrood 
 Your rest with deeper quietude ! 
 
 shapes and hues, dim beckoning, through 
 Yon mountain gaps, my longing view 
 Beyond the purple and the blue, 
 
 To stiller sea and greener land, 
 
 And softer lights and airs more bland, 
 
 And skies, — the hollow of God's hand ! 
 
 Transfused through you, O mountain friends ! 
 With mine your solemn spirit blends, 
 And life no more hath separate ends. 
 
 1 read each misty mountain sign, 
 
 I know the voice of wave and pine, 
 And I am yours, and ye are mine. 
 
 Life's burdens fall, its discords cease, 
 I lapse into the glad release 
 Of Nature's own exceeding peace, 
 105 
 
JULY 
 
 I CALL to mind the summer day, 
 The early harvest mowing, 
 
 The sky with sun and clouds 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. 
 
 Burns. 
 
 2 
 
 Marston Moor, 1644. 
 
 Then Freedom sternly said : " I shun 
 No strife nor pang beneath the sun. 
 When human rights are staked and won. 
 
 " I knelt with Ziska's hunted flock, 
 I watched in Toussaint's cell of rock, 
 I walked with Sidney to the block. 
 
 " The moor of Marston felt my tread, 
 Through Jersey snows the march I led. 
 My voice Magenta's charges sped." 
 
 The Watchers. 
 106 
 
JULY 
 3 
 
 John Singleton Copley, 1737. 
 
 For art and labor, met in truce, 
 For beauty made the bride of use, 
 We thank Thee ; but, withal, we crave 
 The austere virtues strong to save. 
 The honor proof to place or gold, 
 The manhood never bought nor sold ! 
 
 Oh make Thou us, through centuries long, 
 In peace secure, in justice strong ; 
 Around our gift of freedom draw 
 The safeguards of Thy righteous law ; 
 And, cast in some diviner mould, 
 Let the new cycle shame the old ! 
 
 Centennial Hymn. 
 
 4 
 
 Independence Day ; Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804; Garibaldi, T807. 
 
 We give thy natal day to hope, 
 O Country of our love and prayer ! 
 
 Thy way is down no fatal slope, 
 But up to freer sun and air. 
 
 Tried as by furnace-fires, and yet 
 By God's grace only stronger made, 
 
 In future tasks before thee set 
 Thou shalt not lack the old-time aid. 
 
 107 
 
JULY 
 
 With peace that comes of purity 
 And strength to simple justice due, 
 
 So runs our loyal dream of thee ; 
 God of our fathers ! — make it true. 
 
 Our Country. 
 
 5 
 
 D. G. Farragut, 1801 ; " George Sand," 1804. 
 
 Fair First-Day mornings, steeped in summer calm, 
 Warm, tender, restful, sweet with woodland balm, 
 Came to him, like some mother-hallowed psalm 
 To the tired grinder at the noisy wheel 
 Of labor, winding off from memory's reel 
 A golden thread of music. 
 
 The Pennsylvania Pilgrim. 
 
 6 
 
 John Huss, 1373 ; John Flaxman, 1755. 
 
 The path of life we walk to-day 
 
 Is strange as that the Hebrews trod ; 
 
 We need the shadowing rock, as they, — 
 We need, like them, the guides of God. 
 
 God send His angels, Cloud and Fire, 
 To lead us o'er the desert sand ! 
 
 God give our hearts their long desire, 
 His shadow in a weary land ! 
 
 "The Rock " in El Ghor. 
 108 
 
JULY 
 
 GooD-BY to pain and care ! I take 
 
 Mine ease to-day : 
 Here where these sunny waters break, 
 And ripples this keen breeze, I shake 
 All burdens from the heart, all weary thoughts 
 away. 
 
 I draw a freer breath — I seem 
 
 Like all I see — 
 Waves in the sun — the white-winged gleam 
 Of sea-birds in the slanting beam — 
 And far-off sails which flit before the south-wind 
 free. ^ 
 
 Hampton Beach. 
 
 8 
 
 Fitz-Greene Halleck, 1790. 
 
 In common ways, with common men, 
 
 He served his race and time 
 As well as if his clerkly pen 
 
 Had never danced to rhyme. 
 
 If, in the thronged and noisy mart, 
 
 The Muses found their son, 
 Could any say his tuneful art 
 A duty left undone ? 
 
 Fitz-Greene Halleck. 
 109 
 
JULY 
 9 
 
 Henry Hallam, 1777- 
 
 And prayer is made, and praise is given, 
 
 By all things near and far ; 
 The ocean looketh up to heaven. 
 
 And mirrors every star. 
 
 Its waves are kneeling on the strand, 
 
 As kneels the human knee, 
 Their white locks bowing to the sand, 
 
 The priesthood of the sea ! 
 
 They pour their glittering treasures forth, 
 
 Their gifts of pearl they bring, 
 And all the listening hills of earth 
 
 Take up the song they sing. 
 
 The Worship of Nature. 
 
 10 
 
 John Calvin, 1509; Robert Chambers, 1802. 
 
 I REVERENCE old-time faith and men, 
 But God is near us now as then ; 
 His force of love is still unspent. 
 His hate of sin as imminent; 
 And still the measure of our needs 
 Outgrows the cramping bounds of creeds. 
 
 The Meeting. 
 IIO 
 
JULY 
 II 
 
 John Quincy Adams, 1767. 
 
 O FOR the tongue of him who lies at rest 
 
 In Quincy 's shade of patrimonial trees, — 
 Last of the Puritan tribunes and the best. 
 
 To Kossuth. 
 
 He rests with the immortals ; his journey has been 
 
 long: 
 For him no wail of sorrow, but a pcean full and 
 
 strong ! 
 So well and bravely has he done the work he found 
 
 to do, 
 To justice, freedom, duty, God, and man forever 
 
 true. 
 
 John Quincy Adams. 
 
 12 
 
 H. D. Thoreau, 1817. 
 
 Himself to Nature's heart so near 
 
 That all her voices in his ear 
 
 Of beast or bird had meanings clear. 
 
 Like Apollonius of old, 
 
 Who knew the tales the sparrows told. 
 
 Or Hermes who interpreted 
 
 What the sage cranes of Nilus said. 
 
 Snow-Bound. 
 Ill 
 
JULY 
 
 13 
 
 And if the husband or the wife 
 In home's strong light discovers 
 
 Such slight defaults as failed to meet 
 The blinded eyes of lovers, 
 
 Why need we care to ask ? — who dreams 
 
 Without their thorns of roses, 
 Or wonders that the truest steel 
 
 The readiest spark discloses ? 
 
 For still in mutual sufferance lies 
 
 The secret of true living ; 
 Love scarce is love that never knows 
 
 The sweetness of forgiving. 
 
 Among the Hills. 
 John Gibson Lockhart, 1794. 
 
 " Hands that ope but to receive 
 Empty close ; they only live 
 Richly who can richly give. 
 
 " Still," she sighed, with moistening eyes, 
 " Love is sweet in any guise ; 
 But its best is sacrifice ! 
 
 " He who, giving, does not crave 
 Likest is to Him who gave 
 Life itself the loved to save. 
 
JULY 
 
 Love, that self-forgetful gives, 
 Sows surprise of ripened sheaves, 
 Late or soon its own receives." 
 
 The Two Loves. 
 
 15 
 
 Rembrandt, 1606. 
 
 They sat and watched in idle mood 
 
 The gleam and shade of lake and wood, — 
 
 The beach the keen light smote. 
 
 The white sail of a boat, — 
 
 Swan flocks of lilies shoreward lying, 
 In sweetness, not in music, dying, — 
 Hardhack, and virgin's-bower. 
 And white-spiked clethra-flower. 
 
 The Maids of Attitash. 
 
 16 
 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1723. 
 
 The Beauty which old Greece or Rome 
 Sung, painted, wrought, lies close at home ; 
 
 We need but eye and ear 
 In all our daily walks to trace 
 The outHnes of incarnate grace. 
 
 The hymns of gods to hear ! 
 
 To 
 
 113 
 
JULY 
 
 Isaac Watts, 1674. 
 
 Sometimes comes to soul and sense 
 The feeling which is evidence 
 That very near about us lies 
 The realm of spiritual mysteries. 
 The sphere of the supernal powers 
 Impinges on this world of ours. 
 The breath of a diviner air 
 Blows down the answer of a prayer. . . . 
 With smile of trust and folded hands, 
 The passive soul in waiting stands 
 To feel, as flowers the sun and dew, 
 The One true Life its own renew. 
 
 The Meeting. 
 
 18 
 
 George Fox, 1624; Gilbert White, 1720; W. M. Thackeray, 1811. 
 
 O Beauty, old yet ever new ! 
 
 Eternal Voice, and Inward Word, 
 The Logos of the Greek and Jew, 
 
 The old sphere-music which the Samian heard ! 
 
 Truth which the sage and prophet saw. 
 Long sought without, but found within, 
 
 The Law of Love beyond all law. 
 
 The Life o'erfl coding mortal death and sin ! 
 114 
 
JULY 
 
 Shine on us with the light which glowed 
 Upon the trance-bound shepherd's way, 
 
 Who saw the Darkness overflowed 
 
 And drowned by tides of everlasting Day. 
 
 The Shadow and the Light. 
 
 19 
 
 A STRANGER now, a world-worn man, 
 
 Is he who bears my name ; 
 But thou, methinks, whose mortal life 
 
 Immortal youth became, 
 
 Art evermore the same. 
 
 Thou art not here, thou art not there, ' 
 
 Thy place I cannot see ; 
 I only know that where thou art 
 
 The blessed angels be. 
 
 And heaven is glad for thee. 
 
 Look forth once more through space and time. 
 
 And let thy sweet shade fall 
 In tenderest grace of soul and form 
 
 On memory's frescoed wall. 
 
 A shadow, and yet all ! 
 
 A Sea Dream. 
 
 20 
 
 John Sterling, 1S06. 
 
 Methinks the spirit's temper grows 
 Too soft in this still air ; 
 IIS 
 
JULY 
 
 Somewhat the restful heart foregoes 
 Of needed watch and prayer. 
 
 The bark by tempest vainly tossed 
 May founder in the calm, 
 
 And he who braved the polar frost 
 Faint by the isles of balm. 
 
 My Birthday. 
 
 21 
 
 Robert Burns died, 1796. 
 
 To-day be every fault forgiven 
 
 Of him in whom we joy ! 
 We take, with thanks, the gold of Heaven 
 
 And leave the earth's alloy. 
 Be ours his music as of spring, 
 
 His sweetness as of flowers, 
 The songs the bard himself might sing 
 
 In hoHer ears than ours. 
 
 The Memory of Burns. 
 
 22 
 
 When heats as of a tropic clime 
 
 Burned all our inland valleys through, 
 
 Three friends, the guests of summer time, 
 
 Pitched their white tent where sea-winds blew. 
 
 Behind them, marshes, seamed and crossed 
 
 With narrow creeks, and flower-embossed, 
 116 
 
JULY 
 
 Stretched to the dark oak wood, whose leafy arms 
 Screened from the stormy East the pleasant inland 
 farms. 
 
 They rested there, escaped awhile 
 
 From cares that wear the life away, 
 To eat the lotus of the Nile 
 
 And drink the poppies of Cathay, — 
 To fling their loads of custom down, 
 Like drift-weed, on the sand-slopes brown, 
 And in the sea-waves drown the restless pack 
 Of duties, claims, and needs that barked upon their 
 track. 
 
 The Tent on the Beach. 
 
 23 
 
 Charlotte Cushman, 18 16. 
 
 Our common Master did not pen 
 His followers up from other men ; . . . 
 His sermons were the healthful talk 
 That shorter made the mountain-walk, 
 His wayside texts were flowers and birds, . 
 Where mingled with His gracious words 
 The rustle of the tamarisk-tree 
 And ripple-wash of Galilee. 
 
 The Meeting. 
 
 117 
 
JULY 
 24 
 
 Alexandre Dumas, 1803. 
 
 What heed I of the dusty land 
 
 And noisy town ? 
 I see the mighty deep expand 
 From its white line of glimmering sand 
 To where the blue of heaven on bluer waves shuts 
 down ! 
 
 In listless quietude of mind, 
 
 I yield to all 
 The change of cloud and wave and wind 
 And passive on the flood reclined, 
 I wander with the waves, and with them rise and 
 fall. 
 
 Hampton Beach. 
 
 25 
 St. James. 
 
 We live by Faith ; but Faith is not the slave 
 Of text and legend. Reason's voice and God's, 
 Nature's and Duty's, never are at odds. 
 
 What asks our Father of His children, save 
 
 Justice and mercy and humility, 
 A reasonable service of good deeds, 
 Pure living, tenderness to human needs, 
 
 Reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see 
 118 
 
JULY 
 
 The Master's footprints in our daily ways? 
 No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife, 
 But the calm beauty of an ordered life 
 Whose very breathing is unworded praise ! — 
 A life that stands as all true lives have stood, 
 Firm-rooted in the faith that God is Good. 
 
 Requirement, 
 
 26 
 
 Winthrop Mackworth Praed, 1802. 
 
 Thanks for thy gift 
 Of ocean flowers, 
 
 Born where the golden drift 
 
 Of the slant sunshine falls 
 
 Down the green, tremulous walls 
 Of water, to the cool still coral bowers, 
 Where, under rainbows of perpetual showers, 
 
 God's gardens of the deep 
 
 His patient angels keep ; 
 Gladdening the dim, strange solitude 
 
 With fairest forms and hues. 
 
 To Avis Keene. 
 [_0n Receiving a Basket of Sea-Mosses.] 
 
 27 
 
 Thomas Campbell, 1777; Atlantic Telegraph completed, 1866. 
 
 From world to world his couriers fly, 
 Thought-winged and shod with fire ; 
 
 The angel of His stormy sky 
 Rides down the sunken wire. 
 119 
 
JULY 
 
 Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord, 
 
 Beneath the deep so far, 
 The bridal robe of earth's accord, 
 
 The funeral shroud of war ! 
 
 For lo ! the fall of Ocean's wall 
 Space mocked and time outrun ; 
 
 And round the world the thought of all 
 Is as the thought of one ! 
 
 The Cable Hymn. 
 
 28 
 
 Alexandre Dumas, the Younger, 1824. 
 
 Need has its rights, necessity its claim. 
 Yea, even self-wrought misery and shame 
 Test well the charity suffering long and kind. 
 The home-pressed question of the age can find 
 No answer in the catch-words of the blind 
 Leaders of blind. Solution there is none 
 Save in the Golden Rule of Christ alone. 
 
 The Problem. 
 
 29 
 
 Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805. 
 
 Rocked on her breast, these pines and I 
 Alike on Nature's love rely ; 
 And equal seems to live or die. 
 120 
 
JULY 
 
 Assured that He whose presence fills 
 With light the spaces of these hills 
 No evil to His creatures wills, 
 
 The simple faith remains, that He 
 Will do, whatever that may be, 
 The best alike for man and tree. 
 
 What mosses over one shall grow, 
 What light and life the other know, 
 Unanxious, leaving Him to show. 
 
 Summer by the Lakeside. 
 
 30 
 
 Samuel Rogers, 1763. 
 
 Drop Thy still dews of quietness, 
 
 Till all our strivings cease ; 
 Take from our souls the strain and stress, 
 And let our ordered lives confess 
 
 The beauty of Thy peace. 
 
 Breathe through the heats of our desire 
 
 Thy coolness and Thy balm ; 
 Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire ; 
 Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, 
 
 O still, small voice of calm ! 
 
 The Brewing of Soma. 
 121 
 
JULY 
 31 
 
 George Henry Thomas, 1816. 
 
 And light is mingled with the gloom, 
 
 And joy with grief ; 
 Divinest compensations come, 
 Through thorns of judgment mercies bloom 
 
 In sweet relief. 
 
 Who murmurs that in these dark days 
 
 His lot is cast ? 
 God's hand within the shadow lays 
 The stones whereon His gates of praise 
 
 Shall rise at last. 
 
 Turn and o'erturn, O outstretched Hand ! 
 
 Nor stint, nor stay ; 
 The years have never dropped their sand 
 On mortal issue vast and grand 
 
 As ours to-day. 
 
 Anniversary Poem (1863). 
 122 
 
SCuguiSft 
 
 PRELUDE TO AMONG THE HILLS 
 
 Along the roadside, like the flowers of gold 
 That tawny Incas for their gardens wrought, 
 Heavy with sunshine droops the goldenrod. 
 And the red pennons of the cardinal flowers 
 Hang motionless upon their upright staves. 
 The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind, 
 Wing-weary with its long flight from the south, 
 Unfelt ; yet, closely scanned, yon maple leaf 
 With faintest motion, as one stirs in dreams, 
 Confesses it. The locust by the wall 
 Stabs the noon-silence with his sharp alarm. 
 A single hay-cart down the dusty road 
 Creaks slowly, with its driver fast asleep 
 On the load's top. Against the neighboring hill, 
 Huddled along the stone wall's shady side, 
 The sheep show white, as if a snowdrift still 
 Defied the dog-star. Through the open door 
 A drowsy smell of flowers — gray heHotrope, 
 And white sweet clover, and shy mignonette — 
 Comes faintly in, and silent chorus lends 
 To the pervading symphony of peace. 
 123 
 
AUGUST 
 
 Lammas; George Ticknor, 1791 ; Cavour, 1810. 
 
 My ear is full of summer sounds, 
 Of summer sights my languid eye ; 
 
 Beyond the dusty village bounds 
 
 I loiter in my daily rounds, 
 And in the noontime shadows lie. 
 
 I hear the wild bee wind his horn, 
 
 The bird swings on the ripened wheat, 
 The long green lances of the corn 
 Are tilting in the winds of morn, 
 The locust shrills his song of heat. 
 
 The Summons. 
 
 Joseph Sturge, 1793 ; E. A. Freeman, 1823 ; F. Marion Crawford, 
 
 1854. 
 
 Thanks for the good man's beautiful example, 
 
 Who in the vilest saw 
 Some sacred cr\'pt or altar of a temple 
 
 Still vocal with God's law ; 
 
 Not his the golden pen's or lip's persuasion, 
 
 But a fine sense of right, 
 And Truth's directness, meeting each occasion 
 
 Straight as a line of light. 
 
 In Remembrance of Joseph Sturge. 
 124 
 
AUGUST 
 3 
 
 Juliana Horatia Ewing, 1841. 
 
 Our sweet illusions only die 
 Fulfilling love's sure prophecy; 
 And every wish for better things 
 An undreamed beauty nearer brings. 
 
 For fate is servitor of love ; 
 Desire and hope and longing prove 
 The secret of immortal youth, 
 And Nature cheats us into truth. 
 
 The Seeking of the Waterfall. 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792 ; Edward Irving, 1792. 
 
 The glorious ideal of Shelley, who, atheist as he 
 was through early prejudice and defective educa- 
 tion, saw the horizon of the world's future kindling 
 with the light of a better day, — that hope and that 
 faith which constitute, as it were, the world's life, 
 and without which it would be dark and dead, can- 
 not be in vain. 
 
 The World's End. 
 
 5 
 
 The clouds, which rise with thunder, slake 
 
 Our thirsty souls with rain : 
 The blow most dreaded falls to break 
 
 From off our limbs a chain ; 
 125 
 
AUGUST 
 
 And wrongs of man to man but make 
 
 The love of God more plain. 
 As through the shadowy lens of even 
 The eye looks farthest into heaven 
 On gleams of star. and depths of blue 
 The glaring sunshine never knew ! 
 
 All 's Well. 
 
 6 
 
 F^nelon, 1651 ; Tennyson, i8og. 
 
 Oh, more than thrice-blest relic, more 
 Than solemn rite or sacred lore, 
 The holy life of one who trod 
 The foot-marks of the Christ of God ! 
 
 He lived the Truth which reconciled 
 The strong man Reason, Faith the child ; 
 In him belief and act were one, 
 The homilies of duty done ! 
 
 The Chapel of the Hermits. 
 
 7 • 
 
 Joseph Rodman Drake, 1795. 
 
 And there, on breezy morns, they saw 
 The fishing-schooners outward run, 
 
 Their low-bent sails in tack and flaw 
 Turned white or dark to shade and sun, 
 126 
 
AUGUST 
 
 Sometimes, in calms of closing day, 
 They watched the spectral mirage play, 
 Saw low, far islands looming tall and nigh, 
 And ships, with upturned keels, sail like a sea the 
 sky. 
 
 The Tent on the Beach. 
 
 A GLIMMER of heat was in the air, — 
 The dark green woods were still ; 
 
 And the skirts of a heavy thunder-cloud 
 Hung over the western hill. 
 
 Black, thick, and vast arose that cloud 
 
 Above the wilderness, 
 As some dark world from upper air 
 
 Were stooping over this. 
 
 At times the solemn thunder pealed, 
 
 And all was still again. 
 Save a low murmur in the air 
 
 Of coming wind and rain. 
 
 The Exiles. 
 
 9 
 
 Izaak Walton, 1593 ; John Dryden, 1631. 
 
 Passages 
 From Izaak Walton's Angler, sweet and fresh 
 As the flower-skirted streams of Staffordshire, 
 127 
 
AUGUST 
 
 Where, under aged trees, the southwest wind 
 
 Of soft June mornings fanned the thin, white hair 
 
 Of the sage fisher. 
 
 The Bridal of Pennacook. 
 
 lO 
 
 Life shall on and upward go ; 
 
 Th' eternal step of Progress beats 
 
 To that great anthem, calm and slow, 
 
 Which God repeats. 
 
 Take heart ! the Waster builds again, — 
 
 A charmed life old Goodness hath; 
 The tares may perish, but the grain 
 Is not for death. 
 
 God works in all things ; all obey 
 
 His first propulsion from the night : 
 Wake thou and watch ! the world is gray 
 With morning light ! 
 
 The Reformer. 
 
 II 
 
 Jeffries Wyman, 1814. 
 
 White with its sun-bleached dust, the pathway 
 winds 
 Before me ; dust is on the shrunken grass. 
 And on the trees beneath whose boughs I pass ; 
 128 
 
AUGUST 
 
 Frail screen against the Hunter of the sky, 
 Who, glaring on me with his lidless eye, 
 
 While mounting with his dog-star high and 
 higher 
 Ambushed in light intolerable, unbinds 
 
 The burnished quiver of his shafts of fire. 
 Between me and the hot fields of his South 
 A tremulous glow, as from a furnace-mouth, 
 Glimmers and swims before my dazzled sight, 
 
 As if the burning arrows of his ire 
 Broke as they fell, and shattered into light. 
 
 Pictures. 
 
 12 
 
 Robert Southey, 1774. 
 
 Faint not, falter not, nor plead 
 Thy weakness ; truth itself is strong ; 
 The lion's strength, the eagle's speed, 
 Are not alone vouchsafed to wrong. 
 
 Thy nature, which, through fire and flood, 
 To place or gain finds out its way, 
 
 Hath power to seek the highest good, 
 And duty's holiest call obey ! 
 
 The Voices. 
 
 Flowers spring to blossom where she walks 
 
 The careful ways of duty ; 
 Our hard, stiff lines of life with her 
 
 Are flowing curves of beauty. 
 129 
 
AUGUST 
 
 Unspoken homilies of peace 
 
 Her daily life is preaching; 
 The still refreshment of the dew 
 
 Is her unconscious teaching. 
 
 Her presence lends its warmth and health 
 
 To all who come before it. 
 If woman lost us Eden, such 
 
 As she alone restore it. 
 
 Among the Hills. 
 
 14 
 
 Not vain the vision which the prophets saw, 
 Skirting with green the fiery waste of war, 
 Through the hot sand-gleam, looming soft and calm 
 On the sky's rim, the fountain-shading palm. 
 Still lives for Earth, which fiends so long have trod, 
 The great hope resting on the truth of God, — 
 Evil shall cease and Violence pass away. 
 And the tired world breathe free through a long 
 Sabbath day. 
 
 The Peace Convention. 
 
 15 
 
 Napoleon, 1769; Walter Scott, 1771 ; Thomas De Quincey, 1785. 
 
 Human hearts remain unchanged: the sorrow 
 and the sin. 
 The loves and hopes and fears of old, are to our 
 own akin ; 
 
 130 
 
AUGUST 
 
 And if, in tales our fathers told, the songs our 
 
 mothers sung. 
 Tradition wears a snowy beard, Romance is always 
 
 young. 
 
 Mary Garvin. 
 
 i6 
 
 Lavoisier, 1743. 
 
 On my cheek I feel the western wind, 
 And hear it telling to the orchard trees, 
 And to the faint and flower- forsaken bees. 
 Tales of fair meadows, green with constant 
 streams, 
 
 And mountains rising blue and cool behind, 
 Where in moist dells the purple orchis gleams. 
 
 And starred with white the virgin's bower is twined. 
 
 So the o'erwearied pilgrim, as he fares 
 
 Along life's summer waste, at times is fanned. 
 
 Even at noontide, by the cool, sweet airs 
 Of a serener and a holier land, 
 Fresh as the morn, and as the dewfall bland. 
 
 Breath of the blessed Heaven for which we pray, 
 
 Blow from the eternal hills ! make glad our earthly 
 
 way! 
 
 Pictures. 
 
AUGUST 
 
 17 
 
 Fredrika Bremer, 1801. 
 
 Thy sweet thoughts and northern fancies 
 Meet and mingle with our mirth. 
 
 And o'er weary spirits keeping 
 
 Sorrow's night-watch, long and chill, 
 
 Shine they like thy sun of summer 
 Over midnight vale and hill. 
 
 To Fredrika Bremer. 
 
 18 
 
 T. W. Parsons, 1819 ; Emperor Francis Joseph, 1830. 
 
 One, with years grown wiser, said : 
 " So, always baffled, not misled, 
 We follow where before us runs 
 The vision of the shining ones. 
 
 " Not where they seem their signals fly, 
 Their voices while we listen die ; 
 We cannot keep, however fleet, 
 The quick time of their winged feet. 
 
 " From youth to age unresting stray 
 These kindly mockers in our way ; 
 Yet lead they not, the baffling elves, 
 To something better than themselves ? " 
 
 The Seeking of the Waterfall. 
 132 
 
AUGUST 
 
 John Woolman, 1720. 
 
 Earnest toil and strong endeavor 
 
 Of a spirit which within 
 Wrestles with familiar evil 
 
 And besetting sin ; 
 
 And without, with tireless vigor, 
 Steady heart, and weapon strong, 
 
 In the power of truth assaiHng 
 Every form of wrong. 
 
 O'er life's humblest duties throwing 
 Light the earthling never knew, 
 
 Freshening all its dark waste places 
 As with Hermon's dew. 
 
 Beauty, such as Goethe pictured, 
 Such as Shelley dreamed of, shed 
 
 Living warmth and starry brightness 
 Round that poor man's head. 
 
 To . 
 
 [IVith a copy of IVoolman's Jourtial.^ 
 
 20 
 
 Robert Herrick, 1591. 
 
 With warning hand I mark Time's rapid flight 
 From hfe's glad morning to its solemn night ; 
 133 
 
AUGUST 
 
 Yet, through the dear God's love, I also show 
 There 's Light above me by the Shade below. 
 
 Inscription on a Sun-Dial. 
 
 21 
 
 Jules Michelet, 1798; John Tyndall, 1820. 
 
 Now in the west, the heavy clouds 
 
 Scattered and fell asunder. 
 While feebler came the rush of rain. 
 
 And fainter growled the thunder. 
 
 And through the broken clouds, the sun 
 
 Looked out serene and warm. 
 Painting its holy symbol-light 
 
 Upon the passing storm. 
 
 Oh, beautiful ! that rainbow span. 
 
 O'er dim Crane-neck was blended ; — 
 
 One bright foot touched the eastern hills. 
 And one with ocean blended. 
 
 The Exiles, 
 
 22 
 
 Sometimes a cloud, with thunder black. 
 Stooped low upon the darkening main, 
 
 Piercing the waves along its track 
 With the slant javelins of rain. 
 134 
 
AUGUST 
 
 And when. west-wind and sunshine warm 
 Chased out to sea its wrecks of storm, 
 They saw the prismy hues in thin spray showers 
 Where the green buds of waves burst into white 
 froth flowers. 
 
 The Tent on the Beach. 
 
 23 
 
 Cuvier, 1769. 
 
 Earth's rocky tablets bear forever 
 
 The dint of rain and small bird's track : 
 
 Who knows but that my idle verses 
 May leave some trace by Merrimac ! 
 
 So, when this fluid age we live in 
 
 Shall stiffen round my careless rhyme, 
 
 Who made the vagrant tracks may puzzle 
 The savans of the coming time : 
 
 And, following out their dim suggestions, 
 Some idly-curious hand may draw 
 
 My doubtful portraiture, as Cuvier 
 Drew fish and bird from fin and claw. 
 
 The First Flowers. 
 
 135 
 
AUGUST 
 24 
 
 William Wilberforce, 1759. 
 
 The truths ye urge are borne abroad 
 
 By every wind and every tide ; 
 The voice of Nature and of God 
 
 Speaks out upon your side. 
 
 The weapons which your hands have found 
 Are those which Heaven itself has wrought, 
 
 Light, Truth, and Love ; your battle-ground 
 The free, broad field of Thought. 
 
 To THE Reformers of England. 
 
 25 
 C. K. J. von Bunsen, 1791; Bret Haite, 1839. 
 
 And when along the line of shore 
 
 The mists crept upward chili and damp, 
 Stretched, careless, on their sandy floor 
 
 Beneath the flaring lantern lamp. 
 They talked of all things old and new. 
 Read, slept, and dreamed as idlers do ; 
 And in the unquestioned freedom of the tent, 
 Body and o'er-taxed mind to healthful ease unbent. 
 
 The Tent on the Beach. 
 136 
 
AUGUST 
 26 
 
 Sir Robert Walpole, 1676 ; Prince Albert, 1819. 
 
 We search the world for truth ; we cull 
 The good, the pure, the beautiful, 
 From graven stone and written scroll, 
 From all old flower-fields of the soul ; 
 And, weary seekers of the best. 
 We come back laden from our quest, 
 To find that all the sages said 
 Is in the Book our mothers read, 
 
 Miriam. 
 
 27 
 
 Hegel, 1770. 
 
 Ah me ! we doubt the shining skies, 
 
 Seen through our shadows of offence. 
 And drown with our poor childish cries 
 The cradle-hymn of kindly Providence. 
 
 And still we love the evil cause. 
 
 And of the just effect complain : 
 We tread upon life's broken laws, 
 And murmur at our self-inflicted pain. 
 
 The Shadow and the Light. 
 
 137 
 
AUGUST 
 28 
 
 John Locke, 1632; Goethe, 1749; Tolstoi, 1828. 
 
 The soul itself its awful witness is. 
 
 Say not in evil doing, "No one sees," 
 
 And so offend the conscious One within, 
 
 Whose ear can hear the silences of sin 
 
 Ere they find voice, whose eyes unsleeping see 
 
 The secret motions of iniquity. 
 
 Nor in thy folly say, " I am alone." 
 For, seated in thy heart, as on a throne. 
 The ancient Judge and Witness liveth still. 
 To note thy act and thought ; and as thy ill 
 Or good goes from thee, far beyond thy reach, 
 The solemn Doomsman's seal is set on each. 
 
 The Inward Judge. 
 
 29 
 
 F. D. Maurice, 1805 ; O. W. Holmes, 1809. 
 
 His still the keen analysis 
 
 Of men and moods, electric wit. 
 
 Free play of mirth and tenderness 
 To heal the slightest wound from it. 
 
 And his the pathos touching all 
 Life's sins and sorrows and regrets, 
 
 Its hopes and fears, its final call 
 And rest beneath the violets. 
 138 
 
AUGUST 
 
 His sparkling surface scarce betrays 
 The thoughtful tide beneath it rolled, 
 
 The wisdom of the latter days, 
 And tender memories of the old. 
 
 Our Autocrat (1879). 
 
 30 
 
 Climbing a path which leads back never more 
 We heard behind his footsteps and his cheer ; 
 Now, face to face, we greet him standing here 
 
 Upon the lonely summit of Fourscore ! 
 
 Welcome to us, o'er whom the lengthened day 
 Is closing and the shadows colder grow, 
 His genial presence, like an afterglow, 
 
 Following the one just vanishing away. 
 
 Long be it ere the table shall be set 
 For the last breakfast of the Autocrat, 
 And love repeat with smiles and tears thereat 
 
 His own sweet songs that time shall not forget. 
 
 Waiting with us the call to come up higher, 
 
 Life is not less, the heavens are only nigher ! 
 
 O. W. Holmes on his Eightieth Birthday. 
 
 31 
 
 John Bunyan died, 1688. 
 
 The broad and pleasant "river of the Water of 
 
 Life " glided peacefully before him, fringed " on 
 
 either side with green trees, with all manner of 
 
 fruit," and leaves of healing, with " meadows beau- 
 
 139 
 
AUGUST 
 
 tified with lilies, and green all the year long;" he 
 saw the Delectable Mountains, glorious with sun- 
 shine, overhung with gardens and orchards and 
 vineyards ; and beyond all, the Land of Beulah, 
 with its eternal sunshine, its song of birds, its music 
 of fountains, its purple clustered vines, and groves 
 through which walked the Shining Ones, silver- 
 winged and beautiful. 
 
 What were bars and bolts and prison walls to 
 him, whose eyes were anointed to see, and whose 
 ears opened to hear, the glory and the rejoicing of 
 the City of God, when the pilgrims were conducted 
 to its golden gates, from the black and bitter river, 
 with the sounding trumpeters, the transfigured harp- 
 ers with their crowns of gold, the sweet voices of 
 angels, the welcoming peal of bells in the holy city, 
 and the songs of the redeemed ones ? 
 
 John Bunyan. 
 140 
 
September 
 
 SUNSET ON THE BEARCAMP . 
 
 A GOLD fringe on the purpling hem 
 
 Of hills the river runs 
 As down its long green valley falls 
 
 The last of summer's suns. 
 Along its tawny gravel-bed 
 
 Broad-flowing, swift, and still, 
 As if its meadow levels felt 
 
 The hurry of the hill, 
 Noiseless between its banks of green 
 
 From curve to curve it shps ; 
 The drowsy maple-shadows rest 
 
 Like fingers on its lips. 
 
 Touched by a hght that hath no name, 
 
 A glory never sung, 
 Aloft on sky and mountain wall 
 
 Are God's great pictures hung. 
 How changed the summits vast and old ! 
 
 No longer granite-browed, 
 They melt in rosy mist ; the rock 
 
 Is softer than the cloud ; 
 The valley holds its breath ; no leaf 
 
 Of all its elms is twirled : 
 The silence of eternity 
 
 Seems falling on the world. 
 141 
 
SEPTEMBER 
 
 Slow fades the vision of the sky, 
 
 The golden water pales, 
 And over all the valley-land 
 
 A gray- winged vapor sails. 
 I go the common way of all ; 
 
 The sunset fires will burn, 
 The flowers will blow, the river flow. 
 
 When I no more return. 
 No whisper from the mountain pine 
 
 Nor lapsing stream shall tell 
 The stranger, treading where I tread, 
 
 Of him who loved them well. 
 
 But beauty seen is never lost, 
 
 God's colors all are fast ; 
 The glory of this sunset heaven 
 
 Into my soul has passed, — 
 A sense of gladness unconfined 
 
 To mortal date or clime ; 
 As the soul liveth, it shall live 
 
 Beyond the years of time. 
 Beside the mystic asphodels 
 
 Shall bloom the home-born flowers, 
 And new horizons flush and glow 
 
 With sunset hues of ours. 
 142 
 
SEPTEMBER 
 I 
 
 L. H. Sigourney, 1791. 
 
 September sunsets, changing forests, moonrise 
 and cloud, sun and rain, — I for one am contented 
 with them. They fill my heart with a sense of 
 beauty. 
 
 The World's End. 
 
 She sang alone, ere womanhood had known 
 The gift of song which fills the air to-day : 
 
 Tender and sweet, a music all her own 
 May fitly linger where she knelt to pray. 
 
 Lydia H. Sigourney. 
 {Inscription in Christ Churchy Hart/ord.] 
 
 John Howard, 1726. 
 
 Fringing the stream, at every turn 
 Swung low the waving fronds of fern ; 
 From stony cleft and mossy sod 
 Pale asters sprang, and goldenrod. 
 
 And still the waters sang the sweet, 
 Glad song that stirred its gliding feet, 
 And found in rock and root the keys 
 Of its beguiling melodies. 
 
 The Seeking of the Waterfall. 
 
SEPTEMBER 
 
 Mary Whittier Caldwell, 1806. 
 
 There, too, our elder sister plied 
 Her evening task the stand beside ; 
 A full, rich nature, free to trust, 
 Truthful and almost sternly just, 
 Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act. 
 And make her generous thought a fact, 
 Keeping with many a light disguise 
 The secret of self-sacrifice. 
 O heart sore-tried ! thou hast the best 
 That Heaven itself could give thee, — rest. 
 
 Snow-Bound. 
 
 Phoebe Gary, 1824. 
 
 Years since (but names to me before), 
 Two sisters sought at eve my door ; 
 Two song-birds wandering from their nest, 
 A gray old farmhouse in the West. 
 
 How fresh of life the younger one. 
 Half smiles, half tears, like rain in sun.! 
 Her gravest mood could scarce displace 
 The dimples of her nut-brown face. 
 
 Wit sparkled on her lips not less 
 For quick and tremulous tenderness ; 
 144 
 
SEPTEMBER 
 
 And, following close her merriest glance, 
 Dreamed through her eyes the heart's romance. 
 
 The Singer. 
 
 5 
 
 Meyerbeer, 1791 ; Archbishop Trench, 1807, 
 
 For weeks the clouds had raked the hills 
 And vexed the vales with raining, 
 
 And all the woods were sad with mist, 
 And all the brooks complaining. 
 
 At last, a sudden night-storm tore 
 
 The mountain veils asunder, 
 And swept the valleys clean before 
 
 The besom of the thunder. 
 
 Clear drawn against the hard blue sky, 
 The peaks had winter's keenness ; 
 
 And, close on autumn's frost, the vales 
 Had more than June's fresh greenness. 
 
 It was as if the summer's late 
 
 Atoning for its sadness 
 Had borrowed every season's charm 
 
 To end its days in gladness. 
 
 Among the Hills. 
 
SEPTEMBER 
 6 
 
 Lafayette, 1757. 
 
 If the stream had no quiet eddying place, could 
 we so admire its cascade over the rocks ? Were 
 there no clouds, could we so hail the sky shining 
 through them in its still calm purity ? 
 
 The Beautiful. 
 
 7 
 
 John Greenleaf Whittier died, 1892. 
 
 When on my day of life the night is falling, 
 And, in the winds from unsunned spaces blown, 
 
 I hear far voices out of darkness calling 
 My feet to paths unknown, 
 
 Thou who hast made my home of life so pleasant. 
 Leave not its tenant when its walls decay ; 
 
 O Love Divine, O Helper ever present, 
 Be Thou my strength and stay ! 
 
 Be near me when all else is from me drifting ; 
 
 Earth, sky, home's pictures, days of shade and 
 shine. 
 And kindly faces to my own uplifting 
 
 The love which answers mine. 
 
 At Last. 
 146 
 
SEPTEMBER 
 8 
 
 Ariosto, 1474; A. W. Schlegel, 1767. 
 
 I HAVE but Thee, my Father! let Thy spirit 
 Be with me then to comfort and uphold ; 
 
 No gate of pearl, no branch of palm I merit, 
 Nor street of shining gold. 
 
 Suffice it if — my good and ill unreckoned. 
 
 And both forgiven through Thy abounding 
 grace — 
 
 I find myself by hands familiar beckoned 
 Unto my fitting place. 
 
 Some humble door among Thy many mansions. 
 Some sheltering shade where sin and striving 
 cease. 
 And flows forever through heaven's green expan- 
 sions 
 The river of Thy peace. 
 
 At Last. 
 
 9 
 
 Thomas Hutchinson, 171 1; J. H. Shorthouse, 1834. 
 
 I PRAY the prayer of Plato old : 
 God make thee beautiful within, 
 
 And let thine eyes the good behold 
 In everything save sin. 
 147 
 
SEPTEMBER 
 
 Imagination held in check 
 
 To serve, not rule, thy poised mind ; 
 Thy Reason, at the frown or beck 
 
 Of Conscience, loose or bind. 
 
 My Namesake. 
 
 10 
 
 Mungo Park, 1771 ; Philip Gilbert Hamerton, 1834. 
 
 Not alone in tones of awe and power 
 He speaks to man ; 
 The cloudy horror of the thunder-shower 
 His rainbows span ; 
 And where the caravan 
 Winds o'er the desert, leaving, as in air 
 The crane-flock leaves, no trace of passage there. 
 
 He gives the weary eye 
 The palm-leaf shadow for the hot noon hours, 
 And on its branches dry 
 Calls out the acacia's flowers. 
 
 To Avis Keene. 
 
 II 
 
 James Thomson, 1700. 
 
 Nothing before, nothing behind ; 
 
 The steps of Faith 
 Fall on the seeming void, and find 
 
 The rock beneath. 
 148 
 
SEPTEMBER 
 
 The Present, the Present is all thou hast 
 
 For thy sure possessing ; 
 Like the patriarch's angel hold it fast 
 
 Till it gives its blessing. 
 
 My Soul and I. 
 
 12 
 
 Charles Dudley Warner, 1829. 
 
 From the clefts of mountain rocks, 
 Through the dark of lowland firs. 
 
 Flash the eyes and flow the locks 
 Of the mystic Vanishers ! 
 
 And the fisher in his skiff, 
 
 And the hunter on the moss, 
 Hear their call from cape and cliff, 
 
 See their hands the birch-leaves toss. 
 
 Wistful, longing, through the green 
 Twilight of the clustered pines. 
 
 In their faces rarely seen 
 Beauty more than mortal shines. 
 
 The Vanishers. 
 
 13 
 
 James Shirley, 1596. 
 
 Here, though unreached the goal we sought, 
 Its own reward our toil has brought: 
 149 
 
SEPTEMBER 
 
 The winding water's sounding rush, 
 The long note of the hermit thrush, 
 
 The turquoise lakes, the glimpse of pond 
 And river track, and, vast, beyond 
 Broad meadows belted round with pines. 
 The grand uplift of mountain lines ! 
 
 So failure wins ; the consequence 
 Of loss becomes its recompense ; 
 And evermore the end shall tell 
 The unreached ideal guided well. 
 
 The Seeking of the Waterfall. 
 
 14 
 
 John Harvard died, 1638; Alexander von Humboldt, 1769. 
 
 You should have seen that long hill-range 
 With gaps of brightness riven, — 
 
 How through each pass and hollow streamed 
 The purpling lights of heaven, — 
 
 Rivers of gold-mist flowing down 
 
 From far celestial fountains, — 
 The great sun flaming through the rifts 
 
 Beyond the wall of mountains ! 
 
 Among the Hills. 
 
SEPTEMBER 
 IS 
 
 James Fenimore Cooper, 1789; J. G. Percival, 1795. 
 
 Lift we the twilight curtains of the Past, 
 
 And, turning from familiar sight and sound, 
 Sadly and full of reverence let us cast 
 
 A glance upon Tradition's shadowy ground, 
 Led by the few pale lights which, glimmering round 
 That dim, strange land of Eld, seem dying fast ; 
 And that which history gives not to the eye, 
 The faded coloring of Time's tapestry. 
 Let Fancy with her dream-dipped brush supply. 
 
 The Bridal of Pennacook. 
 
 16 
 
 Samuel Adams, 1722; Francis Parkman, 1823. 
 
 O Painter of the fruits and flowers, 
 
 We own Thy wise design, 
 Whereby these human hands of ours 
 
 May share the work of Thine ! 
 
 Apart from Thee we plant in vain 
 
 The root and sow the seed ; 
 Thy early and Thy later rain, 
 
 Thy sun and dew we need. 
 
 Our toil is sweet with thankfulness. 
 
 Our burden is our boon ; 
 
 The curse of Earth's gray morning is 
 
 The blessing of its noon. 
 
 Garden. 
 
SEPTEMBER 
 
 Samuel Hopkins, 1721. 
 
 Honor to the true man ever, who takes his life 
 in his hands, and, at all hazards, speaks the word 
 which is given him to utter, whether men will hear 
 or forbear, whether the end thereof is to be praise 
 or censure, gratitude or hatred. It well may be 
 doubted whether on that Sabbath day the angels of 
 God, in their wide survey of His universe, looked 
 upon a nobler spectacle than that of the minister 
 of Newport, rising up before his slave-holding con- 
 gregation, and demanding, in the name of the High- 
 est, the " deliverance of the captive, and the open- 
 ing of prison doors to them that were bound." 
 
 Samuel Hoi-kins. 
 
 18 
 
 Samuel Johnson, 1709; Joseph Story, 1779. 
 
 Farewell! these smiling hills must wear 
 
 Too soon their wintry frown. 
 And snow-cold winds from off them shake 
 
 The maple's red leaves down. 
 But I shall see a summer sun 
 
 Still setting broad and low ; 
 The mountain slopes shall blush and bloom, 
 
 The golden water flow. 
 A lover's claim is mine on all 
 
 I see to have and hold, — 
 152 
 
SEPTEMBER 
 
 The rose-light of perpetual hills, 
 And sunsets never cold ! 
 
 Sunset on the Bearcamp. 
 
 19 
 
 Hartley Coleridge, 1796. 
 
 Has life's infancy only lieen provided for, and 
 beyond this poor nursery-chamber of Time is there 
 no play-ground for the soul's youth, no broad fields 
 for its manhood ? 
 
 Scottish .Reformers. 
 
 20 
 
 The river wound as it should wind ; 
 
 Their place the mountains took ; 
 The white torn fringes of their clouds 
 
 Wore no unwonted look. 
 
 Yet ne'er before that river's rim 
 Was pressed by feet of mine, 
 
 Never before mine eyes had crossed 
 That broken mountain line. 
 
 A presence, strange at once and known, 
 Walked with me as my guide ; 
 
 The skirts of some forgotten life 
 Trailed noiseless at my side. 
 153 
 
SEPTEMBER 
 
 Was it a dim-remembered dream ? 
 
 Or glimpse through aeons old ? 
 The secret which the mountains kept 
 
 The river never told. 
 
 A Mystery. 
 
 21 
 
 St. Matthew; Savonarola, 1452. 
 
 Suffice it now. — In time to be 
 Shall holier altars rise to Thee, — 
 Thy Church our broad humanity ! 
 
 White flowers of love its walls shall climb, 
 Soft bells of peace shall ring its chime, 
 Its days shall all be holy time. 
 
 A sweeter song shall then be heard, — 
 The music of the world's accord 
 Confessing Christ, the Inward Word ! 
 
 That song shall swell from shore to shore, 
 One hope, one faith, one love, restore 
 The seamless robe that Jesus wore. 
 
 Hymn. 
 
 22 
 
 Michael Faraday, 1791 ; Dr. John Brown, 1810. 
 
 We need love's tender lessons taught 
 
 As only weakness can ; 
 God hath His small interpreters ; 
 
 The child must teach the man. 
 154 
 
SEPTEMBER 
 
 We wander wide through evil years, 
 
 Our eyes of faith grow dim ; 
 But he is freshest from His hands 
 
 And nearest unto Him ! 
 
 Child-Songs. 
 
 23 
 
 Jane Taylor, 1783; Karl Theodor Korner, 1791. 
 
 More than clouds of purple trail 
 
 In the gold of setting day ; 
 More than gleams of wing or sail 
 
 Beckon from the sea-mist gray. 
 
 Glimpses of immortal youth, 
 
 Gleams and glories seen and flown. 
 
 Far-heard voices sweet with truth, 
 Airs from viewless Eden blown, — 
 
 Beauty that eludes our grasp. 
 Sweetness that transcends our taste. 
 
 Loving hands we may not clasp, 
 Shining feet that mock our haste. 
 
 The Vanishers. 
 
 24 
 
 John Marshall, 1755. 
 
 Hope not the cure of sin till Self is dead ; 
 Forget it in love's service, and the debt 
 Thou canst not pay the angels shall forget; 
 155 
 
SEPTEMBER 
 
 Heaven's gate is shut to him who comes alone 
 Save thou a soul, and it shall save thy own ! 
 
 The Two Rabbins. 
 
 25 
 
 Felicia Dorothea Hemans, 1794. 
 
 When did Age transfer to Youth 
 The hard-gained lessons of its day ? 
 Each lip must learn the taste of truth, 
 Each foot must feel its way. 
 
 We cannot hold the hands of choice 
 That touch or shun life's fateful keys 
 
 The whisper of the inward voice 
 Is more than homilies. 
 
 A Name. 
 
 ■ 26 
 
 Lord Collingwood, 1750. 
 
 Let winds that blow from heaven refresh. 
 
 Dear Lord, the languid air ; 
 And let the weakness of the flesh 
 
 Thy strength of spirit share. 
 
 And, if the eye must fail of light, 
 
 The ear forget to hear, 
 Make clearer still the spirit's sight. 
 
 More fine the inward ear ! 
 156 
 
SEPTEMBER 
 
 Be near me in mine hours of need 
 To soothe, or cheer, or warn, 
 
 And down these slopes of sunset lead 
 As up the hills of morn ! 
 
 My Birthday. 
 
 27 
 
 Bossuefr, 1627. 
 
 It becomes all to hope and labor for the coming 
 of that day when the hymns of Cowper and the 
 Confessions of Augustine, the humane philosophy 
 of Channing and the devout meditations of Thomas 
 a Kempis, the simple essays of Woolman and the 
 glowing periods of Bossuet, shall be regarded as 
 the offspring of one spirit and one faith, — lights 
 of a common altar, and precious stones in the 
 temple of the one universal Church. 
 
 Pope Night. 
 
 28 
 
 Francis Turner Palgrave, 1824. 
 
 For there was freedom in that wakening time 
 Of tender souls ; to differ was not crime ; 
 The varying bells made up the perfect chime. 
 
 On lips unlike was laid the altar's coal, 
 
 The white, clear light, tradition-colored, stole 
 
 Through the stained oriel of each human soul. 
 
 The Pennsylvania Pilgrim. 
 
 ^S7 
 
SEPTEMBER 
 
 29 
 
 Michaelmas; William, Lord Russell, 1639; Lady Russell 
 died, 1723. 
 
 I FAIN would thank Thee that my mortal life 
 
 Has reached the hour (albeit through care and 
 pain) 
 When Good and Evil, as for final strife, 
 
 Close dim and vast on Armageddon's plain ; 
 And Michael and his angels once again 
 
 Drive howling back the Spirits of the Night. 
 Oh for the faith to read the signs aright 
 And, from the angle of Thy perfect sight, 
 
 See Truth's white banner floating on before; 
 
 And the Good Cause, despite of venal friends, 
 
 And base expedients, move to noble ends ; 
 
 See Peace with Freedom make to Time amends, 
 And, through its cloud of dust, the threshing-floor, 
 
 Flailed by the thunder, heaped with chaffless 
 
 grain ! 
 181:6. What of the Day ? 
 
 30 
 
 For pearls that gem 
 
 A diadem 
 The diver in the deep sea dies ; 
 
 The regal right 
 
 We boast to-night 
 Is ours through costlier sacrifice ; 
 158 
 
SEPTEMBER 
 
 The blood of Vane, 
 
 His prison pain 
 Who traced the path the Pilgrim trod, 
 
 And hers whose faith 
 
 Drew strength from death, 
 And prayed her Russell up to God ! 
 
 The shadow rend, 
 
 And o'er us bend, 
 O martyrs, with your crowns and palms ; 
 
 Breathe through these throngs 
 
 Your battle songs. 
 Your scaffold prayers, and dungeon psalms ! 
 
 To party claims 
 
 And private aims, 
 Reveal that august face of Truth, 
 
 Whereto are given 
 
 The age of heaven. 
 The beauty of immortal youth. 
 
 The Eve of Election. 
 
<©tto6er 
 
 FOR AN AUTUMN FESTIVAL 
 
 Once more the liberal year laughs out 
 O'er richer stores than gems or gold ; 
 
 Once more with harvest-song and shout 
 Is Nature's bloodless triumph told. 
 
 Our common mother rests and sings, 
 
 Like Ruth, among her garnered sheaves ; 
 
 Her lap is full of goodly things, 
 
 Her brow is bright with autumn leaves. 
 
 Oh, favors every year made new ! 
 
 Oh, gifts with rain and sunshine sent ! 
 The bounty overruns our due, 
 
 The fulness shames our discontent. 
 
 We shut our eyes, the flowers bloom on ; 
 
 We murmur, but the corn-ears fill, 
 We choose the shadow, but the sun 
 
 That casts it shines behind us still. 
 
 God gives us with our rugged soil 
 The power to make it Eden-fair, 
 
 And richer fruits to crown our toil 
 Than summer-wedded islands bear. 
 i6o 
 
OCTOBER 
 
 Who murmurs at his lot to-day ? 
 
 Who scorns his native fruit and bloom ? 
 Or sighs for dainties far away, 
 
 Beside the bounteous board of home ? 
 
 Thank Heaven, instead, that PVeedom's arm 
 Can change a rocky soil to gold, — 
 
 That brave and generous lives can warm 
 A clime with northern ices cold. 
 
 And let these altars, wreathed with flowers 
 And piled with fruits, awake again 
 
 Thanksgivings for the golden hours, 
 The early and the latter rain ! 
 i6i 
 
OCTOBER 
 
 Rufus Choate, 
 
 The airs of spring may never play 
 
 Among the ripening corn, 
 Nor freshness of the flowers of May 
 
 Blow through the autumn morn ; 
 
 Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look 
 Through fringed lids to heaven, 
 
 And the pale aster in the brook 
 Shall see its image given ; — 
 
 The woods shall wear their robes of praise, 
 
 The south-wind softly sigh. 
 And sweet, calm days in golden haze 
 
 Melt down the amber sky. 
 
 My Psalm. 
 
 W. E. Channing died, 1842. 
 
 Not vainly did old poets tell, 
 Nor vainly did old genius paint 
 
 God's great and crowning miracle, — 
 The hero and the saint ! 
 
 For even in a faithless day 
 
 Can we our sainted ones discern ; 
 
 And feel, while with them on the way, 
 Our hearts within us burn. 
 162 
 
OCTOBER 
 
 In vain shall Rome her portals bar, 
 
 And shut from him her saintly prize, 
 
 Whom, in the world's great calendar. 
 
 All men shall canonize. 
 
 Channing. 
 
 3 
 
 George Bancroft, 1800 ; George Ripley, 1802. 
 
 All which is real now remaineth. 
 
 And f adeth never : 
 The hand which upholds it now sustaineth 
 
 The soul forever. 
 
 And that cloud itself, which now before thee 
 
 Lies dark in view, 
 Shall with beams of light from the inner glory 
 
 Be stricken through. 
 
 And like meadow mist through autumn's dawn 
 
 UprolHng thin, 
 Its thickest folds when about thee drawn 
 
 Let sunlight in. 
 
 My Soul and L 
 
 4 
 
 Guizot, 1787; J. F. Millet, 1814. 
 
 Beautiful yet for me this autumn day 
 Melts on its sunset hills ; and, far away, 
 163 
 
OCTOBER 
 
 For me the Ocean lifts its solemn psalm, 
 To me the pine-woods whisper ; and for me 
 Yon river, winding through its vales of calm, 
 By greenest banks, with asters purple-starred, 
 And gentian bloom and golden-rod made gay, 
 Flows down in silent gladness to the sea. 
 Like a pure spirit to its great reward ! 
 
 The Prisoners of Naples. 
 
 Jonathan Edwards, 1703. 
 
 In the church of the wilderness Edwards wrought, 
 
 Shaping his creed at the forge of thought ; 
 
 And with Thor's own hammer welded and bent 
 
 The iron links of his argument, 
 
 Which strove to grasp in its mighty span 
 
 The purpose of God and the fate of man ! 
 
 Yet faithful still, in his daily round 
 
 To the weak, and the poor, and sin-sick found, 
 
 The schoolman's lore and the casuist's art 
 
 Drew warmth and life from his fervent heart. 
 
 Had he not seen in the solitudes 
 
 Of his deep and dark Northampton woods 
 
 A vision of love about him fall ? 
 
 Not the blinding splendor which fell on Saul, 
 
 But the tenderer glory that rests on them 
 
 Who walk in the New Jerusalem, 
 
 Where never the sun nor moon are known, 
 
 But the Lord and His love are the light alone ! 
 
 The Preacher. 
 164 
 
OCTOBER 
 6 
 
 Jenny Lind, 1821. 
 
 Who hates, hates Thee, who loves becomes 
 
 Therein to Thee allied ; 
 All sweet accords of hearts and homes 
 
 In Thee are multiplied. 
 
 Deep strike Thy roots, O heavenly Vine, 
 
 Within our earthly sod, 
 
 Most human and yet most divine, 
 
 The flower of man and God ! 
 
 Our Master. 
 
 Robert Dinsmore, 1757. 
 
 A GENIAL, jovial, large-hearted old man, simple 
 as a child, and betraying, neither in look nor man- 
 ner, that he was accustomed to 
 
 " Feed on thoughts which voluntary move 
 Harmonious numbers." 
 
 Peace to him! ... In the ancient burial-ground 
 of Windham, by the side of his "beloved Molly," 
 and in view of the old meeting-house, there is a 
 mound of earth, where, every spring, green grasses 
 tremble in the wind, and the warm sunshine calls 
 out the flowers. There, gathered like one of his 
 own ripe sheaves, the farmer poet sleeps with his 
 fathers. 
 
 Robert Dinsmore. 
 165 
 
OCTOBER 
 8 
 
 E. C. Stedman, 1833 ; John Hay, 1839. 
 
 Poet and friend of poets, if thy glass 
 Detects no flower in winter's tuft of grass, 
 Let this slight token of the debt I owe 
 
 Outlive for thee December's frozen day, 
 And, like the arbutus budding under snow, 
 Take bloom and fragrance from some morn of 
 
 May 
 When he who gives it shall have gone the way 
 Where faith shall see and reverent trust shall 
 know. 
 
 To E. C. S. 
 [Dedication to At S7mdown.'\ 
 
 9 
 
 Cervantes, 1549; Giuseppe Verdi, 1813. 
 
 We dropped the seed o'er hill and plain, 
 
 Beneath the sun of May, 
 And frightened from our sprouting grain 
 
 The robber crows away. 
 
 All through the long, bright days of June 
 
 Its leaves grew green and fair, 
 And waved in hot midsummer's noon 
 
 Its soft and yellow hair. 
 
 And now, with autumn's moonlit eves, 
 Its harvest-time has come, 
 166 
 
OCTOBER 
 
 We pluck away the frosted leaves, 
 And bear the treasure home. 
 
 The Corn-Song. 
 
 lO 
 
 Benjamin West, 1738 ; Hugh Miller, 1802. 
 
 Autumn's earliest frost had given 
 
 To the woods below 
 Hues of beauty, such as heaven 
 
 Lendeth to its bow ; 
 And the soft breeze from the west 
 Scarcely broke their dreamy rest. 
 
 The Fountain. 
 
 II 
 
 Nowhere fairer, sweeter, rarer, 
 Does the golden-locked fruit bearer 
 
 Through his painted woodlands stray, 
 Than where hillside oaks and beeches 
 Overlook the long, blue reaches, 
 Silver coves and pebbled beaches, 
 
 And green isles of Casco Bay ; 
 
 Nowhere day, for delay. 
 With a tenderer look beseeches, 
 
 " Let me with my charmed earth stay." 
 
 The Ranger. 
 167 
 
OCTOBER 
 
 12 
 
 On all his sad or restless moods 
 The patient peace of Nature stole ; 
 
 The quiet of the fields and woods 
 Sank deep into his soul. 
 
 He worshipped as his fathers did, 
 And kept the faith of childish days, 
 
 And, howsoe'er he strayed or slid, 
 He loved the good old ways. 
 
 The simple tastes, the kindly traits, 
 The tranquil air, and gentle speech. 
 
 The silence of the soul that waits 
 For more than man to teach. 
 
 My Namesake. 
 
 13 
 
 Elizabeth Fry died, 1845. 
 
 The Gospel of a life like hers 
 
 Is more than books or scrolls. 
 From scheme and creed the light goes out, 
 
 The saintly fact survives ; 
 The blessed Master none can doubt 
 
 Revealed in holy lives. 
 
 The Friend's Burial. 
 168 
 
OCTOBER 
 14 
 
 William Penn, 1644. 
 
 Gathered from many sects, the Quaker brought 
 
 His old beliefs, adjusting to the thought 
 
 That moved his soul the creed his fathers taught : 
 
 One faith alone, so broad that all mankind 
 Within themselves its secret witness find, 
 The soul's communion with the Eternal mind. 
 
 The Spirit's law, the Inward Rule and Guide, 
 Scholar and peasant, lord and serf, allied, 
 The polished Penn and Cromwell's Ironside. 
 
 The Pennsylvania Pilgrim. 
 
 15 
 
 Allan Ramsay, i686 ; Wilhelm von Kaulbach, 1805. 
 
 The summer grains were harvested ; the stubble- 
 fields lay dry. 
 
 Where June winds rolled, in light and shade, the 
 pale green waves of rye ; 
 
 But still, on gentle hill-slopes, in valleys fringed 
 with wood, 
 
 Ungathered, bleaching in the sun, the heavy corn 
 crop stood. 
 
 Bent low, by autumn's wind and rain, through husks 
 
 that, dry and sere, 
 Unfolded from their ripened charge, shone out the 
 
 yellow ear ; 
 
 169 
 
OCTOBER 
 
 Beneath, the turnip lay concealed, in many a ver- 
 dant fold, 
 
 And glistened in the slanting light the pumpkin's 
 sphere of gold. 
 
 The Huskers. 
 
 i6 
 
 Noah Webster, 1758; Robert Stephenson, 1803. 
 
 Oh, fruit loved of boyhood! the old days recalling, 
 When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts 
 
 were falling ! 
 When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin, 
 Glaring out through the dark with a candle within ! 
 When we laughed round the corn-heap, with hearts 
 
 all in tune, 
 Our chair a broad pumpkin, — our lantern the 
 
 moon, 
 Telling tales of the fairy who travelled like steam, 
 In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for her 
 
 team ! 
 
 The Pumpkin. 
 
 17 
 
 Sir John Bowring, 1792. 
 
 With silence only as their benediction, 
 
 God's angels come 
 Where, in the shadow of a great affliction. 
 
 The soul sits dumb ! 
 170 
 
OCTOBER 
 
 Yet, would I say what thy own heart approveth : 
 
 Our Father's will, 
 Calling to Him the dear one whom He loveth, 
 
 Is mercy still. 
 
 God calls our loved ones, but we lose not wholly 
 
 What He hath given ; 
 They live on earth, in thought and deed, as truly 
 
 As in His heaven. 
 
 To My Friend on the Death of His Sister. 
 
 i8 
 
 St. Luke; Henry Taylor, 1800. 
 
 For lo ! in human hearts unseen 
 
 The Healer dwelleth still. 
 And they who make His temples clean 
 
 The best subserve His will. 
 
 The holiest task by Heaven decreed, 
 
 An errand all divine, 
 The burden of our common need 
 
 To render less is thine. 
 
 The Healer, 
 John Adams, 1735 ; Leigh Hunt, 1784. 
 
 It was the pleasant harvest-time, 
 When cellar-bins are closely stowed, 
 And garrets bend beneath their load, 
 171 
 
OCTOBER 
 
 And the old swallow-haunted barns, — 
 Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams 
 Through which the moted sunlight streams, 
 
 And winds blow freshly in, to shake 
 The red plumes of the roosted cocks, 
 And the loose hay-mow's scented locks, — 
 
 Are filled with summer's ripened stores. 
 Its odorous grass and barley sheaves, 
 From their low scaffolds to their eaves. 
 
 Mabel Martin. 
 
 20 
 
 Sir Christopher Wren, 1632 ; Thomas Hughes, 1823. 
 
 As long as a wandering pigeon shall search 
 The fields below from his white-oak perch, 
 When the barley-harvest is ripe and shorn. 
 And the dry husks fall from the standing corn ; 
 As long as Nature shall not grow old, 
 Nor drop her work from her doting hold, 
 And her care for the Indian corn forget, 
 And the yellow rows in pairs to set ; — 
 So long shall Christians here be born, 
 Grow up and ripen as God's sweet corn ! — 
 By the beak of bird, by the breath of frost, 
 Shall never a holy ear be lost, 
 But, husked by Death in the Planter's sight. 
 Be sown again in the fields of light ! 
 
 The Prophecy of Samuel Sewai 
 172 
 
OCTOBER 
 
 21 
 
 S. T. Coleridge, 1772; Alphonse de Lamartine, 1790. 
 
 It was late in mild October, and the long autumnal 
 rain 
 
 Had left the summer harvest-fields all green with 
 grass again ; 
 
 The first sharp frosts had fallen, leaving all the 
 woodlands gay 
 
 With the hues of summer's rainbow, or the meadow- 
 flowers of May. 
 
 Through a thin, dry mist, that morning, the sun 
 
 rose broad and red, 
 At first a rayless disk of fire, he brightened as he 
 
 sped ; 
 Yet, even his noontide glory fell chastened and 
 
 subdued, 
 On the cornfields and the orchards, and softly 
 
 pictured wood. 
 
 The Huskers. 
 
 22 
 
 Franz Liszt, 1811. 
 
 And all that quiet afternoon, slow sloping to the 
 
 night, 
 He wove with golden shuttle the haze with yellow 
 
 light ; 
 
 173 
 
OCTOBER 
 
 Slanting through the painted beeches, he glorified 
 
 the hill ; 
 And, beneath it, pond and meadow lay brighter, 
 
 greener still. 
 
 From spire and barn looked westerly the patient 
 weathercocks ; 
 
 But even the birches on the hill stood motionless 
 as rocks. 
 
 No sound was in the woodlands, save the squirrel's 
 dropping shell, 
 
 And the yellow leaves among the boughs, low rus- 
 tling as they fell. 
 
 The Huskers. 
 
 23 
 Francis Jeffrey, 1773. 
 
 With mingled sound of horns and bells, 
 
 A far-heard clang, the wild geese fly, 
 Storm-sent, from Arctic moors and fells, 
 
 Like a great arrow through the sky, 
 Two dusky hues converged in one. 
 Chasing the southward-flying sun; 
 While the brave snow-bird and the hardy jay 
 Call to them from the pines, as if to bid them stay. 
 
 The Last Walk in Autumn. 
 
OCTOBER 
 24 
 
 Daniel Webster died, 1852. 
 
 Ah, cruel fate, that closed to thee, 
 O sleeper by the Northern sea, 
 The gates of opportunity ! 
 God fills the gaps of human need, 
 Each crisis brings its word and deed. 
 Wise men and strong we did not lack ; 
 But still, with memory turning back, 
 In the dark hours we thought of thee, 
 And thy lone grave beside the sea. 
 
 But, where thy native mountains bare 
 Their foreheads to diviner air, 
 Fit emblem of enduring fame, 
 One lofty summit keeps thy name. 
 And evermore that mountain mass 
 Seems climbing from the shadowy pass 
 To light, as if to manifest 
 Thy nobler self, thy life at best ! 
 
 The Lost Occasion. 
 
 25 
 
 Lord Macaulay, iSoo. 
 
 He who lies where the minster's groined arches 
 curve down 
 
 To the tomb-crowded transept of England's re- 
 nown, 
 
 17s 
 
OCTOBER 
 
 The glorious essayist, by genius enthroned, 
 Whose pen as a sceptre the Muses all owned, — 
 
 How vainly he labored to sully with blame 
 
 The white bust of Penn, in the niche of his 
 
 fame ! . . . 
 For the sake of his gifts, and the works that outlive 
 
 him. 
 And his brave words for freedom, we freely forgive 
 
 him ! 
 
 The Quaker Alumni. 
 
 26 
 
 Count von Moltke, 1800. 
 
 Search thine own heart. What paineth thee 
 In others in thyself may be ; 
 All dust is frail, all flesh is weak ; 
 Be thou the true man thou dost seek ! 
 
 The Chapel of the Hermits. 
 
 27 
 
 The blessing of her quiet life 
 
 Fell on us like the dew ; 
 And good thoughts where her footsteps pressed 
 
 Like fairy blossoms grew. 
 
 Sweet promptings unto kindest deeds 
 
 Were in her very look ; 
 We read her face, as one who reads 
 
 A true and holy book : 
 176 
 
GONI 
 
 OCTOBER 
 
 The measure of a blessed hymn, 
 To which our hearts could move ; 
 
 The breathing of an inward psalm, 
 A canticle of love. 
 
 28 
 
 Erasmus, 1467. 
 
 Fringed with gold their mantles flow 
 On the slopes of westering knolls ; 
 
 In the wind they whisper low 
 Of the Sunset Land of Souls. 
 
 Doubt who may, O friend of mine ! 
 
 Thou and I have seen them too ; 
 On before with beck and sign 
 
 Still they glide, and we pursue. . . . 
 
 Gentle eyes we closed below, 
 Tender voices heard once more, 
 
 Smile and call us, as they go 
 On and onward, still before. 
 
 The Vanishers. 
 
 29 
 
 John Keats, 1795. 
 
 God's angels come not as of old 
 The Syrian shepherds knew them ; 
 
 In reddening dawns, in sunset gold. 
 And warm noon lights I view them. 
 177 
 
OCTOBER 
 
 Nor need there is, in times like this 
 When heaven to earth draws nearer, 
 
 Of wing or song as witnesses 
 To make their presence clearer. 
 
 O stream of life, whose swifter flow 
 
 Is of the end forewarning, 
 Methinks thy sundown afterglow 
 
 Seems less of night than morning ! 
 
 St. Martin's Summer. 
 
 30 
 
 Enough that blessings undeserved 
 Have marked my erring track ; — 
 
 That whereso'er my feet have swerved. 
 His chastening turned me back; — 
 
 That more and more a Providence 
 
 Of love is understood. 
 Making the springs of time and sense 
 
 Sweet with eternal good ; — 
 
 That death seems but a covered way 
 
 Which opens into light, 
 Wherein no blinded child can stray 
 
 Beyond the Father's sight. 
 
 My Psalm. 
 178 
 
OCTOBER 
 
 All Hallows Eve ; John Evelyn, 1620. 
 
 If it be true that, according to Cornelius Agrippa, 
 *'a wood fire doth drive away dark spirits," it is, 
 nevertheless, also true that around it the simple 
 superstitions of our ancestors still love to linger; 
 and there the half-sportful, half-serious charms of 
 which I have spoken are oftenest resorted to. 
 
 Within the circle of the light of the open fire 
 safely might the young conjurers question destiny; 
 for none but kindly and gentle messengers from 
 Wonderland could venture among them. And who 
 of us, looking back to those long autumnal even- 
 ings of childhood when the glow of the kitchen-fire 
 rested on the beloved faces of home, does not feel 
 that there is truth and beauty in what the quaint 
 old author just quoted affirms ? " As the spirits of 
 darkness grow stronger in the dark, so good spirits, 
 which are angels of light, are multiplied and strength- 
 ened, not only by the divine light of the sun and 
 stars, but also by the light of our common wood- 
 fires." 
 
 Charms and Fairy Faith. 
 179 
 
A DAY 
 
 Talk not of sad November, when a day 
 Of warm, glad sunshine fills the sky of noon, 
 And a wind, borrowed from some morn of June, 
 
 Stirs the brown grasses and the leafless spray. 
 
 On the unfrosted pool the pillared pines 
 
 Lay their long shafts of shadow : the small rill, 
 Singing a pleasant song of summer still, 
 
 A line of silver, down the hill-slope shines. 
 
 Hushed the bird-voices and the hum of bees, 
 In the thin grass the crickets pipe no more ; 
 But still the squirrel hoards his winter store. 
 
 And drops his nutshells from the shag-bark trees. 
 
 Softly the dark green hemlocks whisper : high 
 Above, the spires of yellowing larches show, 
 Where the woodpecker and home-loving crow 
 
 And jay and nut-hatch winter's threat defy. 
 
 O gracious beauty, ever new and old ! 
 
 O sights and sounds of nature, doubly dear 
 When the low sunshine warns the closing year 
 
 Of snow-blown fields and waves of Arctic cold ! 
 1 80 
 
NOVEMBER 
 
 Close to my heart I fold each lovely thing 
 The sweet day yields ; and, not disconsolate, 
 With the calm patience of the woods I wait 
 
 For leaf and blossom when God gives us Spring ! 
 
 l8i 
 
NOVEMBER 
 
 All Saints; Antonio Canova, 1757. 
 
 Where now with pain thou treadest, trod 
 The whitest of the saints of God ! 
 To show thee where their feet were set, 
 The light which led them shineth yet. 
 
 The footprints of the life divine, 
 Which marked their path, remain in thine; 
 And that great Life, transfused in theirs, 
 Awaits thy faith, thy love, thy prayers ! 
 
 The Chapel of the Hermits. 
 
 2 
 
 Marie Antoinette, 1755. 
 
 Soon or late to all our dwellings come the spectres 
 
 of the mind, 
 Doubts and fears and dread forebodings, in the 
 
 darkness undefined ; 
 Round us throng the grim projections of the heart 
 
 and of the brain. 
 And our pride of strength is weakness, and the 
 
 cunning hand is vain. 
 
 In the dark we cry like children ; and no answer 
 
 from on high 
 Breaks the crystal spheres of silence, and no white 
 
 wings downward fly; 
 
 182 
 
NOVEMBER 
 
 But the heavenly help we pray for comes to faith, 
 
 and not to sight, 
 And our prayers themselves drive backward all the 
 
 spirits of the night ! 
 
 The Garrison of Cape Ann. 
 
 3 
 
 William Cullen Bryant, 1794. 
 
 We praise not now the poet's art, 
 The rounded beauty of his song; 
 
 Who weighs him from his life apart 
 Must do his nobler nature wrong. 
 
 Not for the eye, familiar grown 
 
 With charms to common sight denied, — 
 The marvellous gift he shares alone 
 
 With him who walked on Rydal-side. 
 
 Not for rapt hymn nor woodland lay, 
 Too grave for smiles, too sweet for tears ; 
 
 We speak his praise who wears to-day 
 The glory of his seventy years. 
 
 1864. Bryant on his Birthday. 
 
 4 
 
 James Montgomery, 1771. 
 
 The grass is browning on the hills; 
 
 No pale, belated flowers recall 
 The astral fringes of the rills, 
 183 
 
NOVEMBER 
 
 And drearily the dead vines fall, 
 Frost-blackened, from the roadside wall. 
 
 Yet through the gray and sombre wood, 
 Against the dusk of fir and pine, 
 
 Last of their floral sisterhood. 
 
 The hazel's yellow blossoms shine, 
 The tawny gold of Afric's mine ! 
 
 Hazel-Blossoms. 
 
 Washington Allston, 1779. 
 
 Along the river's summer walk. 
 
 The withered tufts of asters nod ; 
 And trembles on its arid stalk 
 
 The hoar plume of the golden-rod. 
 And on a ground of sombre fir. 
 And azure-studded juniper. 
 The silver birch its buds of purple shows, 
 And scarlet berries tell where bloomed the sweet 
 wild-rose ! 
 
 The Last Walk in Autumn. 
 
 6 
 
 C. C. Felton, 1807; Richard Jefferies, 1848. 
 
 Our hearts grow cold, 
 We lightly hold 
 A right which brave men died to gain ; 
 184 
 
NOVEMBER 
 
 The stake, the cord, 
 
 The axe, the sword, 
 
 Grim nurses at its birth of pain. 
 
 Look from the sky, 
 
 Like God's great eye. 
 Thou solemn moon, with searching beam, 
 
 Till in the sight 
 
 Of thy pure light 
 Our mean self-seekings meaner seem. 
 
 The Eve of Election. 
 
 That care and trial seem at last, 
 Through Memory's sunset air. 
 
 Like mountain-ranges overpast, 
 In purple distance fair; — 
 
 That all the jarring notes of life 
 Seem blending in a psalm, 
 
 And all the angles of its strife 
 Slow rounding into calm. 
 
 And so the shadows fall apart, 
 And so the west-winds play ; 
 
 And all the windows of my heart 
 I open to the day. 
 
 My Psalm. 
 
 185 
 
NOVEMBER 
 8 
 
 Robert, Earl Lytton, 1831. 
 
 The summer and the winter here 
 
 Midway a truce are holding, 
 A soft, consenting atmosphere 
 
 Their tents of peace enfolding. 
 
 The silent woods, the lonely hills, 
 Rise solemn in their gladness ; 
 
 The quiet that the valley fills 
 Is scarcely joy or sadness. 
 
 St. Martin's Summer. 
 
 My autumn time and Nature's hold 
 
 A dreamy tryst together, 
 And, both grown old, about us fold 
 
 The golden-tissued weather. 
 
 I lean my heart against the day 
 
 To feel its bland caressing; 
 I will not let it pass away 
 
 Before it leaves its blessing. 
 
 St. Martin's Summer. 
 
 186 
 
NOVEMBER 
 lo 
 
 Luther, 1483; Goldsmith, 1728; Schiller, 1759; S. G. Howe, 1801. 
 
 Smile not, fair unbeliever ! 
 
 One man, at least, I know, 
 Who might wear the crest of Bayard 
 
 Or Sidney's plume of snow. 
 
 True as the knights of story, 
 
 Sir Lancelot and his peers, 
 Brave in his calm endurance 
 
 As they in tilt of spears. 
 
 Wouldst know him now ? Behold him, 
 
 The Cadmus of the blind, 
 Giving the dumb lip language. 
 
 The idiot clay a mind. 
 
 The Hero. 
 
 II 
 
 Martinmas; T. B. Aldrich, 1836. 
 
 Though flowers have perished at the touch 
 
 Of Frost, the early comer, 
 I hail the season loved so much, 
 
 The good St. Martin's summer. 
 
 O gracious morn, with rose-red dawn, 
 And thin moon curving o'er it! 
 
 The old year's darling, latest born, 
 More loved than all before it ! 
 187 
 
NOVEMBER 
 
 The sweet day, opening as a flower 
 
 Unfolds its petals tender, 
 Renews for us at noontide's hour 
 
 The summer's tempered splendor. 
 
 St. Martin's Summer. 
 
 Richard Baxter, 1615. 
 
 The " Call to the Unconverted " and the " Saints' 
 Everlasting Rest " belong to no time or sect. They 
 speak the universal language of the wants and de- 
 sires of the human soul. They take hold of the 
 awful verities of life and death, righteousness and 
 judgment to come. Through them the suffering 
 and hunted minister of Kidderminster has spoken 
 in warning, entreaty, and rebuke, or in tones of ten- 
 derest love and pity, to the hearts of the genera- 
 tions which have succeeded him. 
 
 Richard Baxter. 
 St. Augustine, 354; Tegner, 17S2; Edwin Booth, 1833. 
 
 The fourteen centuries fall away 
 
 Between us and the Afric saint. 
 And at his side we urge, to-day, 
 The immemorial quest and old complaint- 
 No outward sign to us is given, — 
 
 From sea or earth comes no reply ; 
 Hushed as the warm Numidian heaven 
 He vainly questioned, bends our frozen sky. 
 
NOVEMBER 
 
 No victory comes of all our strife, — 
 
 From all we grasp the meaning slips ; 
 The Sphinx sits at the gate of life, 
 With the old question on her awful lips. 
 
 The Shadow and the Light. 
 
 14 
 
 L. J. M. Daguerre, 1787; Sir Charles Lyell, 1797. 
 
 I HAVE no answer for myself or thee, 
 
 Save that I learned beside my mother's knee ; 
 
 " All is of God that is, and is to be ; 
 
 And God is good." Let this suffice us still, 
 Resting in childlike trust upon His will 
 
 Who moves to His great ends unthwarted by the 
 ill. 
 
 Trust. 
 
 15 
 
 William Cowper, 1731; R. H. Dana, 1787. 
 
 And if the tender ear be jarred 
 
 That, haply, hears by turns 
 The saintly harp of Olney's bard, 
 
 The pastoral pipe of Burns, 
 No discord mars His perfect plan 
 
 Who gave them both a tongue ; 
 Fo;: he who sings the love of man 
 
 The love of God hath sung ! 
 
 Burks Festival. 
 189 
 
NOVEMBER 
 i6 
 
 John Bright, 1811 ; Charles Eliot Norton, 1827, 
 
 Press on ! — the triumph shall be won 
 Of common rights and equal laws, 
 
 The glorious dream of Harrington, 
 And Sidney's good old cause : 
 
 Blessing the cotter and the crown, 
 Sweetening worn Labor's bitter cup; 
 
 And, plucking not the highest down. 
 Lifting the lowest up. 
 
 To THE Reformers of England. 
 
 17 
 
 Sir Charles Eastlake, 1793; George Grote, 1794. 
 
 The dear Christ dwells not afar, 
 The king of some remoter star, 
 Listening, at times, with flattered ear 
 To homage wrung from selfish fear, 
 But here, amidst the poor and blind, 
 The bound and suffering of our kind, 
 In works we do, in prayers we pray, 
 Life of our life. He lives to-day. 
 
 The Meeting. 
 
 190 
 
' ' NOVEMBER 
 i8 
 
 David Wilkie, 1785; Asa Gray, 1810. 
 
 O'er the bare woods, whose outstretched hands 
 
 Plead with the leaden heavens in vain, 
 I see, beyond the valley lands, 
 
 The sea's long level dim with rain. 
 Around me all things, stark and dumb, 
 Seem praying for the snows to come, 
 And, for the summer bloom and greenness gone, 
 With winter's sunset lights and dazzling morn 
 atone. 
 
 The Last Walk in Autumn. 
 
 19 
 
 Elisha Mulford, 1833. 
 
 Unnoted as the setting of a star 
 
 He passed ; and sect and party scarcely knew 
 When from their midst a sage and seer with- 
 drew 
 
 To fitter audience, where the great dead are 
 In God's republic of the heart and mind, 
 Leaving no purer, nobler soul behind. 
 
 Mulford. 
 
 20 
 
 Thomas Chatterton, 7752 ; Queen Margherita, 1851. 
 
 Forever round the Mercy-seat 
 
 The guiding lights of Love shall burn ; 
 191 
 
NOVEMBER 
 
 But what if, habit-bound, thy feet 
 Shall lack the will to turn? 
 
 What if thine eye refuse to see, 
 
 Thine ear of Heaven's free welcome fail, 
 And thou a willing captive be, 
 
 Thyself thy own dark jail ? 
 
 Oh, doom beyond the saddest guess. 
 As the long years of God unroll. 
 
 To make thy dreary selfishness 
 The prison of a soul ! 
 
 The Answer. 
 
 21 
 
 Bryan Waller Procter, 1787. 
 
 Never yet in darkest mood 
 Doubted I that Thou wast good. 
 Nor mistook my will for fate, 
 Pain of sin for heavenly hate, — 
 Never dreamed the gates of pearl 
 Rise from out the burning marl. 
 Or that good can only live 
 Of the bad conservative. 
 And through counterpoise of hell 
 Heaven alone be possible. 
 
 Andrew Rykman's Prayer. 
 
 [92 
 
NOVEMBER 
 
 22 
 " George Eliot," 1819. 
 
 Before the Ender comes, whose charioteer 
 Is swift or slow Disease, lay up each year 
 Thy harvests of well-doing, wealth that kings 
 Nor thieves can take away. When all the things 
 Thou callest thine, goods, pleasures, honors fall, 
 Thou in thy virtue shalt survive them all. 
 
 Laying up Treasure. 
 
 Fairer hands never wrought at a pastry more fine, 
 Brighter eyes never watched o'er its baking, than 
 
 thine ! 
 And the prayer, which my mouth is too full to ex- 
 press. 
 Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less. 
 That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below, 
 And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin-vine 
 
 grow. 
 And thy life be as sweet, and its last sunset sky 
 Golden-tinted and fair as thy own Pumpkin pie ! 
 
 The Pumpkin. 
 
 24 
 
 Laurence Sterne, 1713; H. T. Buckle, 1821. 
 
 The horn, on Sabbath morning, through the still 
 and frosty air. 
 From Spurwink, Pool, and Black Point, called to 
 sermon and to prayer, 
 193 
 
NOVEMBER 
 
 To the goodly house of worship, where, in order 
 
 due and fit, 
 As by public vote directed, classed and ranked the 
 
 people sit ; 
 
 Mistress first and goodwife after, clerkly squire 
 
 before the clown, 
 From the brave coat, lace-embroidered, to the gray 
 
 frock, shading down. 
 
 Mary Garvin. 
 
 25 
 
 The wise old Doctor went his round, 
 Just pausing at our door to say, 
 In the brief autocratic way 
 Of one who, prompt at Duty's call, 
 Was free to urge her claim on all, 
 
 That some poor neighbor sick abed 
 At night our mother's aid would need. 
 For, one in generous thought and deed, 
 
 What mattered in the sufferer's sight 
 
 The Quaker matron's inward light. 
 The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed ? 
 All hearts confess the saints elect 
 
 Who, twain in faith, in love agree, 
 And melt not in an acid sect 
 
 The Christian pearl of charity ! 
 
 Snow-Bound. 
 194 
 
NOVEMBER 
 
 Empress Marie Feodorovna, 1847. 
 
 Ah ! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and 
 
 from West, 
 From North and from South come the pilgrim and 
 
 guest, 
 When the gray-haired New-Englander sees round 
 
 his board 
 The old broken links of affection restored, 
 When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once 
 
 more, 
 And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled 
 
 before. 
 
 The Pumpkin. 
 
 27 
 
 Frances Anne Kemble, 1809. 
 
 Still on the lips of all we question 
 The finger of God's silence lies ; 
 
 Will the lost hands in ours be folded } 
 Will the shut eyelids ever rise ? 
 
 O friend ! no proof beyond this yearning, 
 This outreach of our hearts, we need ; 
 
 God will not mock the hope He giveth, 
 No love He prompts shall vainly plead. 
 
 No dreary splendors wait our coming 
 Where 4"apt ghost sits from ghost apart ; 
 195 
 
NOVEMBER 
 
 Homeward we go to Heaven's thanksgiving, 
 The harvest-gathering of the heart. 
 
 To LvDiA Maria Child. 
 
 28 
 
 William Blake, 1757. 
 
 O Christ of God ! whose life and death 
 
 Our own have reconciled, 
 Most quietly, most tenderly 
 
 Take home Thy star-named child ! 
 
 Thy grace is in her patient eyes, 
 Thy words are on her tongue ; 
 
 The very silence round her seems 
 As if the angels sung. 
 
 Her smile is as a listening child's 
 
 Who hears its mother call ; 
 The lilies of Thy perfect peace 
 
 About her pillow fall. 
 
 Oh, less for her than for ourselves 
 We bow our heads and pray ; 
 
 Her setting star, like Bethlehem's, 
 To Thee shall point the way ! 
 
 Vesta 
 
 196 
 
NOVEMBER 
 29 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney, 1554 
 
 Better to use the bit, than throw 
 The reins all loose on fancy's neck. 
 
 The liberal range of Art should be 
 
 The breadth of Christian liberty, 
 Restrained alone by challenge and alarm 
 Where its charmed footsteps tread the border 
 
 land of harm. 
 
 The Tent on the Beach. 
 
 30 
 
 St. Andrew; Jonathan Swift, 1667; Theodor Mommsen, 1817, 
 
 Let the lowliest task be mine. 
 Grateful, so the work be Thine ; 
 Let me find the humblest place 
 In the shadow of Thy grace : 
 Blest to me were any spot 
 Where temptation whispers not. 
 If there be some weaker one, 
 Give me strength to help him on ; 
 If a blinder soul there be, 
 Let me guide him nearer Thee, 
 Make my mortal dreams come true 
 With the work I fain would do ; 
 Clothe with life the weak intent, 
 Let me be the thing I meant. 
 
 Andrew Rykman's Prayer. 
 197 
 
SDeccmbct 
 
 A CHRISTMAS CARMEN 
 
 Sound over all waters, reach out from all lands, 
 
 The chorus of voices, the clasping of hands ; 
 
 Sing hymns that were sung by the stars of the 
 
 morn. 
 Sing songs of the angels when Jesus was born ! 
 
 With glad jubilations 
 
 Bring hope to the nations ! 
 The dark night is ending and dawn has begun : 
 Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun, 
 All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one ! 
 
 Sing the bridal of nations ! with chorals of love 
 Sing out the war-vulture and sing in the dove, 
 Till the hearts of the peoples keep time in accord, 
 And the voice of the world is the voice of the 
 Lord ! 
 Clasp hands of the nations 
 In strong gratulations: 
 The dark night is ending and dawn has begun ; 
 Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun, 
 All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one ! 
 198 
 
DECEMBER 
 
 III 
 
 Blow, bugles of battle, the marches of peace ; 
 East, west, north, and south let the long quarrel 
 
 cease : 
 Sing the song of great joy that the angels began, 
 Sing of glory to God and of good-will to man ! 
 Hark! joining in chorus 
 The heavens bend o'er us ! 
 The dark night is ending and dawn has begun ; 
 Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun. 
 
 All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one ! 
 199 
 
DECEMBER 
 
 Alexandra, Princess of Wales, 1844, 
 
 The sun that brief December day 
 Rose cheerless over hills of gray, 
 And, darkly circled, gave at noon 
 A sadder light than waning moon. 
 Slow tracing down the thickening sky 
 Its mute and ominous prophecy, 
 A portent seeming less than threat, 
 It sank from sight before it set. 
 A hard, dull bitterness of cold, 
 That checked, mid-vein, the circHng race 
 Of life-blood in the sharpened face, 
 The coming of the snow-storm told. 
 The wind blew east ; we heard the roar 
 Of Ocean on his wintry shore, 
 And felt the strong pulse throbbing there 
 Beat with low rhythm our inland air. 
 
 Snow-Bound. 
 
 Pedro II. of Brazil, 1825. 
 
 To Thee our full humanity, 
 Its joys and pains, belong ; 
 
 The wrong of man to man on Thee 
 Inflicts a deeper wrong. 
 
 To do Thy will is more than praise, 
 As words are less than deeds, 
 200 
 
DECEMBER 
 
 And simple trust can find Thy ways 
 We miss with chart of creeds. 
 
 Alone, O Love ineffable ! 
 
 Thy saving name is given ; 
 To turn aside from Thee is hell, 
 
 To walk with Thee is heaven ! 
 
 Our Master. 
 
 3 
 
 Mary Lamb, 1764; Sir Frederick Leighton, 1830. 
 
 O Love Divine ! — whose constant beam 
 
 Shines on the eyes that will not see, 
 And waits to bless us, while we dream 
 Thou leavest us because we turn from Thee ! 
 
 All souls that struggle and aspire. 
 
 All hearts of prayer by Thee are lit ; 
 And, dim or clear, thy tongues of fire 
 On dusky tribes and twilight centuries sit. 
 
 Nor bounds, nor clime, nor creed Thou know'st, 
 
 Wide as our need Thy favors fall ; 
 The white wings of the Holy Ghost 
 Stoop, seen or unseen, o'er the heads of all. 
 
 The Shadow and the Light. 
 201 
 
DECEMBER 
 4 
 
 Thomas Carlyle, 1795. 
 
 Fade, pomp of dreadful imagery 
 Wherewith mankind have deified 
 Their hate, and selfishness, and pride ! 
 
 Let the scared dreamer wake to see 
 The Christ of Nazareth at his side ! 
 
 The world sits at the feet of Christ, 
 Unknowing, blind, and unconsoled ; 
 It yet shall touch His garment's fold, 
 
 And feel the heavenly Alchemist 
 Transform its very dust to gold. 
 
 The Over-Heart. 
 
 5 
 
 Martin Van Buren, 1782 ; " E. Marlitt,"' 1825. 
 
 Age brought him no despairing 
 Of the world's future faring ; 
 In human nature still 
 He found more good than ill. 
 
 Hater of din and riot, 
 He lived in days unquiet ; 
 And, lover of all beauty, 
 Trod the hard ways of duty. 
 
 An Autograph. 
 
 202 
 
DECEMBER 
 6 
 
 R. H. Barham, 1788. 
 
 Others shall sing the song, 
 Others shall right the wrong, • 
 Finish what I begin, 
 And all I fail of win. 
 
 What matter, I or they ? 
 Mine or another's day, 
 So the right word be said 
 And life the sweeter made ? 
 
 Hail to the coming singers ! 
 Hail to the brave light-bringers ! 
 Forward I reach and share 
 All that they sing and dare. 
 
 Mv Triumph. 
 
 Elizabeth Whittier, 1815. 
 
 As one who held herself a part 
 Of all she saw, and let her heart 
 
 Against the household bosom lean, 
 Upon the motley-braided mat 
 Our youngest and our dearest sat. 
 Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes. 
 
 Now bathed in the unfading green 
 And holy peace of Paradise. 
 
 203 
 
DECEMBER 
 
 I cannot feel that thou art far, 
 Since near at need the angels are ; 
 And when the sunset gates unbar, 
 
 Shall I not see thee waiting stand, 
 And, white against the evening star, 
 
 The welcome of thy beckoning hand ? 
 
 Snow-Bound. 
 
 8 
 
 Lady Anne Barnard, 1750. 
 
 Nor mine the hope of Indra's son, 
 Of slumbering in oblivion's rest, 
 
 Life's myriads blending into one, 
 In blank annihilation blest. 
 
 No! I have friends in Spirit Land, — 
 Not shadows in a shadowy band. 
 
 Not others, but themselves are they.. 
 And still I think of them the same 
 As when the Master's summons came ; 
 Their change, — the holy mornlight breaking 
 Upon the dream-worn sleeper, waking, — 
 
 A change from twilight into day. 
 
 Lucy Hooper. 
 
 9 
 
 John Milton, 1608. 
 
 The new world honors him whose lofty plea 
 For England's freedom made her own more sure, 
 204 
 
DECEMBER 
 
 Whose song, immortal as its theme, shall be 
 
 Their common freehold while both worlds endure. 
 
 Milton. 
 [^Inscription on the Memorial Window in St. Margarefs 
 Church., Westminster.] 
 
 lO 
 
 William Lloyd Garrison, 1805. 
 
 From lips that Sinai's trumpet blew 
 We heard a tender undersong ; 
 
 Thy very wrath from pity grew, 
 
 From love of man thy hate of wrong. 
 
 Now past and present are as one ; 
 
 The life below is life above ; 
 Thy mortal years have but begun 
 
 The immortality of love. 
 
 Go, leave behind thee all that mars 
 The work below of man for man ; 
 
 With the white legions of the stars 
 Do service such as angels can. 
 
 Garrison. 
 
 II 
 
 Hector Berlioz, 1803 ; Alfred de Musset, 1810. 
 
 O LIVING friends who love me ! 
 
 dear ones gone above me ! 
 Careless of other fame, 
 
 1 leave to you my name. 
 
 205 
 
DECEMBER 
 
 Hide it from idle praises. 
 
 Save it from evil phrases : 
 
 Why, when dear lips that spake it 
 
 Are dumb, should strangers wake it ? 
 
 Let the thick curtain fall ; 
 I better know than all 
 How little I have gained. 
 How vast the unattained. 
 
 My Triumph. 
 
 12 
 
 John Jay, 1745 ; F. H. Hedge, 1805. 
 
 Beyond the poet's sweet dream lives 
 
 The eternal epic of the man. 
 He wisest is who only gives. 
 
 True to himself, the best he can ; 
 Who, drifting in the winds of praise, 
 The inward monitor obeys ; 
 And, with the boldness that confesses fear, 
 Takes in the crowded sail, and lets his conscience 
 steer. 
 
 The Tent on the Beach. 
 
 13 
 
 Artliur Peiirliyn Stanley, 1815; Phillips Brooks, 1835. 
 
 A TRUE life is at once interpreter and proof of 
 the Gospel. 
 
 Introduction to Woolman's Journal. 
 206 
 
' DECEMBER 
 
 Still shines the light of holy lives 
 
 Like star-beams over doubt; 
 Each sainted memor}-, Christlike, drives 
 
 Some dark possession out. 
 
 William Forster. 
 
 14 
 
 Washington died, 1799. 
 
 Our first and best ! — his ashes lie 
 
 Beneath his own Virginian sky. 
 Forgive, forget, O true and just and brave, 
 The storm that swept above thy sacred grave ! 
 
 For, ever in the awful strife 
 
 And dark hours of the nation's life. 
 
 Through the fierce tumult pierced his warning 
 word. 
 
 Their father's voice his erring children heard ! 
 
 The Vow of Washington, 
 La Rochefoucauld, 1613. 
 
 O Lord and Master of us all ! 
 
 Whate'er our name or sign, 
 We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call, 
 
 We test our lives by Thine. 
 
 Our thoughts lie open to Thy sight ; 
 And, naked to Thy glance, 
 207 
 
DECEMBER 
 
 Our secret sins are in the light 
 Of Thy pure countenance. 
 
 Thy healing pains, a keen distress 
 Thy tender light shines in; 
 
 Thy sweetness is the bitterness, 
 Thy grace the pang of sin. 
 
 Our Master. 
 
 i6 
 
 George Whitefield, 1714; Jane Austen, 1775. 
 
 Lo ! by the Merrimack Whitefield stands 
 
 In the temple that never was made by hands, — 
 
 Curtains of azure, and crystal wall. 
 
 And dome of the sunshine over all ! — 
 
 A homeless pilgrim, with dubious name 
 
 Blown about on the winds of fame ; 
 
 Now as an angel of blessing classed, 
 
 And now as a mad enthusiast. 
 
 Called in his youth to sound and gauge 
 
 The moral lapse of his race and age, 
 
 And, sharp as truth, the contrast draw 
 
 Of human frailty and perfect law; 
 
 Possessed by the one dread thought that lent 
 
 Its goad to his fiery temperament, 
 
 Up and down the world he went, 
 
 A John the Baptist crying, Repent ! 
 
 The Preacher. 
 
 208 
 
DECEMBER 
 
 Beethoven, 1770; John Greenleaf Whittier, 1807. 
 
 Beside that milestone where the level sun, 
 Nigh unto setting, sheds his last, low rays 
 
 On word and work irrevocably done, 
 
 Life's blending threads of good and ill outspun, 
 I hear, O friends ! your words of cheer and praise, 
 
 Half doubtful if myself or otherwise. 
 Like him who, in the old Arabian joke, 
 A beggar slept and crowned Caliph woke. 
 
 Thanks not the less. With not unglad surprise 
 
 I see my life-work through your partial eyes; 
 
 Assured, in giving to my home-taught songs 
 
 A higher value than of right belongs, 
 
 You do but read between the written lines 
 
 The finer grace of unfulfilled designs. 
 
 1877. Response. 
 
 18 
 
 Constitutional Amendment Abolishing Slavery, 1865. 
 
 How they pale, 
 Ancient myth and song and tale. 
 
 In this wonder of our days. 
 When the cruel rod of war 
 Blossoms white with righteous law, 
 
 And the wrath of man is praise ! 
 
 Ring and swing, 
 Bells of joy ! On morning's wing 
 209 
 
DECEMBER 
 
 Send the song of praise abroad ! 
 With a sound of broken chains 
 Tell the nations that He reigns, 
 
 Who alone is Lord and God ! 
 
 Laus Deo. 
 
 19 
 
 He saw her lift her eyes ; he felt 
 
 The soft hand's light caressing, 
 And heard the tremble of her voice, 
 
 As if a fault confessing. 
 
 " I 'm sorry that I spelt the word : 
 
 I hate to go above you, 
 Because," — the brown eyes lower fell, — 
 
 " Because, you see, I love you ! " 
 
 Still memory to a gray-haired man 
 That sweet child-face is showing. 
 
 Dear girl ! the grasses on her grave 
 Have forty years been growing ! 
 
 He lives to learn, in life's hard school, 
 
 How few who pass above him 
 Lament their triumph and his loss, 
 
 Like her, — because they love him. 
 
 In School-Days. 
 
DECEMBER 
 
 20 
 
 Let the icy north-wind blow 
 The trumpets of the coming storm. 
 To arrowy sleet and bhnding snow 
 
 Yon slanting lines of rain transform. 
 Young hearts shall hail the drifted cold, 
 As gayly as I did of old ; 
 And I, who watch them through the frosty pane, 
 Unenvious, live in them my boyhood o'er again. 
 The Last Walk in Autumn. 
 
 21 
 
 Leopold von Ranke, 1795 ; Lord Beaconsfield, 1804. 
 
 Dear to me these far, faint glimpses of the dual 
 life of old. 
 
 Inward, grand with awe and reverence ; outward, 
 mean and coarse and cold ; 
 
 Gleams of mystic beauty playing over dull and 
 vulgar clay, 
 
 Golden-threaded fancies weaving in a web of hod- 
 den gray. 
 
 The great eventful Present hides the Past; but 
 
 through the din 
 Of its loud life hints and echoes from the life 
 
 behind steal in ; 
 
 211 
 
DECEMBER 
 
 And the lore of home and fireside, and the legen- 
 dary rhyme, 
 
 Make the task of duty lighter which the true man 
 owes his time. 
 
 The Garrison of Cape Ann. 
 
 22 
 
 Landing of the Pilgrims, 1620. 
 
 Sad Mayflower ! watched by winter stars, 
 
 And nursed by winter gales, 
 With petals of the sleeted spars, 
 
 And leaves of frozen sails ! 
 
 What had she in those dreary hours, 
 
 Within her ice-rimmed bay, 
 In common with the wild-wood flowers, 
 
 The first sweet smiles of May ? 
 
 " God wills it : here our rest shall be, 
 
 Our years of wandering o'er ; 
 For us the Mayflower of the sea 
 
 Shall spread her sails no more." 
 
 So live the fathers in their sons, 
 
 Their sturdy faith be ours, 
 And ours the love that overruns 
 
 Its rocky strength with flowers. 
 
 The Mayflowers. 
 212 
 
DECEMBER 
 23 
 
 Sir Richard Arkwright, 1732 ; C. A. Sainte-Beuve, 1804. 
 
 Ask not why to these bleak hills 
 I cling, as clings the tufted moss, 
 To bear the winter's lingering chills, 
 
 The mocking spring's perpetual loss. 
 I dream of lands where summer smiles. 
 And soft winds blow from spicy isles, 
 But scarce would Ceylon's breath of flowers be 
 
 sweet, 
 Could I not feel thy soil. New England, at my 
 feet ! 
 
 The Last Walk in Autumn. 
 
 24 
 
 George Crabbe, 1754; Matthew Arnold, 1822- 
 
 Who gives and hides the giving hand, 
 Nor counts on favor, fame, or praise, 
 Shall find his smallest gift outweighs 
 
 The burden of the sea and land. 
 
 Who gives to whom hath naught been given, 
 His gift in need, though small indeed 
 As is the grass-blade's wind-blown seed, 
 Is large as earth and rich as heaven. 
 
 Giving and Taking. 
 213 
 
DECEMBER 
 
 Christmas; Sir Isaac Newton, 1642 ; William Collins, 1720. 
 
 Our Friend, our Brother, and our Lord, 
 
 What may Thy service be ? — 
 Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word, 
 
 But simply following Thee. 
 
 In vain shall waves of incense drift 
 
 The vaulted nave around. 
 In vain the minster turret lift 
 
 Its brazen weights of sound. 
 
 The heart must ring Thy Christmas bells, 
 
 Thy inward altars raise ; 
 Its faith and hope Thy canticles, 
 
 And its obedience praise ! 
 
 Our Master. 
 
 26 
 
 St. Stephen ; Thomas Gray, 1716. 
 
 I LISTEN, from no mortal tongue, 
 To hear the song the angels sung ; 
 And wait within myself to know 
 The Christmas lilies bud and blow. 
 
 The outward symbols disappear 
 From him whose inward sight is clear; 
 214 
 
DECEMBER 
 
 And small must be the choice of days 
 To him who fills them all with praise ! 
 
 The Mystic's Christmas. 
 
 27 
 
 St. John Evangelist ; Abigail Whittier (the Poet's Mother), 
 died 1857. 
 
 And she was with us, living o'er again 
 
 Her life in ours, despite of years and pain, — 
 
 The Autumn's brightness after latter rain. 
 
 Beautiful in her holy peace as one 
 
 Who stands, at evening, when the work is done, 
 
 Glorified in the setting of the sun ! 
 
 Her memory makes our common landscape seem 
 Fairer than any of which painters dream, 
 Lights the brown hills and sings in every stream ; 
 
 For she whose speech was always truth's pure gold 
 Heard, not unpleased, its simple legends told, 
 And loved with us the beautiful and old. 
 
 Proem to Mabel Martin. 
 
 28 
 
 Innocents' Day ; C. M. Sedgwick, 1789. 
 
 Of such the kingdom ! — Teach Thou us, 
 
 O Master most divine, 
 To feel the deep significance 
 
 Of these wise words of Thine ! 
 215 
 
DECEMBER 
 
 The haughty eye shall seek in vain 
 
 What innocence beholds ; 
 No cunning finds the key of heaven, 
 
 No strength its gate unfolds. 
 
 Alone to guilelessness and love 
 
 That gate shall open fall ; 
 The mind of pride is nothingness, 
 
 The childlike heart is all ! 
 
 Child-Songs. 
 
 29 
 
 W. E. Gladstone, 1809. 
 
 What is really momentous and all-important 
 with us is the present, by which the future is shaped 
 and colored. 
 
 The Better Land. 
 
 Then of what is to be; and of what is done, 
 
 Why queriest thou ? — 
 The past and the time to be are one, 
 
 And both are now ! 
 
 My Soul and I. 
 
 30 
 
 Gallery of sacred pictures manifold, 
 A minster rich in holy effigies, 
 And bearing on entablature and frieze 
 
 The hieroglyphic oracles of old. 
 216 
 
DECEMBER 
 
 Along its transept aureoled martyrs sit ; 
 
 And the low chancel side-lights half acquaint 
 The eye with shrines of prophet, bard, and saint, 
 Their age-dimmed tablets traced in doubtful writ ! 
 But only when on form and word obscure 
 Falls from above the white supernal light 
 We read the mystic characters aright, 
 And life informs the silent portraiture, 
 Until we pause at last, awe-held, before 
 The One ineffable Face, love, wonder, and adore. 
 
 The Book. 
 
 31 
 
 James T. Fields, 1816. 
 
 He knew each living pundit well, 
 
 Could weigh the gifts of him or her, 
 And well the market value tell 
 
 Of poet and philosopher. 
 But if he lost, the scenes behind, 
 Somewhat of reverence vague and blind. 
 Finding the actors human at the best, 
 No readier lips than his the good he saw confessed. 
 
 His boyhood fancies not outgrown. 
 
 He loved himself the singer's art; 
 Tenderly, gently, by his own 
 
 He knew and judged an author's heart. 
 No Rhadamanthine brow of doom 
 Bowed the dazed pedant from his room ; 
 217 
 
DECExMBER 
 
 And bards, whose name is legion, if denied, 
 Bore off alike intact their verses and their pride. 
 
 The Tent on the Beach. 
 
 Beneath the moonlight and the snow 
 
 Lies dead my latest year ; 
 The winter winds are wailing low 
 
 Its dirges in my ear, 
 
 I grieve not with the moaning wind 
 
 As if a loss befell ; 
 Before me, even as behind, 
 
 God is, and all is well ! 
 
 My Birthday. 
 
 Rich gift of God ! A year of time ! 
 
 What pomp of rise and shut of day, 
 What hues wherewith our Northern clime 
 
 Makes autumn's dropping woodlands gay, 
 What airs outblown from ferny dells, 
 
 And clover-bloom and sweet-briar smells. 
 What songs of brooks and birds, what fruits and 
 
 flowers. 
 Green woods and moonlit snows, have in its round 
 been ours ! 
 
 The Last Walk in Autumn. 
 2l8