J...UH Jgf~---
 
 of
 
 Cincinnati : Jennings and 
 gorft: aton and
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY 
 JENNINGS AND PYE
 
 Like mists that round a mountain gray 
 Hang for an hour, then melt away, 
 So I and nearly all my race 
 Have vanished from my native place. 
 
 Each haunt of boyhood s loves and dreams 
 More beautiful in fancy seems; 
 Yet if I to those scenes repair, 
 I find I am a stranger there. 
 
 thou beloved Acadie! 
 
 How, whensoe er I think of thee, 
 
 Dull grow these skies neath which I range, 
 
 While all the summer hills are strange. 
 
 Yet sometimes I discern thy gleam 
 In sparkles of the chiming stream; 
 And sometimes speaks thy haunting lore 
 The foam-wreathed Sibyl of the Shore. 
 
 And sometimes will mine eyes incline 
 To hill or wood that seems like thine; 
 Or, if the robin pipeth clear, 
 It is thy vernal note I hear. 
 
 And oft my heart will leap aflame, 
 To deem I hear thee call my name, 
 To see thy face with gladness shine, 
 And find the joy that once was mine. 
 5 
 
 2136781
 
 Contents 
 
 MEMORY AND BELLS, .... ^ 
 
 PHEMIE ; THE STORY OF A CHILD, - - - 53 
 
 VERNAL NOTES, 87 
 
 THE MINISTER S SATURDAY EVENING ; 
 
 A SYMPOSIUM, - - - - 142 
 
 WINTER ON THE PENOBSCOT, - 188 
 
 OUR DOCTOR AT GRAND-PRE, - - - - 222 
 
 THE GRACE OF DEATH, 244 
 
 WAVE-SONGS, 274 
 
 AUTUMNAL NOTES, 301 
 
 L ENVOY, 385
 
 and I3ell& 
 
 i. 
 
 "Across the dykes the bell s low sound is borne 
 From green Grand Pre, abundant with the corn." 
 John Frederick Herbin. 
 
 " T is sweet to hear a brook; t is sweet 
 
 To hear the Sabbath bell ; 
 T is sweet to hear them both at once, 
 Deep in a woody dell." 
 
 Coleridge. 
 
 I THOUGHT, to-day, while the musical moni 
 tor, hanging in its tower near by, was "sprink 
 ling the air with holy sounds," and the vil 
 lagers were entering the sacred porch, how 
 when a boy in my father s house I used to 
 hear on Sabbath mornings the distant ringing 
 of church bells among the Horton hills, sound 
 ing when the air was quiet, or when a favor 
 ing wind 
 
 "Scattered the tuneful largess far and near." 
 9
 
 io Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Distant chimes are they now, heard onty in 
 memory ! Ah, how soon, in spite of cares and 
 years, when the Magician of our Youth re 
 turns, touching us, we are children again ! 
 Surely some spirit within me held the invisible 
 cord, pulling at the Bells of Memory ! 
 
 II. 
 
 "How soft the music of those village bells, 
 Falling at intervals upon the ear 
 In cadence sweet ! Now dying all away, 
 Now pealing loud again, and louder still, 
 Clear and sonorous as the gale comes on. 
 With easy force it opens all the cells 
 Where memory slept." 
 
 Can we ever hear the sound of bells at even 
 ing, softening over meadows and streams, nor 
 think of the Saint of Olney, renewing that 
 glimpse, had long ago, of 
 
 "The embattled tower 
 Whence all the music?" 
 
 His memory animates my thought and prompts 
 this reverie. Among all the chimes struck by 
 the singers of England, none touch the inner 
 most strings of life more deftly than those
 
 Memory and Bells. n 
 
 heard at Berkhampstead by childish ears. 
 Again we melt to the pathos of the lines : 
 
 "I heard the bell toll d on thy burial day, 
 I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away, 
 And, turning from my nursery window, drew 
 A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu." 
 
 Who that loves Cowper (and many there still 
 are, we hope, to love him, for we know of 
 none who in his best mood appeals more 
 sweetly to the heart) has not listened to the 
 melody floating to his ear long ago from Ol- 
 ney tower? 
 
 "Tall spire from which the sound of cheerful bells 
 Just undulates upon the listening ear." 
 
 III. 
 
 And who was he who first struck the solemn 
 chime ? He surely wanted a music that should 
 no longer linger and die alone among hollow 
 vales and low birthplaces, but salute heaven 
 with its winged echoes, and, stealing softly 
 back, waft our aspirations thither. Perpetual 
 benison to the head of the good Campanian 
 bishop, Paulinias, or whoever he was, who first 
 swung from its tower the inverted cup of brass 
 or iron, with its jubilant clamor, express
 
 12 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 image of the lowly flower-bell, drooped so 
 modestly, that "tolls its perfume on the pass 
 ing air." It was a goodly invention, of noble 
 use and high delight, that hath consecration 
 of melody above the sobbing murmurs of a 
 desolate world. I marvel not at the legends, 
 like summer mists creeping into the turrets of 
 the bells, and hanging them as with a gray 
 veil, that their notes were once made the 
 sweeter by the infusion of the martyr-maiden s 
 holy blood; that to them were assigned the 
 functions, not only of calling the living and 
 bemoaning the dead, but of breaking the light 
 ning in pieces and contending for mastery with 
 the spirits of the storm. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The bell of the Moslem is the tongue of the 
 muezzin, as from the tower of his mosque he 
 summons the devout to his monotonous prayer. 
 More appealing are the inaudible notes of the 
 Angelus stealing out of Millet s picture : for 
 we feel there is indeed one God, and that all 
 ought to worship him. O the bells ! the bells ! 
 and the notes stealing down from them! 
 Spell-giving sounds are they, that take hold 
 of masterful spirits, and sway them as wind
 
 Memory and Bells. 13 
 
 sways the corn. Not Napoleon alone pauses, 
 as he attains the life-summit of some Alp, to 
 take the message of some vocal vale. O ye 
 bells! your distant voices are invitations and 
 salutations from Eternity ! O ye bells of as 
 piration of affection of hope ! how ye ring 
 out in memory ! Poet-peals, heart -touching 
 as any of nature s voices like Heine s "far- 
 off chimes, smiting with mysterious awe," bid 
 ding "insatiable yearning, profound sadness, 
 steal into the heart;" bells, perhaps, that fill 
 us with a sense of the infinitude of being, lift 
 ing the boundaries of sense and thought far 
 off, like Milton s curfew, heard distinctly 
 from some high plot of ground, sounding, 
 
 "Over some wide-watered shore, 
 Swinging slow with sullen roar;" 
 
 like a peal of chiming bells at evening under 
 a starry sky, playing, "The heavens declare the 
 glory of God, and the firmament showeth his 
 handiwork." 
 
 And, when the hot and dusty day has run 
 its course, is there not a chime, wished for and 
 expected ? 
 
 "Twilight and evening bell, 
 And after that the dark!"
 
 14 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Not the blank darkness of nothingness, but 
 the softening, soothing shadows that are meant 
 for rest, and which prelude the Eternal Morn 
 ing. 
 
 There is an immortal Elegy, that with the 
 tolling of any bell at evening, abides, a haunt 
 ing spell of music, so long as human feeling 
 and the English speech endure. Surely Mil 
 ton and Gray will live in England, and wher 
 ever the sons of that great Mother have gone ; 
 nor will the curfew cease from memory, but 
 must, however our social customs change, for 
 ever "toll the knell of parting day." 
 
 V. 
 
 The waste billow has a double voice a 
 melody that is not all its own. Did it not 
 speak with sudden sharpness up out of the 
 waves to you, that surf-swung bell, as you 
 were swept past it ? A startling clang beneath 
 your prow, and it sounded faintly behind you. 
 
 "In the void air the music floats," 
 
 or along the homeless sea. The Inchcape bell, 
 like a siren, lures the wanton sailor to his own 
 undoing. Like all music, the music of bells 
 seems most consonant with winds and waters.
 
 Memory and Bells. 15 
 
 The harmonies of the turret have sweetness 
 still more delicious coming down to still shores 
 and quiet waters, to the wash of waves or the 
 lapse of streams. We wonder if rowers still 
 pause on their oars to listen, as on the evening 
 when memory s minstrel mingled the melody 
 of the rivers of Erin with that of alien waters, 
 and lingered with Canadian boatmen listening 
 to the chimes faintly tolling at St. Anne s! 
 And, if long an absentee, has Father Prout 
 been forgotten, with his 
 
 "Bells of Shandon 
 That sound so grand on 
 The pleasant waters of the river Lee?" 
 
 There is a poetess of our own time whom the 
 gentle-hearted feel to call sister. You will say 
 Elizabeth Browning, or Christina Rossetti, 
 and I will not gainsay )^ou ; but I now mean 
 Jean Ingelow. We have all heard some dear 
 school-girl give her own peculiar emphasis to 
 the "Boston Bells" that rang over that "stolen 
 tyde" when all the floods were out, and fair 
 Elizabeth went calling, "Cusha, cusha," amid 
 the watery meadows: 
 
 "The ringers ran by two, by three, 
 Pull, if ye never pulled before; 
 Good ringers, pull your best/ quoth he."
 
 1 6 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Was ever anything at once so threadbare, and 
 so whole and sweet ! But among her later 
 poems is one into which she has woven, among 
 many things of beauty and harmony, music of 
 bells in the fruitful vale of Evesham. There, 
 amid orchards by the river-side, she seems to 
 have heard, stealing from the old abbey, what 
 here she gives us in a memory-chime: 
 
 "Often in dream I see full fain 
 
 The bell-tower beautiful that I love well, 
 A seemly cluster with her churches twain ; 
 I hear adown the river, faint and swell 
 And lift upon the air that sound again, 
 
 It is, it is, how sweet no tongue can tell, 
 For all their world-wide breadth of shining foam 
 The bells of Evesham chiming Home, Sweet 
 Home !" 
 
 "Home, Sweet Home," and the bells, how 
 happily they sound together ! We put the 
 chimes of Ingelow to match the chimes of 
 Cowper. 
 
 Bells and the sea ! What boy forgets 
 Southey and his Inchcape bell! What of the 
 bells that ring their music, cheerful or melan 
 choly, beside the shore? Can any elfin music 
 ever visit earth like that out of the bosom of
 
 Memory and Bells. 17 
 
 the deep, from submerged towns, "lost in the 
 olden times," as imagined by the German poet ? 
 
 "How from the sea s abyss there rings 
 The sound of prayers and chimes." 
 
 Bells on shipboard ! The sounding of the sail 
 or s watch at night. A stroke of the imagina 
 tion almost unequaled in all the pages of Long 
 fellow, piercingly vivid is that scene on board 
 the doomed Valdemar, when 
 
 "The dismal ship bell tolled, 
 And ever and anon she rolled 
 And lurched into the sea." 
 
 Bells of the sea and shore ! Bells of fate and 
 warning I hear them ! 
 
 " O father, I hear the church bells ring ! 
 
 O say, what may it be? 
 "T is a fog bell on a rock-bound coast ! 
 And he steered for the open sea." 
 
 Ah! amid the perishing storms of this early 
 winter, so cruelly begun, has this poetry of the 
 past been written fact in the distress of the 
 present, when but a fortnight since, from Cape 
 Sable to Cape May, "the seaman s cry was 
 heard along the deep!"
 
 1 8 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Bells by the lake-side ! Many visions rise 
 before me; many voices of many bells sound 
 in my ears. I see Wordsworth, on a Sabbath 
 morning", standing bareheaded, with quickened 
 sense, listening to the softened tones that float 
 down Ullswater, or across Rydalmere mo 
 tionless, while 
 
 "Down the placid lake 
 
 Floats the soft cadence of the church-tower bells." 
 
 Bells of the wilderness ! I see Tom Campbell 
 entranced with his wild Bavarian Eldern, to 
 hear 
 
 "Church bells tolling to beguile 
 The cloud-born thunder passing by," 
 
 with reminiscence of Von Weber s imitative 
 music ; or Ebenezer Elliott, traversing "the 
 path of the quiet fields," reading Shenstone, 
 
 "When the village bell 
 Sounds o er the river, softening up the dell." 
 
 Bells of the waste places ! I catch a glimpse 
 of Charles Kingsley, hurrying, with distracted, 
 melancholy thoughts, over the snow-clad 
 moorland, when cheery bells were ringing in 
 Christmas Eve. Doleful they seem to him, for 
 I hear him cry: 
 
 "The bells but mock the wailing world !"
 
 Memory and Bells. 19 
 
 Bells over the heather! Scott heard them 
 chime in that wild song of Marmion ! I see 
 Tom Hood turning him about at Hampstead 
 and pausing in the road to beguile his walk 
 with notes of sweetness, that he might trans 
 mit them to us in sweetest verse: 
 
 "Dear bells ! how sweet the sound of village bells, 
 
 When on the undulating air they swim ! 
 Now loud as welcomes ! Faint, now, as farewells ! 
 And trembling all about the breezy dells, 
 As fluttered by the wings of cherubim." 
 
 VI. 
 
 Francis Mahony, more familiarly known 
 as "Father Prout," sings : 
 
 "With fond affection 
 And recollection, 
 I often think on 
 
 Those Shandon bells, 
 Whose sounds so wild would, 
 In the days of childhood, 
 Fling round my cradle 
 Their magic spells." 
 
 For the music of bells is somehow in league 
 with the tenderest affections. We hear the 
 same sound to which they once listened who 
 now, maybe, are accustomed to the singing of
 
 20 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 angels. What is that strain you remember in 
 the far-off days, of "those evening bells?" It 
 is your mother s voice, and you hear it when 
 other, nearer voices are silent, singing as once 
 often, but no more, 
 
 "Of youth and home, and that glad time 
 When last we heard their soothing chime." 
 
 Her image is radiant, for she is now with the 
 departed she sang of, who stay not to hearken 
 after earthly chimes. I fancy we will grow 
 for a moment a little less worldly while we 
 listen to these chimes of memory, and remem 
 ber that "so t will be when we are gone." I 
 think, too, the Irish poet s follies will be for 
 gotten by some who have the memory of a 
 mother s voice singing his pensive verses. 
 
 "Soft hour! which wakes the wish, and melts the 
 
 heart. . . . 
 
 Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way, 
 As the far bell of vesper makes him start." 
 
 While we are busied about ringing the 
 chimes of memory, we suddenly recall one of 
 the sweetest ever heard, of the most plaintive, 
 pathetic note, from an old and mighty poet 
 the Voice of the Middle Ages. Still the old,
 
 Memory and Bells. 21 
 
 strange, sweet words have power, we would 
 that all might feel: 
 
 "Lo di ch han detto a dolce amici a dio; 
 
 Eche lo nuovo peregrin d amore 
 Punge, se ode Squilla di lontano, 
 
 Che paia 1 giorno pianger che si muore." 
 
 But, if we may not all do this, and sip this 
 rill from the most liquid of Etruscan foun 
 tains, we may seek our fairest compensation 
 in the English of that Rossetti who bore 
 Dante s name; which is, on the whole, closest 
 to the original, though that of Byron, quoted 
 above who caught the spirit of it is cer 
 tainly fine. These verses come to the soul of 
 some with indescribable power. Who would 
 not feel, though he had never read a line of 
 his history, how Dante must have lived in a 
 strange city and felt the woes of exile ! 
 
 "It is the hour that thaws the heart, and sends 
 
 The voyager s affections home, when they 
 Since morn have said adieu to darling friends; 
 
 And smites the new-made pilgrim on his way 
 With love, if he a distant bell should hear 
 That seems a-mourning for the dying day." 
 
 One fondly lingers, as on enchanted ground, 
 and wishes the pilgrim may not depart. We 
 bring our sensibility into touch with this
 
 22 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 lucent, fragrant ambergris of the mournful 
 poet s heart and fancy homeless, yet so in 
 love with home that down the centuries gains 
 currency more and more with lovers of song. 
 The more it is chafed, it smells the sweeter. 
 It has still the charm that was felt by Ma- 
 caulay, and is worthy his magnificent eulo- 
 gium: "To other writers evening may be the 
 season of dews and stars and radiant clouds. 
 To Dante it is the hour of fond recollection 
 and passionate devotion, the hour which 
 melts the heart of the mariner and kindles the 
 love of the pilgrim, the hour when the toll 
 of the bell seems to mourn for another day 
 which has gone and will return no more." 
 
 VII. 
 
 Stand, if you will, at the baptism of the bell, 
 when it goes sounding up into the tower of 
 St. Gudule, and "all men praise with laud 
 ing lips the apotheosis." Or wait, where the 
 bell of Schiller is being rung, for the nuptial 
 or the burial. Sweeter and sadder peals were 
 never sounded than from our German poet s 
 belfry. 
 
 Or ascend, with Victor Hugo, some visioned 
 height of the long-ago city by the Seine. Paris
 
 Memory and Bells. 23 
 
 is aglow with the rising sun of a Whitsuntide, 
 or an Easter morning. The half-slumbering 
 metropolis lies beneath you, its almost innu 
 merable spires emblazoned in that glory which 
 lit the peaks of that fifteenth century even as 
 it does ours. Hark ! t is the awakening of the 
 bells ! Soon as the sun gives the signal, as if 
 the ear had vision, there ascends the sounding 
 column, there hovers the floating cloud of har 
 mony. The towers of a thousand churches 
 tremble melodiously. At first, as when an 
 orchestra sends out its prelusive notes, "a tink 
 ling vibration runs over the city, then comes 
 the crashing peal that tells to the drowsiest 
 ear the arrival of the sacred morning! At 
 first the vibration of each bell rises straight, 
 pure, and in a manner separate from that of 
 the others, into the splendid morning sky; 
 then, swelling by degrees, they blend, melt, 
 amalgamate into a magnificent concert. It is 
 now but one mass of sonorous vibrations, 
 issuing incessantly from the innumerable 
 steeples, which floats, undulates, bounds, 
 whirls over the city, and expands far beyond 
 the horizon the deafening circle of its oscilla 
 tions. That sea of harmony, however, is not 
 a chaos. Vast and deep as it is, it has not lost
 
 24 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 its transparency; you see in it each group of 
 notes that has flown from the belfries, winding 
 along apart; you may follow the dialogue, by 
 turns low and shrill ; you may see the octaves 
 skipping from steeple to steeple; you watch 
 them springing light, winged, sonorous from 
 the silver bell ; dropping dull, faint, and feeble 
 from the wooden; you admire the rich gamut 
 incessantly running up and down the seven 
 bells of St. Eustache; you see clear and rapid 
 notes dart about in all directions, make three 
 or four luminous zigzags, and vanish like 
 lightning. Down yonder the Abbey of St. 
 Martin sends forth its harsh, sharp tones ; here 
 the Bastile raises its sinister and husky voice; 
 at the other extremity is the great tower of 
 the Louvre, with its counter-tenor. The royal 
 chimes of the palace throw out incessantly on 
 all sides resplendent trills, upon which falls, 
 at measured intervals, the heavy toll from the 
 belfry of Notre Dame, which makes them 
 sparkle like the anvil under the hammer. 
 From time to time you see tones of all shapes, 
 proceeding from the triple peal of St. Germain 
 des Pres, passing before you. Then again at 
 intervals this mass of sublime sounds opens 
 and makes way for the strette of the Ave
 
 Memory and Bells. 25 
 
 Maria, which glistens like an aigrette of stars. 
 Beneath, in the deepest part of the concert, 
 you distinguish confusedly the singing within 
 the churches, which transpires through the 
 vibrating pores of their vaults. Verily this is 
 an opera which is well worth listening to. In 
 the ordinary way, the ordinary noise issuing 
 from Paris in the daytime is the talking of the 
 city; at night it is the breathing of the city; 
 in this case it is the singing of the city. 
 
 "Lend your ears, then, to this tutti of stee 
 ples ; diffuse over the whole the buzz of a mil 
 lion human beings, the eternal murmur of the 
 river, the infinite piping of the wind, the grave 
 and distant quartet of the four forests placed 
 like immense organs on the four hills of the 
 horizon; soften down as with a demi-tint, all 
 that is too shrill and too harsh in the central 
 mass of sound, and say if you know anything 
 more rich, more gladdening, more dazzling 
 than that tumult of bells ; than that furnace of 
 music; than those ten thousand brazen tones 
 breathed all at once from flutes of stone three 
 hundred feet high ; than that city which is but 
 one orchestra ; than the symphony rushing and 
 roaring like a tempest."
 
 26 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 VIII. 
 "Rustling runners and sharp bells." 
 
 Not sharp, but soft, of sound, is my fancy. 
 "Your bells are sweet," I said to my com 
 panion, as we went gliding at moonlit evening 
 along a woodland road, between firs hooded 
 with late snow. "Yes," he observed, "they call 
 them chimes. I object to the obstreperous 
 jingle, yet want something on winter nights 
 beside the creaking of my sleigh to listen to." 
 At the word "chimes" I fell into silence, and 
 went off fairying. My friend furnishes me a 
 moonlit ride and an agreeable companion, who 
 says the fitting word, not too often, but leaves 
 me to pleasant memories and fancies set to the 
 music of fairy bells. They do not rudely as 
 sault, they entice, the ear. There is a delicate, 
 persistent jingle- jangle, and through my brain 
 these words go galloping on : 
 
 "How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, 
 
 In the icy air of night, 
 While the stars that oversprinkle 
 All the heavens seem to tinkle 
 With a crystalline delight; 
 Keeping time, time, time, 
 In a sort of Runic rhyme, 
 
 To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells 
 From the bells."
 
 Memory and Bells. 27 
 
 For, indeed, "the sleigh-drive through the 
 frosty night," which is one of the imaginative 
 joys of "Snow Bound," can have no more 
 musical accompaniment than the chimey tinkle 
 of those delicate fairy bells. 
 
 IX. 
 
 But with Yule the bells reach the summit 
 of their power. Then they are riotous; from 
 that height they triumph! And the chimes 
 that summon the New- Year, how they stir us ! 
 Then we revert again to the clangorous notes 
 where the grand organ of the "In Memoriam" 
 swells its loudest : 
 
 "The Christmas bells from hill to hill 
 Answer each other in the mist. 
 
 Each voice four changes on the wind, 
 That now dilate, and now increase, 
 Peace and good will, good will and peace, 
 
 Peace and good will, to all mankind. 
 
 Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, 
 The flying cloud, the frosty light: 
 The year is dying in the night ; 
 
 Ring out, wild bells, and let him die."
 
 28 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 And again, the softer strain of the laureate 
 of our own coasts, who bids us hear 
 
 "The bells on Christmas-day 
 Their old familiar carols play," 
 
 till instantly all the memory chimes of Yule- 
 tide are resounding, to mind us of star and 
 sage, of manger and babe, of shepherd and 
 singing seraph. 
 
 X. 
 "How sweet the tuneful bells responsive peal ! 
 
 And hark! with lessening cadence now they fall. 
 And now along the white and level tide 
 They fling their melancholy music wide ; 
 Bidding me many a tender thought recall 
 Of summer days and those delightful years 
 When from an ancient tower, in life s fair prime, 
 The mournful magic of their mingling chime 
 First waked my wondering childhood into tears. 
 William Lisle Bowles, "Bells of Ostend." 
 
 I recall one evening of a by-gone summer, 
 when I had gone into the upper part of what 
 Longfellow has termed, "that leafy, blossom 
 ing, and beautiful Cambridge" home of gen 
 ius and of learning then in its season of rich 
 est efflorescence, and at the sweetest time of 
 the Sabbath. The air, softened and serene, 
 was ready for its burden of musical vibration ; 
 the sky was full of faintly-tinted light, and the
 
 Memory and Bells. 29 
 
 foliage was fresh and unsullied from recent 
 showers. I stood at the gate of the "Craigie 
 House" demesne of valor and song! haunt 
 of a hero of an earlier age, and a master- 
 minstrel of our own when the chimes com 
 menced to float upward to my ear from the 
 heart of the bowery city below. Memory-bells 
 again ! It was charmed listening. He, who 
 then dwelt in the home near by, but who now 
 has drawn "a little nearer to the Master of all 
 music," while his dust sleeps in Mount Auburn 
 he loved such tones, and rung them again in 
 his own mellow numbers, 
 
 "Low and loud and sweetly blended, 
 Low at times and loud at times." 
 
 For was it not while lying wakeful in the inn 
 of the "quaint old Flemish city," listening to 
 the bells of the market-place, that the genius 
 of Memory arose and threw wide her many- 
 folded doors! In his verse are stirred the 
 tongues of many bells : 
 
 "O curfew of the dying day, 
 O bells of Lynn !" 
 
 Mournfully, solemnly, 
 
 Pealing its dole, 
 The curfew bell 
 
 Is beginning to toll."
 
 30 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Chimes out of the Middle Ages, 
 
 "Bells that ring so slow, 
 So mellow, musical, and low;" 
 
 holy, half mournful tones, such as Evangeline 
 listened to while standing before her father s 
 doorway, shading her eyes with her hands, 
 while the sun was descending, and "sweetly 
 over the village the bell of the Angelus 
 sounded." So, also, is Millet s picture like a 
 poem, "half rustic, half divine," a silent 
 strain, like that which goes beating its hal 
 lowed way through hearts that are lowly, 
 
 "With whom the melodies abide 
 Of the everlasting chime." 
 
 XI. 
 
 What lover of song can talk of bells and 
 not remember Schiller, with his well-conned 
 poem, elaborate and exhaustive? or of one 
 less than Schiller, in breadth and in spiritual 
 vigor, if not in refined mentality ; but not in 
 the faculty of musical and beautiful expres 
 sion Edgar Poe? He educed the orchestral 
 capacity of our own world-wide speech in 
 tensely and essentially a poet, if little he could
 
 Memory and Bells. 31 
 
 teach us. One soul may not give us all things ; 
 each brings forth his own peculiar treasure; 
 and for lack of sustained power, dynamic force 
 of genius and character, he has a compensat 
 ing something to give. Where have we an 
 intenser worship at the shrine of harmony and 
 of exquisite form? Where can we hear a 
 subtler music than he won from the bells ? He 
 is a ringer of elfin chimes the most aerial 
 chimes heard far aloof, or from turrets sub 
 merged by the sea, or faerie knells, like those 
 rung by sea-nymphs in that magical play, "The 
 Temptest." Hear them ! 
 
 "Through the balmy air of night, 
 How they ring out with delight ; 
 From the* molten-golden notes, 
 
 And all in tune, 
 What a liquid ditty floats!" 
 
 Bells that are jubilant ! Bells that utter rap 
 ture! Bells resonant of hope and joy! Bells 
 that prophesy! For the bells have not alone 
 the power of invoking Memory; they are 
 potent enchanters; inspirers of courage and 
 expectation. For what boy was he, who 
 lucky deserter from good fortune, timely re-
 
 32 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 called ! looked back through the lights of one 
 magical evening from his seat on the stone at 
 the foot of Highgate Hill, upon the great city 
 behind him, and interpreted the musical salu 
 tation of Bow Bells into: "Turn again, turn 
 again, Dick Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor 
 of London!" The hodden, kindly muse of 
 Eliza Cook has embalmed his legend and 
 pointed his moral : 
 
 "Be it fable or truth about Whittington s youth, 
 Which the tale of the magical ding-dong im 
 parts, 
 
 Yet the story that tells of the boy and the bells 
 Has a purpose and meaning for many sad 
 hearts." 
 
 A spirit in the bells, say you ? Ay, if you will ; 
 but, perchance, a spirit also in the boy, or he 
 had heard their voices, but found not their 
 meaning. 
 
 XII. 
 
 And what of the humors of the bells ? They 
 laugh, rejoice, and make merry. There lies 
 many a joke under their clanging tongues, and 
 the throbbing air comes with many a ripple of 
 mirth. Schiller closes his great poem jubi-
 
 Memory and Bells. 33 
 
 lantly, as his bell rises up into the belfry, and 
 its first salutation falls on waiting ears : 
 
 "Now then, with the rope so strong, 
 From the vault the bell upweigh, 
 That it gains the realms of song, 
 And the heavenly light of day! 
 All hands nimbly ply ! 
 Now it mounts on high : 
 To this city JOY reveals, 
 PEACE be the first strain it peals !" 
 
 And did not Hunter Duvar tell us of the 
 baptism of the Bell of St. CEudula? and how 
 the carnal friars made a rollicking day of it, 
 and sprinkled the holy water with wicked 
 leers ; naming her "as she passed the belfry 
 slips" they alone knew why St. Jimima! 
 Hear the shouts rising from the populace, 
 while 
 
 "All men praised with lauding lips 
 The apotheosis of the bell !" 
 
 And what wild, merry, tipsy, talkative, com 
 panionable bells were those Charles Dickens 
 listened to, bells lending rarest delight to one 
 of his most charming fantasies, bells that 
 burst out so loud and clear and sonorous, say 
 ing : "Toby Veck, Toby Veck, waiting for you, 
 3
 
 34 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Toby. . . . Come and see us ; come and 
 see us. Drag him to us ; drag him to us. 
 Haunt and haunt him; haunt and haunt him. 
 Break his slumbers; break his slumbers! 
 Toby Veck ! Toby Veck ! Door open wide, 
 Toby." They drew him, the enchanters ! 
 They drew him, as they have drawn us, till 
 he cared not whither his feet wandered, while 
 their summons was in his ears. 
 
 "The Bells, the old familiar Bells ! his own 
 dear constant friends; the chimes began to 
 ring the joyous peals for a New- Year ; so lust 
 ily, so merrily, so happily, so gayly, that he 
 leaped upon his feet. . . . The chimes are 
 ringing in the New- Year. Hear them. They 
 were ringing! Bless their sturdy hearts! 
 They were ringing ! Great bells as they were ; 
 melodious, deep-mouthed, noble bells ; cast in 
 no common metal ; made by no common 
 founder; when had they ever chimed like that 
 before?" 
 
 Not since they chimed in the ears of a poet 
 like their celebrant, who makes his rite the 
 more religious, and gives us another litany of 
 the heart. Sleep well, Charles Dickens, be 
 neath the worn pavement and the beckoning
 
 Memory and Bells. 35 
 
 towers of thy gray minster ! They, too, call 
 me, and I should like to go and stand where 
 you were laid. The tolling from above shall 
 not wake you; but such joyous peals as you 
 have rung will ever fill the memory of man 
 with delight. We love you well, great de 
 parted one! for your ringing of memory- 
 chimes. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 "I heard the city time bells call 
 
 Far off in hollow towers, 
 And one by one with measured fall 
 
 Count out the old dead hours ; 
 I felt the march, the silent press 
 Of time, and held my breath ; 
 I saw the haggard dreadfulness 
 Of dim old age and death." 
 
 Archibald Lampman. 
 
 But what shall we say of bells that have 
 sterner voices ; bells darkly rusted, and doom- 
 ful in their notes; that answer "fiercely back" 
 the sighs of mortals ; with an angry, implac 
 able, as well as an "impetuous strain, ringing," 
 or, rather, clanging, "in the very bricks and 
 plaster on the walls." For what a doleful peal 
 was that which startled the guilty bosoms of 
 Lord and Lady Macbeth, waking at dead of
 
 36 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 night all that slept in the castle, when the hue 
 of death was on Duncan s face, and "his silver 
 skin" was "laced with his golden blood !" A 
 victim is a terrible creature loosed in this uni 
 verse, and free to appear before God ! 
 
 "Ring the alarum-bell : Murther ! and treason ! 
 Ring the bell !" 
 
 It was not on Whittington s ear alone there 
 fell the calling bells; they have borne mes 
 sages of dread and doom. Think you that 
 Lochiel shall have triumphant exit from Cul- 
 loden ? 
 
 "Ah no ! for a darker departure is near ; . . . 
 His death-bell is tolling!" 
 
 Such sound gave warning to the tremulous 
 heart of the Countess Amy, for her poet makes 
 her shudder, 
 
 "That dread death-bell smites my ear !" 
 
 Then, before the dawning of her fateful day 
 
 "Full many a piercing scream was heard, 
 And many a cry of mortal fear. 
 
 The death bell thrice was heard to ring, 
 An aerial voice was heard to call, 
 
 And thrice the raven flapped his wing 
 Around the towers of Cumnor Hall."
 
 Memory and Bells. 37 
 
 And, in the Wallenstein of Schiller, we find a 
 thrill responsive to the Fourth Henry of 
 France, who foreboded the knife of Ravaillac : 
 
 "The phantom 
 
 Started him from the Louvre, chased him forth 
 Into the open air ; like funeral knells 
 Sounded that coronation festival." 
 
 The bells ! Their iron tongues seemed calling 
 him to his doom. 
 
 With what a shudder of awfulness "even 
 the vesper s heavenly tone smote sea and shore 
 and the unfeeling rocks, bidding 
 
 "The passing bell to toll 
 For welfare of a passing soul," 
 
 when "injured Constance" had been entombed 
 at Holy Isle, and the direful conclave that had 
 just consigned her was ascending to the lights 
 of a summer evening. Ay, long after the stars 
 were shining, 
 
 "Slow o er the midnight wave it swung, 
 Northumbrian rocks in answer rung; 
 To Warkworth cell the echoes rolled, 
 His beads the wakeful hermit told; 
 The Bamborough peasant raised his head, 
 But slept ere half a prayer he said ; 
 So far was heard the mighty knell, 
 The stag sprang up on Cheviot fell,
 
 38 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Spread his broad nostril to the wind, 
 Listed before, aside, behind ; 
 Then couched him down beside the hind, 
 And quaked among the mountain fern, 
 To hear that sound so dull and stern." 
 
 And how soon are all the quips and jests 
 wherewith Death condescended to tickle his 
 lean uncomely sides (when he became mellow 
 and garrulous in the glow of Burns s usquc- 
 bae), made worse than ridiculous when that 
 midnight monitor 
 
 "The auld kirk hammer struck the bell !" 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Heralds, monitors, of sorrow and misfor 
 tune are they. They toll not as bells from our 
 village towers, when they who have passed 
 peacefully are laid in reverent quietude away. 
 They have the note of horror. They sounded 
 in Paris, at St. Bartholomew s, when papal 
 vengeance fell on the noblest heads and the 
 fairest necks in France. Their hideous clangor 
 has sounded throughout Spain at many an 
 auto-da-fc, when, with lifted cross, humanity 
 and the Christ of humanity were insulted by 
 the monsters of a barbaric religion, and the
 
 Memory and Bells. 39 
 
 father put the torch to the pile where his beau 
 tiful and delicate child was consumed. Heaven 
 fend our world again from times like those ! 
 Dreadful bells ! They rang when great Lon 
 don was on fire, and the winged fury that be 
 gins his circuit on sheds and returns on palaces 
 was in full splendor of his march. We are 
 wakened from our sleep by such doom-notes, 
 when fear comes upon the spirit and trembling, 
 and our chamber glares with the rolling flame 
 that shrivels and scorches in mockery. So the 
 poet shakes us with ghoulish bells, battle- 
 bells, and bells whose shriek is, "Fire !" 
 
 "What a tale their terror tells 
 
 Of despair ! 
 
 How they clang, and clash, and roar, 
 What a horror they outpour 
 On the bosom of the palpitating air! 
 
 Yet there were some tones of triumph and 
 gratulation mingled with the lamentation of 
 the Kremlin bell, when their beloved Moscow 
 wilted into ashes before the torches of its citi 
 zens ; for was it not a show of defiance that 
 Napoleon turned pale to see? Great, waste, 
 wintry land, with its undaunted hearts ! Is 
 this the stone of offense on which nations are 
 yet to stumble and be broken? The "loud
 
 40 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 tocsin" told no such triumph for Prague or 
 Poland : 
 
 "Hark ! as the smoldering piles in thunder fall, 
 A thousand shrieks for hopeless mercy call !" 
 
 They tell us this Muscovite Empire is the 
 greatest country in the world for bells; and 
 that their "delicious tones, which ring at all 
 hours of the day and night, distill their melody 
 into the Moujik s ears from his babyhood."* 
 So were there triumphant notes, according to 
 our noble-speaking poet,f when the great 
 church tower of Hamburg was in flames, and 
 
 "The bells, in sweet accord," 
 pealed forth that grand old German hymn, 
 "All good souls praise the Lord." 
 
 And, hark ! was that the tolling of a bell 
 floating along the watery way of Venice ? Yes, 
 it was the great bell of St. Mark, bidding the 
 conspirators rally to their work and to their 
 doom ! In the great council hall, where hang 
 the portraits of the Doges, we are told, by 
 Madame de Stael in her "Corinne," that 
 Marino is degraded. "On the space which 
 would have been occupied by that of Faliero, 
 
 *How the Russian Moujik Lives. William Durban, 
 t Lowell.
 
 Memory and Bells. 41 
 
 who was beheaded as a traitor, is painted a 
 black curtain, whereon is written the date and 
 manner of his death." And Byron closes his 
 version of the Doge s tragedy with the sig 
 nificant lines : 
 
 "His hoary hair 
 
 Streams on the wind like foam upon the wave ! 
 Now now he kneels and now they form a 
 
 circle 
 
 Round him, and all is hidden but I see 
 The lifted sword in air Ah! hark! it falls! 
 
 The gory head rolls down the Giants Steps !" 
 
 If one is disposed to pity the victims in the 
 Parisina of Byron and the poet claims pity 
 for his misguided people, pity dangerous to 
 the lover of virtue he may listen, while 
 
 "The convent bells are ringing 
 
 But mournfully and slow, 
 In the gray square turret swinging, 
 
 With a deep sound to and fro. 
 
 Heavily to the heart they go ! 
 Hark ! the hymn is singing 
 
 The song for the dead below, 
 
 Or the living who shortly shall be so! 
 For a departing being s soul 
 The death-hymn peals, and the hollow bells 
 knoll."
 
 42 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 XV. 
 
 And thou, dark-haunted mediaeval Xotre 
 Dame ! were not thy bells beloved by him who 
 sounded the Angelus or rang for vespers, yet 
 when he did so heard them not, save when he 
 was in the belfry beside them ; that singular, 
 gnomic, half-human, half-daemonic being, w r ho 
 was the familiar of thy walls, thine aisles and 
 mysterious cloisters, thy Calaban-Ouasi- 
 modo, an Ariel-soul imprisoned within his 
 misshapen body ? O, the Bells ! the Bells ! 
 How says thy poet? "He loved them, he ca 
 ressed them, he talked to them, he understood 
 them from the chimes in the steeple of the 
 transept to the great bell above the porch. The 
 belfry of the transept and the two towers were 
 like immense cages, in which the birds that he 
 had reared rang for him alone. It was these 
 same birds, however, which had deafened him. 
 . . . It is true that theirs were the only 
 voices he could still hear. . . ." Can you 
 not see him, flying up the winding staircase 
 to the high belfry, when a great peal was to 
 be rung, and hurrying breathlessly into the 
 "aerial chamber" where repose his brazen 
 aviary, with folded wings, and especially his
 
 Memory and Bells. 43 
 
 monstrous Mary, regarding her with the lov 
 ing attention a master gives his mettled steed 
 when about to put him to his utmost ? Ah ! 
 and then, when the ringers below drew the 
 ropes, and the "windlass creaked, and slowly 
 and heavily the enormous cone of metal was 
 set in motion," how Quasimodo, "with heav 
 ing bosom watched the movement ! The first 
 shock of the clapper against the wall of brass 
 shook the woodwork upon which it was hung. 
 Quasimodo vibrated with the bell, yah! he 
 would cry, with a burst of idiot laughter. 
 Meanwhile the motion of the bell was accel 
 erated, and as the angle which it described 
 became more and more obtuse, the eye of 
 Quasimodo glistened and shone out with more 
 phosphoric light. At length the grand peal 
 began : the whole tower trembled ; rafters, 
 leads, stones, all groaned together, from the 
 piles of the foundation to the trefoils of the 
 parapet. Quasimodo then boiled over with de 
 light; he foamed at the mouth; he ran back 
 ward and forward ; he trembled with the tower 
 from head to foot. The great bell, let loose, 
 and, as it were, furious with rage, turned first 
 to one side and then to the other side of the 
 tower its enormous brazen throat, which issued
 
 44 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 a roar that might be heard to the distance of 
 four leagues around. Quasimodo placed him 
 self before this open mouth ; he crouched down 
 and rose up, as the bell swung to and fro, in 
 haled its boisterous breath, and looked by 
 turns at the abyss two hundred feet deep be 
 low him, and at the enormous tongue of brass 
 which came ever and anon to bellow in his ear. 
 This was the only speech that he could hear, 
 the only sound that broke the universal silence 
 to which he was doomed. He would spread 
 himself out in it like a bird in the sun. All at 
 once the frenzy of the bell would seize him ; 
 his look became wild ; he would watch the 
 rocking engine, as a spider watches a fly, and 
 suddenly leap upon it. Then, suspended over 
 the abyss, carried to and fro in the formidable 
 oscillation of the bell, he seized the brazen 
 monster by the earlets, strained it with his 
 knees, spurred it with his heels, and with the 
 whole weight and force of his body increased 
 the fury of the peal. While the tower began 
 to quake he would shout and grind his teeth, 
 his red hair bristled up, his breast heaved and 
 puffed like bellows of a forge, his eye flashed 
 fire, and the monstrous bell neighed breathless 
 under him. It was then no longer the bell of
 
 Memory and Bells. 45 
 
 Notre Dame and Quasimodo : it was a dream, 
 a whirlwind, a tempest, vertigo astride of up 
 roar ; a spirit clinging to a winged monster ; a 
 strange centaur, half man, half bell ; a species 
 of horrible Astolpho, carried off by a prodig 
 ious hippogriff of living brass." Surely in all 
 the romantic literature of Bells there is nothing 
 to parallel with this! vivid as the lightning, 
 rapid as the whirlwind, invigorating to the 
 spirit as a mountain storm. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Many bells there are, of many chimes. We 
 may have leisure to listen, as they sound in 
 memory, by and by. Bells, throbbing pen 
 sively, where Owen Meredith leans out from 
 his window in the damp night to gather the 
 sweet sadness : 
 
 "The sound of the midnight bells 
 When the oped casement with the night rain drips." 
 
 Bells, sounding in the twilight! for, in the 
 changing of our vision, the boy, Keats, is seen 
 wandering at his will, toying with "songs of 
 birds," with "whispering of leaves," and all
 
 46 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 beguiling and delightful things, charmed at 
 last most of all by 
 
 "The great bell that heaves 
 With solemn sound." 
 
 "The antiphonal bells of Hull," our Ca 
 nadian city, so recently desolated by fire; 
 as Duncan Scott has sounded them over the 
 land in musical verse. The bells of Rome, for 
 the crowning of Corinne, ring in my ear; and 
 the bells of Florence that Dante heard going 
 afar ; and the bells that Marian Evans rung in 
 her "Romola;" temple bells calling from "the 
 old Moulmein Pagoda," as Rudyard Kipling 
 lately heard them. I hear the chimes of Nor 
 ton Bury, from the memory of her who wrote 
 "John Halifax!" "Norton Bury was proud of 
 its Abbey chimes." And Elizabeth Brown 
 ing s knight, in the "Rhyme of the Duchess 
 May," remembers the like sounds less pleas 
 antly : 
 
 "He sprang up in the selle, and he laughed out 
 
 bitter well, 
 Wouldst thou ride among the leaves, as we 
 
 used on other eves 
 To hear chime a vesper bell? 
 
 I sat beneath the tree, and the bell tolled 
 solemnly, 
 
 Tolled slowly.
 
 Memory and Bells. 47 
 
 While the trees and river s voices flowed between 
 
 the solemn noises, 
 Yet death seemed more loud to me." 
 
 Hawthorne, on a Sunday morning, sits 
 watching the church-goers along the side 
 walks below, hearing every sound, and espe 
 cially one as "with an unexpected sensation 
 the bell turns in the steeple overhead, and 
 throws out an irregular clamor, jarring the 
 tower to its foundation." 
 
 I see Longfellow on the Nahant shore. He, 
 too, seems among the entranced ones: 
 
 "Down the darkened coast run the tumultuous 
 
 surges, 
 
 And clap their hands and shout to you, O Bells 
 of Lynn !" 
 
 And there, yet, is Whittier, sitting in the door 
 of his white "Tent On the Beach," for he, too, 
 can hear, when "the wind is lightly blowing, 
 and the waves are silent," 
 
 "The bells of morn and night 
 Swing, miles away, their silver speech. 1 * 
 
 Smaller bells, with slenderer notes ; Bryant s 
 "bells of wandering sheep," and "sheep-bells 
 . . . on the desert hills," with Gray s 
 "drowsy tinklings" that "lull the distant 
 folds ;" Wordsworth hearing the bells of kine
 
 48 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 as they go to pasture on the hills of Westmore 
 land. 
 
 I hear Spenser waking the bells of his 
 "Epithalamium," to celebrate the bridal of 
 Maia; and Tennyson, as at the close of the 
 "In Memoriam," he awakens the echoes at the 
 bridal of a sister: 
 
 "Begins the clash and clang that tells 
 The joy to every wandering breeze; 
 The blind wall rocks, and on the trees 
 The dead leaf trembles to the bells." 
 
 I see the glow in Scott s eyes, as he looks 
 up into the face of Willie Laidlaw, from read 
 ing the newly-written sheet : 
 
 "On Christmas eve the bells were rung." 
 
 XVII. 
 
 But, ah, Time himself is a winged bell, toll 
 ing very swiftly ! Space narrows ; we can not 
 give to speech all musical memories that cluster 
 upon us, nor listen now to all the "melodious 
 bells among the spires." We listen still, we 
 muse, we hesitate to depart : 
 
 "The bell strikes one! We take no note of time. 
 But by its loss."
 
 Memory and Bells. 49 
 
 O ye sounding chroniclers ! of what past and 
 passing hours take ye note? What musical 
 record make ye of the passing generations? 
 Will ye not soon ring in the Laureate s hap 
 pier time ? Listen to one of the deepest strains 
 of one of the truest poets of our age : 
 
 "This is the midnight of the century, hark ! 
 
 Through aisle and arch of Godminster have 
 
 gone 
 
 Twelve throbs that tolled the zenith of the dark. 
 And mornward now the starry bands move on ; 
 Morn ward ! the angelic watchers say, 
 
 Passed is the sorest trial ; 
 No plot of man can stay 
 
 The hand upon the dial ; 
 Night is the dark stem of the lily day. " 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 We were about to cry: Beat us not down, 
 O Bells ! with your doom-notes, your discon 
 tented jangling; trample us not beneath a 
 hopeless music, in which there is no Christly 
 mercy and compassion. But what is this you 
 tell us, O Bells! The night is far past, and 
 the morning is at hand. You beat the upward 
 march of humanity ; you ring the triumph of 
 mankind ! Bless you, O Bells ! No longer 
 4
 
 50 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 "toll slowly;" no longer ring mournfully; but 
 tell Time s gladdest story peal the fullness of 
 its jubilee! 
 
 "O chime of sweet St. Charity, 
 Peal soon that Easter morn 
 When Christ for all shall risen be, 
 And in all hearts new-born !" 
 
 Ring in that millennial day, O Bells ! 
 
 XIX. 
 
 I think that Charles L,amb gave us right, as 
 well as pleasant, words when he said, among 
 other fine sayings, that high-pealing bells make 
 "the music nighest bordering on heaven." 
 They solemnize the soul, and fit it for the mes 
 sage that comes only in our serenest, clearest 
 mood. 
 
 "Tintadgel bells ring o er the tide ;" 
 
 and this is the word they speak the message 
 of "the merry Bottreau bells :" 
 
 " Come to thy God in time ! 
 
 Rang out Tintadgel chime; 
 
 Youth, manhood, old age past, 
 
 Come to thy God at last ! "
 
 Memory and Bells. 51 
 
 XX. 
 
 "O ye sweet bells of concord, fling 
 
 Your burden to the haunted air ! 
 Ye bells of peace, a solace bring 
 
 Down to this weary world of care ! 
 Your voices falling from above, 
 
 Like star-breathed anthems silver-clear, 
 Our prayerful hearts to praise shall move, 
 
 In hope of heaven s millennial year. 
 Your metal mouths be tuned alone 
 
 To themes eternal and sublime, 
 The golden joys that have not known 
 
 The dull, corroding touch of Time. 
 Bespeak the souls that homeward fly, 
 
 With wings of music, glad and free, 
 To the pure temple of the sky, 
 
 The palace of eternity." 
 
 And soon, perhaps, the bells whose music 
 woke anew with our existence, will signify, 
 more solemnly, our departure. Slowly their 
 brazen tongues will number or more, or less 
 our "threescore years and ten." They will 
 consign our lives to Memory; then Memory 
 will hand our names to Oblivion. 
 
 Shall we not welcome, in its season, this 
 final "cure of all diseases?" As Sir Thomas 
 Browne quaintly and truly saith : "There is 
 no catholicon, or universal remedy I know but
 
 52 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 this, which, though nauseous to queasy 
 stomachs, yet to prepared appetites is nectar 
 and a pleasant potion of immortality." 
 
 Soon it will be time for the ringing of life s 
 curfew : 
 
 "Cover the embers, 
 
 And put out the light." 
 
 But, beyond the darkness and the silence that 
 shall follow Wake ! blessed chimes that usher 
 in the new morning! Wake! Bells of Eter 
 nity!
 
 &torp of a 1)115. 
 
 " T is of a little child 
 
 Upon a lonesome wild, 
 
 Not far from home, but she hath lost her way." 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 
 
 THE sultriest day of the year was well ad 
 vanced, and the August sun was in its languid 
 decline, when, jaded with journeying in the 
 heat as I had been obliged to walk all the 
 way from Pointz Creek I came to the foot of 
 the hill leading upward to the village of Ar- 
 doise, where I had an appointment at evening. 
 A feeling of faintness and of unusual weari 
 ness oppressed me suddenly. I paused, and 
 looked upward along the hill-road that wound 
 to the naked top, a ribbon of yellow glaring 
 dust. The heavy wheels of a wagon just ahead 
 of me made the situation still more intolerable, 
 for the dust they stirred nearly hid horses and 
 driver from view. I regretted, also, my walk 
 ing-stick, which I am in the habit of leaving 
 53
 
 54 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 inopportunely at home, and the duster that I 
 knew to be at that moment hanging unused 
 in the hall, while meditating the difficulty of 
 the ascent before me. 
 
 When the dust had cleared somewhat, and 
 the wagon had vanished beyond the brow of 
 the hill, I lifted the gripsack with which I was 
 encumbered, and trudged on. But when I 
 came to a cluster of pines at the roadside, 
 w r hose branches overspread the way, the temp 
 tation to rest seemed irresistible, and I flung 
 myself down on the carpet of brown needles, 
 to inhale their fragrance and soothe my ear 
 with the indefinable music that comes through 
 their myriad tassel-harps out of the aerial 
 deep. Reclining there, the mystic song put 
 me into a mood of dreams ; my eyes closed, or 
 half-opening, pored on a spray of golden-rod, 
 or a butterfly that, flitting like a white, delicate 
 thought here and there, lit finally and poised 
 on a buttercup. The crickets sang in the stub 
 ble; the grasshoppers went on their eccentric 
 way around me; the pines whispered out of 
 dreamland. 
 
 I was aroused by the sound of a slow, shuf 
 fling, dragging tread, and the muttered tone 
 of a voice. I sat up immediately, and looked
 
 Phemie. 55 
 
 toward the road. An old man had come into 
 view, who was talking strangely, wildly to 
 himself, and gesticulating with his right hand, 
 while in the left he held his walking-stick. He 
 drooped his head forward, and his face was 
 shaded under a broad hat, while he sweltered 
 in a slouching coat of threadbare black. He 
 looked not to right or left, nor appeared to 
 notice me, talking all the while with himself, 
 and flourishing hand or cane so he shuffled 
 on, stirring the dust into a cloud before him. 
 Just a few steps beyond where I sat he paused, 
 leaned heavily on his staff, and with a labored, 
 asthmatic breathing, panted and muttered as 
 he stood. When he moved on again I heard 
 him say, in a tone of reverie, "I shall find her, 
 I shall find her yet!" 
 
 My curiosity was piqued by his manner and 
 utterance; so I watched him till he had as 
 cended the hill well-nigh to the summit ; when, 
 unwilling to have him pass from my view, I 
 arose and hastened after him. At a perspir 
 ing gait I reached the hill-top, and kept the 
 aged pilgrim within my vision. Having 
 gained the point of vantage whence I could 
 survey his movements, I paused to recover my 
 breath, and to note in detail the features of
 
 56 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 an extensive domain of hill and vale and wind 
 ing water spread below me ; for at this eleva 
 tion the view was one of the most inspiring I 
 had seen in this part of the country. 
 
 Just a little way beyond stood an old-time 
 farmhouse, on the right side of the road, with 
 its low hipped roof, unpainted walls, and 
 small-paned windows. The abundance of 
 shrubbery did something to relieve its homely 
 bareness. A hop-vine enfolded the eastern 
 gable and the lean-to in its thick-clustered em 
 brace ; while over the front of the house, and 
 the porch of entrance, a mass of woodbine 
 went climbing to the roof, as yet scarcely 
 touched with the autumnal flame. Lilac shrubs 
 grew wildly at the corners of the house, decay 
 ing here and there. In front were the relics 
 of an old-fashioned garden, not nowadays 
 very carefully tended, in which grew irregu 
 larly the flowers that delighted in the long ago. 
 There had once flourished bachelor s-buttons, 
 candytuft, marigolds, dahlias, lavender, and 
 the damask rose; and there the hollyhock set 
 up its knightly spear, like a sylvan crusader, 
 all clustered with tinted rosettes. Between the 
 garden and the fence that inclosed it was an 
 ample space of green lawn sheltered with elms.
 
 Phemie. 57 
 
 maples, and varied shrubbery ; while over at 
 the left were the moldering remains of an or 
 chard, the gnarled limbs of which were fruited 
 scantily. 
 
 The old man having arrived in front of this 
 farmhouse, which stood solitary, turned ab 
 ruptly, and, entering by the smaller of the two 
 gates, walked slowly up the path to the front 
 door. He did not enter at the main portal, 
 however, but, passing around toward the back, 
 disappeared. The place seemed an invitation 
 to rest, and, in some way unaccountable, the 
 man had exercised a fascination upon me; so 
 I halted, came to the side of the road, and 
 stood leaning over the big farm gate, wiping 
 my perspiring face, and looking wishfully 
 toward the well-sweep just inside, fancying 
 the coolness and sweetness of that which was 
 abundantly stored below in "the deep-delved 
 earth." 
 
 Away at the left of the house, at the foot of 
 a smooth grassy slope, stretched the winding 
 waters of the creek, white and sluggish, save 
 where it took the fires of the approaching sun 
 set. There the poplar clapped and rustled its 
 myriad silver leaves, and made a joyous mel 
 ody ; while on its bluff stood the somberer oak
 
 58 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 and the more somber pine-tree, to give sylvan 
 life its appropriate shadow, and to intone the 
 graver monody of human hearts. 
 
 Nearer was an enticing syren-cluster of sil 
 ver birches, on one part of the slope ; while at 
 the brow, and just beyond it, were the apple- 
 trees, gnarled and mossy, in sprawling, irreg 
 ular attitudes, looking as if they had at some 
 time been badly frightened, and had started to 
 run down hill. The fields around, and this 
 yard in front of me, were brightly green, for 
 the rain had been abundant, while the heat was 
 recent and exceptional. The hilltop seemed 
 benedictory ; gladly I inhaled its gracious 
 freshness. The balm of Gilead tree, that hung 
 motionless over the big gate, though it scat 
 tered its buds no longer, like those that regaled 
 my sense and lulled me in boyhood, brought 
 a wave of haunted memory refining their spicy 
 odor. 
 
 Presently the old man reappeared in the 
 yard, and, carrying with him a bucket, came 
 toward the well. He was a little, old man, 
 very much shrunken, and tottered feebly, put 
 ting out his staff before him in a dim-sighted 
 manner, as if uncertain of his way. I ob 
 served particularly his tremulousness, and a
 
 Phemie. 59 
 
 peculiar straining and blinking of his eyes, as 
 of one who faces a strong light. He suddenly 
 halted, as if he had observed me, and shaded 
 his eyes with his hand, as if to obtain a more 
 certain view of my person ; but he removed 
 his hand directly, and proceeded to the well. 
 
 There was about him an atmosphere of re 
 finement and good breeding, and he had an 
 appearance of gentleness and high intelligence 
 unusual in rural communities. Yet years 
 seemed to have adjusted him to his rustic en 
 vironment, and the polish of his nature had 
 taken a sort of rust. His face, however, indi 
 cated intelligence and refinement, rather than 
 force, and there was a confused sense of men 
 tal bewilderment given out from him of a 
 partial wrecking and paralysis of the man. 
 Yet there was a certain stateliness of move 
 ment, with all his tremulous uncertainty, and 
 the noble manner and fine consciousness were 
 indicated, which are the property of the gen 
 tleman and the scholar. His spare figure gave 
 evidence of former strength and athletic sup 
 pleness, but these were long since departed. 
 His brow broad ; his face and hands still white ; 
 his eyes the eyes of a dreamer, blue, deep-set, 
 overhung by heavy brows, and surrounded by
 
 60 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 many wrinkles. His ample forehead was fur 
 rowed with decisive lines, and seemed planned 
 for meditative and philosophic thought. 
 
 A fringe of curly hair encircled his temples, 
 and the silvery bleached crown, now bare. 
 His locks were like clean-washed wool ; his 
 chin was covered with a fine beard, closely 
 trimmed ; his cheeks were large, but hollow 
 and flabby ; his mouth, full, yet fine. His nose 
 was a marked feature, and gave a distinction 
 to his now colorless face. He wore a dress- 
 coat of faded black, which hung slackly upon 
 him, and slouched about his knees to keep 
 rhythm with his swaying movement. It was a 
 face on which many years and many sorrows 
 had inscribed their evident legends. 
 
 Let it be interpolated here that I had, dur 
 ing my week of rustication in the vicinity of 
 Ardoise, an ample opportunity to become inti 
 mate with "Master Huot" (for it was by this 
 title he was widely known), an opportunity 
 I did not neglect to improve. The old man 
 admitted me to his confidence, and related to 
 me some portion of his history. He was of 
 French ancestry, and had come from the island 
 of Barbadoes soon after entering his teens; 
 and in that sunny clime some of his kindred
 
 Phemie. 61 
 
 still survived. It thrilled him to remember 
 the suffering and sacrifice of his Protestant 
 ancestors, who were thrust out of France by 
 a perfidious Catholic king ; and he was not 
 afraid, if not vain, to match the name of Puri 
 tan with that of Huguenot. 
 
 "Master Huot" was himself of a deeply re 
 ligious strain, a member of the Baptist denomi 
 nation. He had married a domestic woman, 
 of gentle nature, and had settled here many 
 years before. He had seen sons and daughters 
 grow up about him, had buried some of them, 
 but had lived, since the death of his wife, with 
 his eldest son, who kept the homestead. Far 
 and wide he had traveled, his vocation being 
 that of an old-time schoolmaster. He loved to 
 recalr memories of that dear old time in the 
 vale of the St. Croix ; or his sojourn where the 
 Annapolis goes slipping away among its apple- 
 trees, in the society of his friend, Angus Gid- 
 ney, who would recite to him the lays of Mc- 
 Pherson, "The Harp of Acadia," of whom he 
 was preceptor and patron. 
 
 I called one evening at the farmhouse, and 
 found him alone. Following my knock, I 
 heard his shuffling tread, when the door was 
 thrown open, and he gave me one of his peer-
 
 62 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 ing looks of scrutiny, and exclaimed, cheer 
 fully, "Ah ! it is Mr." Alley ! Come in, sir." 
 
 He had been seated near the window, and 
 he resumed his arm-chair at the end of the 
 table, whereon was laid an old leather-covered 
 volume, open page downward. I advanced to 
 inspect it, and found it to be "Tristram 
 Shandy." "Yes," said he, "I like sometimes 
 to amuse myself with this fine old humorist." 
 
 "Do you," I asked, "class him with your 
 
 wise men 
 
 "Alas! no," he replied; "I will prefer the 
 wisdom of those who have lived well, before 
 they wrote well Epictetus or Antoninus, for 
 example or, better, Paul. But Sterne has the 
 strain of humanity, and I may laugh with him ; 
 though the laugh dies rather querulously away 
 when I notice his dereliction and infirmity, the 
 hectic pallor of his life. A more pitiful death 
 than his I do not know in the history of all 
 mirthful men." 
 
 He adjusted his glasses, and took up the 
 book as if to refer to it, but laid it suddenly 
 dow r n again, and continued : 
 
 "Weak men and erring men are in the great 
 majority, and have numbered among them 
 some of the brightest and most gifted of man-
 
 Phemie. 63 
 
 kind, including some whose names were hal 
 lowed in Holy Writ. But Wisdom remains 
 the same, a steadfast star, on which the mar 
 iner-soul must needs look if he steer rightly. 
 It has been said that in the multitude of the 
 wise is the welfare of the world, yet it saddens 
 us to see how solitary they stand amid the 
 multitude who seem impervious to wisdom, or 
 who lack the will, the art, or the leisure to be 
 wise. Happily there is a wisdom accessible 
 to the simple which consists in faith and obedi 
 ence toward the Lord of Life. This alone we 
 may hope, of all forms of wisdom, shall one 
 day become the common heritage." 
 
 It became evident to me that I was in the 
 
 / 
 
 presence of a person who, in a neighborhood 
 where such things were not common, led the 
 intellectual, tempered with the spiritual, life ; 
 and I had to reconcile this with certain rumors 
 of his insanity, and the evidences I had wit 
 nessed of at least a morbid bias. 
 
 He was fond of repeating old-time poetry, 
 which he did with a certain sonorous precision, 
 yet with feeling and effectiveness. I can see 
 him now, with his spectacles elevated upon his 
 brow, his left leg crossed over his right, his 
 head erect in unwonted stateliness, while with
 
 64 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 his hand moving in rhythmic concert with the 
 lines, he repeats that passage of Pope, which 
 has in it an unusual and real pathos : 
 
 "What can atone (O ever-injured shade!) 
 Thy fate unpitied, and thy rites unpaid? 
 No friend s complaint, no kind domestic tear 
 Pleased thy pale ghost, or graced thy mournful 
 
 bier. 
 
 By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed, 
 By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed, 
 By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned, 
 By strangers honored, and by strangers mourned."* 
 
 Or, from his lips, how tenderly sounded 
 these sweetest lines from my most heartfelt 
 poet lines never heard without bringing the 
 vernal thought of youth into the heart s au 
 tumnal bower: 
 
 "O life in death, the days that are no more !" 
 
 "Down to the vale this water steers ; 
 
 How merrily it goes ! 
 T will murmur on a thousand years, 
 And flow as now it flows. 
 
 And here, on this delightful day, 
 
 I can not choose but think 
 How oft, a vigorous man, I lay 
 
 Beside this fountain s brink. 
 
 * " Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady."
 
 Phemie. 65 
 
 My eyes are dim with childish tears, 
 
 My heart is idly stirred, 
 For the same sound is in my ears 
 
 Which in those days I heard."* 
 
 I observed that he gave preference to pieces 
 of tenderness and pathos, in which are to be 
 felt the pulse of longing, the mingled mood 
 of cheerfulness and mild regret a feeling in 
 full harmony with the revelations of this nar 
 rative for I must remind the reader that this 
 is a digression, and that we are still standing 
 at the gate. 
 
 I had supposed myself the subject of the old 
 man s scrutiny, and that he had determined 
 to pass me without salutation ; but it was soon 
 evident that he had not observed me ; for he 
 went through the same motions, and gazed 
 outwardly in the like manner, so soon as he 
 had set his bucket down on the well-curb. 
 Leaving it there, he wandered obliquely across 
 the yard to the gate at which he had entered, 
 and looked with a sort of anxious eagerness 
 up and down the road, as if to note the ap 
 proach of some one expected. He turned and 
 came back to the well ; and while he pro 
 ceeded to lower and fill his bucket, I entered 
 
 * Wordsworth, " The Fountain. 
 5
 
 66 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 the yard and stood at his elbow just as the 
 brimming bucket ascended all dripping to his 
 hand. 
 
 He started and turned, as I accosted him : 
 "Can you tell me, sir, how far it is to the vil 
 lage of Ardoise?" 
 
 He moved and answered as abruptly as one 
 of his leisurely habit admitted ; scanning me 
 searchingly, and finding me to be a stranger, 
 he answered courteously, but precisely : 
 
 "The matter of half a mile, we call it, sir." 
 "Will you favor me with a draught from 
 your bucket? The sight of it at this instant 
 is almost overpowering; and I concede its 
 merits, with the writer of a popular song, as 
 being far superior to the nectar that Jupiter 
 sips. If the sun had not done so. the sight of 
 your cool well and old oaken bucket would 
 make me thirsty." 
 
 A faint smile rose to his lips as he answered : 
 "This is a draught indeed to slake a fever. 
 My father s table was not without its choice 
 wine, and my memory can recall the well- 
 known flavor ; yet here I have what now con 
 tents me, while I could wish that no draught 
 less innocent might ever be lifted to the lips 
 of man."
 
 Phemie. 67 
 
 He soon supplied me; then, while I eagerly 
 drank from a cup that had been hung inside 
 the curb, he turned away his attention and 
 scanned the road again, or looked down the 
 sunset way filling with glory the watery vale 
 below, straining his eyes in either direction, 
 and assuming his former look of anxious in 
 quiry. 
 
 "Is there some one expected, for whom you 
 are looking?" I inquired. 
 
 He returned again to a subconsciousness of 
 my presence, and addressed me in a tone of 
 preoccupation : 
 
 "Ah ! sir, I have looked for her long ; nor 
 can I forbear looking for her; nor can I con 
 jecture whither she has gone. But," he added, 
 in a tone that went straight to my heart, "she 
 will come, some time ! Surely she will come, 
 some time !" 
 
 He spoke and acted in so distracted and 
 mournful a manner that I was led to survey 
 his face more critically than before. I noticed 
 a singular muscular twitching, especially about 
 the lips and eyes, and that wild, gleaming ex 
 pression of their orbs, peculiar to the dis 
 traught, that gave me a suspicion of insanity, 
 existing in its milder or melancholy form.
 
 68 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 "Whom do you expect?" I queried. 
 
 "O, sir," he answered, hopefully, in a tone 
 of greater cheerfulness, and of a childlike con 
 fidence, "it is my little granddaughter it is 
 Phemie ! Ah ! sir, it is most strange, and I 
 can never account for it ; but so it is, and it is 
 one of God s great mysteries, and our most 
 sore privation. Though seven times the buds 
 have fallen from yonder balm of Gilead, to 
 make the air sweet with memories of her, she 
 has never reappeared at the door from which 
 she vanished so suddenly. Yet I anticipate 
 her presence momently, and feel that she may 
 enter yonder gate, or come up the slope from 
 the brookside yes, even now, while I speak 
 of her. O ! can you know," he continued, 
 with tone and manner of sharpest pathos, "can 
 you conjecture what a parent must feel to lose 
 a dear child so in so mysterious a way ! To 
 miss her, sir, when she has seemed absent from 
 your sight but a moment ; to search for her 
 to search anxiously and long, and to renew 
 your quest yet never to see her again never 
 to know what has become of her!" 
 
 My sympathies by this time were in a state 
 of lively commotion, and he paused, with 
 choked utterance, to master the tumult of his
 
 Phemie. 69 
 
 bosom. In a few minutes he resumed : "She 
 was a precious child, sir ! Though but eight 
 summers had flown from her birth to the void 
 and terrible day of her departure, she had 
 woven about our hearts a holy spell, and we 
 saw her through a mist of beauty and splen 
 dor. Where she moved there was abundant 
 life, and all was radiance. I scarcely see life 
 any more ; but then it teemed in every sun 
 beam, and swarmed in every cranny. She 
 made life and light, sir ! She was the darling 
 object of our affection. I never loved any 
 human creature so ! God, who has stricken, 
 forgive me, if I made her my idol ! 
 
 "There were two children in our home 
 two little daughters. My son sighed for a 
 man-child, who might become his companion 
 and helper on the farm, and, by and by, his 
 successor. It is in our children we hope to 
 survive, for our graves are sweetened by grate 
 ful memories. But some things, howsoever 
 we long for them, are denied us ; and his desire 
 was never gratified. But little Eve, and our 
 beautiful Euphemia whom we called Phemie 
 did not lack love. Phemie was our angel- 
 child, and we adored her. Eve was the 
 younger and feeble a babe a yearling lisper,
 
 70 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 who engaged our care, and was of our kind 
 clay of our clay. She went tottering uncer 
 tainly, babbling of maternity, and we reached 
 our hands to her to save her from falling, or 
 gathered her to our bosoms. There was a 
 delicacy about her that excited foreboding 
 comment. We pitied while we loved. 
 
 "But Phemie seemed ours, yet not wholly 
 ours ; she moved in such a joyous, undecaying 
 atmosphere, we thought of her as of one al 
 ready immortal. The neighbors saw a sign 
 of early flitting upon the baby s brow, but they 
 spake not so of Phemie. How could they see 
 in her a bit of human evanescence, too 
 strangely beautiful for abiding here ? O ! sir, 
 if you know the language of the poets, and 
 will cull their magical phrases, yet can you 
 not paint the radiance of her coming, and then 
 the sudden gloom of her departure. But he 
 who spake of the vanishing of earth s most 
 beautiful forms the snowflake, the aurora, 
 the rainbow he would at least have under 
 stood by sympathy our woe and surprise. He 
 spake truly, for grief had made him timely 
 wise ; and the same lore I have learned, in my 
 season." 
 
 Willing to encourage his somewhat repe-
 
 Phemie. 71 
 
 titious and extravagant eulogy, when that was 
 evidently the birth of so deep an affection, I 
 observed, as he gave me the opportunity of a 
 momentary silence : 
 
 "Was your Phemie, then, so much more 
 beautiful than Eve?" 
 
 "Ah ! Eve," he sighed ; "dear little cherub, 
 that sat with wan, uplifted face, and gazed 
 with faerie-wide eyes into vacancy, as if she 
 saw something our eyes could not see it 
 seemed, indeed, as if other worlds must 
 claim her ! We loved her with a love all her 
 own. Do you not know that each child in 
 the household claims its unique place and pe 
 culiar affection ? They do not all affect us 
 alike. I loved her, too, and still love her. I 
 know, also, whither she went. Sometimes, as 
 I sat beside her cradle watching her, she in 
 spired me with unusual and indefinable emo 
 tion filled me with ghostly thoughts and 
 dreamings, most unearthly, vague, and soli 
 tary. 
 
 "But Phemie warmed my blood, and filled 
 all my horizon with light. Nothing ever 
 realized so powerfully the glow and gleam of 
 youth the dawning life of the heart. She 
 was of our world, yet with the glamour of an-
 
 72 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 other world around her. Asserting that sphere 
 where all is unfading purity and beauty, she 
 kept her wings hidden, and held her place 
 upon the earth ay, without any warning until 
 she went ! Sir, she was the sort of child whom, 
 having known, you can never forget, and of 
 whom the deprivation is unspeakable woe. 
 She had a spirit of absolute trust and affec 
 tion ; she was an embodied rapture ; she was 
 a sunbeam soul, transfused through a mold of 
 curves and dimples. No tint or outline seemed 
 lacking that could heighten loveliness. Never 
 dwelt a spirit blither or gentler in a whole- 
 somer or seemlier body. I would dwell on her 
 praises more than a lover on those of his mis 
 tress. And, O! sir, that voice of hers! To 
 hear her coming up yonder slope, as I have 
 often heard her, 
 
 " Singing clearer than the crested bird 
 That claps her wings at dawn, 
 
 was to have experienced a delight no bird can 
 give. Ah ! it was good to listen to her ! 
 
 "And, when in motion, her form was de 
 lightful to look upon. Just one glint of her 
 sweet, innocent eyes, with the old mischief in 
 them ; just one honest peal of her merry, ring-
 
 Phemie. 73 
 
 ing laughter; just one more sight of her fly 
 ing figure, now fleeting over the grass, like the 
 Water-of-Birds, that slips over its pebbles sil 
 ver-footed at the base of the hill, or dancing 
 a-tiptoe like the very bobolink, or the curving 
 swallow ! Ah ! to see her so again, if but for 
 a heart s golden minute ! That is all I need 
 to make me ready to go to follow her, hav 
 ing had one more enticing glimpse. 
 
 "Sir, had you become sad, to enter when she 
 was present had been a heart s tonic for you. 
 She was no rubicund earthiness ; her face 
 had roundness and color, but her features 
 were small and fine. She was of rarest text 
 ure; her figure of exceeding symmetry. Her 
 full, deep-lit blue eyes were shadowed by long 
 lashes ; and the purity of her brow, contrasted 
 with the wavy abundance of her hair, that 
 rippled gold on neck and shoulders, seemed 
 like a pearl enchased. A mist of amber round 
 her showed that hair to me sometimes, flying 
 afoot through a sea of daisies and buttercups, 
 dancing under the trees, coquetting with the 
 sunbeams herself a sunbeam. She was the 
 fleetest, lightest thing I ever saw in motion 
 without wings ; for wings, I fancy could 
 scarcely have borne her more easily than her
 
 74 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 twinkling feet. She was nature s child, and 
 loved the world of open air. 
 
 " O blessed vision ! happy child ! 
 That art so exquisitely wild ! 
 
 "Never can I think of Wordsworth s hap 
 piest lines, descriptive of child or woman, with 
 out thinking of her: 
 
 " She shall be sportive as the fawn, 
 That, wild with glee, across the lawn 
 
 Or up the mountain springs ; 
 And hers shall be the breathing balm, 
 And hers the silence and the calm 
 
 Of mute, insensate things. 
 
 "The grace of the willow, the cloud, and 
 the evening star, were indeed hers. Then, at 
 times, she was so sage and grave, so abundant 
 in quaint questioning and wise remark and, 
 withal, so loving. How she doted on that 
 eerie, wee sister of hers ! It seemed as if she 
 might have been Love s self, divorced in the 
 past from Sorrow, and in the present wedded 
 to Joy." 
 
 Again he paused, as if he had exhausted 
 his vocabulary of admiration and eulogy. It 
 became more evident, as he advanced, that his 
 was a mind unbalanced, yet with a rich and
 
 Phemie. 75 
 
 fertile fancy. To turn his thought, I said : 
 "From what you have said I can readily con 
 ceive the beauty of her face and figure, as 
 well as the brightness and sweetness of her 
 spirit. But will you not now relate to me the 
 manner of her disappearance?" 
 
 "To that mournful event I was approach 
 ing/ he responded. "The dear girl had shown 
 such signs of rare intelligence and musical 
 ability that her parents designed for her a lib 
 eral education, and had the most hopeful ex 
 pectation concerning her. She developed rap 
 idly, was mature beyond her years, and was 
 the pet and favorite of all. Then came the 
 fateful day (what other can I call it?) that 
 began our desolation. It was in the season, 
 too, that begets our liveliest emotion the era 
 of hope, when the young grasses are spring 
 ing, after arbutus has risen from its wintry 
 sleep and faded, and when the dandelion has 
 covered our hillsides with its minted gold, and 
 the stars of Bethlehem have sprinkled the 
 meadow. The green was living green ; the 
 lilac bushes, yonder at the corners of the fence, 
 were coming into blossom; while the balmy 
 buds from the great tree over the gate fell 
 down where we stand, filling the air with bal-
 
 76 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 sam sweetness. The warm breeze toying 
 softly with its leaves made them to rustle and 
 catch the changing lights of a sun clearer, 
 more delicious than on this sultry day ; when, 
 right here, under the shelter of its branches, I 
 saw Phemie and baby Eve together, the elder 
 leaping and playing around the younger, who 
 threw up her little hands, crowing with the 
 glee of infancy, both brightening in the glory 
 that fell around them. I sat, watching from 
 the porch. Eve caught the loose leaves and 
 mingled wild flowers with which her sister had 
 filled her lap, as she sat on a shawl spread over 
 the grass, and tossed the sweet baubles aloof, 
 crowing aloud, and giving, now and again, 
 a shrieking emphasis to her sweet baby-babble. 
 I saw Phemie weave a wreath of lilac leaves 
 and blossoms, and put it on her sister s tiny 
 head ; then she danced and spun about her in 
 a whirl of delight, as if her sister had been a 
 Queen of the May, or she herself a servitor of 
 Titania. Such loving, mirthful attendance I 
 joyed to look upon ; it was a part of nature s 
 general loveliness. Then she started on a stag- 
 race down the green slope, and passed from 
 my sight. It was so I saw her for the last 
 time.
 
 Themie. 77 
 
 "I thought she would be flying back again 
 in a few minutes; and directly, I entered the 
 house. Her mother came, looked out of the 
 window, and, missing the child, said : I won 
 der where Themie has gone? I see that little 
 Eve is sitting alone. I looked out and saw 
 the baby sitting in her eerie silence, and every 
 appearance of mirth was gone. I sat near 
 the window for a time, still watching the little 
 one ; then, when I began to wonder that 
 Themie had not come back, I went out to 
 look for her. I was ever restless, sir, if she 
 was not in my presence. 
 
 "I went out behind the house, shading my 
 eyes from the afternoon sun, that I might look 
 down the slope to the brookside, whither she 
 might have gone for other leaves and blos 
 soms ; but I saw no living thing, save a soli 
 tary crow, that flew over the meadow, and, 
 lighting on a fir-tree top, sat silently looking. 
 
 "I re-entered the house, when her mother 
 asked if I had discovered her. Nay, I said, 
 she was nowhere in sight. Where can the 
 child be? she queried, in an anxious tone. It 
 is not like her to leave baby so long. I think 
 she may have gone down to the brook after her 
 father, I replied; I think he is there, for I
 
 78 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 heard the sound of his ax clipping among the 
 alders. So I sat down again by the window, 
 watching Eve, and thinking that Phemie 
 would soon come to her. Presently I heard a 
 little cry, and I went out to cuddle her and to 
 fetch her in, for she was getting fretful. How 
 ever, it seemed pleasanter outside, and I dal 
 lied with her till she was pleased, then crooned 
 and cradled her in my arms till she fell asleep ; 
 then I laid her down on the shaw r l, and went 
 round to the back of the house once more to 
 look for Phemie. I saw my son coming up 
 the slope, his ax over his shoulder the shift 
 ing blade of which glanced the beams of light, 
 for the sun was low ; but Phemie was not with 
 him. 
 
 "When he had arrived, and learned of 
 Phemie s disappearance, he went back im 
 mediately to look for her ; while I carried Eve 
 into the house and hushed her to rest in my 
 arms, for I had need of quieting more than the 
 babe. Her mother, too, wore a look of anxi 
 ety she strove to conceal, and went about her 
 household cares, drawing the tea and laying 
 the cloth for supper. Mary was a sweet and 
 patient woman, and the quiver of her lip or 
 the rising of a tear, in time of grief, usually
 
 Phemie. 79 
 
 betrayed her emotion. The baby slept placidly 
 as a sunset lake, with a star like a smile in its 
 waters. The gray cat sat purring gently on 
 the hearth rug, and sometimes seemed to look 
 up at me inquiringly. On the hob the tea 
 steamed, and sent out its fragrant odor, while 
 the tall clock sounded distinctly its measured 
 tick. The sunset faded; deeper and deeper 
 grew the shadows; an hour passed away, and 
 then another. We sat and waited, and still we 
 heard no footstep. 
 
 " I wonder why Robert does not come with 
 Phemie? sighed her mother, in a tone of 
 pained surprise. It is growing very late. 
 Just then we heard his foot on the threshold. 
 He entered, pale and ghastly, and staggering 
 as if from a heavy blow. There was no dis 
 guising that message of grief and fear. 
 Robert! cried his wife, what is the matter? 
 Where is Phemie? I have not found her, 
 he faltered, in a stifled voice. No one has seen 
 her in all this neighborhood to-day. We must 
 call out the people ; we must search the woods 
 the creek ! 
 
 "O, sir, you can not imagine, nor can I de 
 scribe to you, our consternation the anguish, 
 the dismay, that oppressed us. The mother
 
 8o Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 uttered a shrill cry, and sank down. Supper 
 had long been ready, but on the board it was 
 left untasted. Suddenly I found myself in 
 solitude. I laid the little Eve in her cradle. 
 Happily she slept; and, leaving her, I went 
 outside. I could see no human shape, and 
 could hear no voice, save that of the brook 
 murmuring in the hollow with prophetic dis 
 tinctness in that still world of trance. The sky 
 was clear, and a few soft stars were mirrored 
 in the creek. I heard the sharp barking of a 
 dog somewhere beyond its waters. Ah ! what 
 a disturbed heart was mine on such a tranquil 
 night ! Could the world, indeed, be so changed 
 for me and mine in a few hours ! The shadows 
 crept ever lonelier round me. I went inside 
 again, and sat, listening to the ticking of the 
 clock, the breathing of the sleeping babe, and 
 the simmering of the kettle on the fire for 
 still I kept the tea in readiness, in hope of a 
 possible happy return. Alas ! what a thing it 
 is to have become old and helpless! I could 
 do nothing but sit, the prey of torturing 
 thought, while my unhappy children, in the 
 company of the aroused neighborhood, had 
 gone out in search of our lost darling. 
 
 "Soon after midnight I heard the sound of
 
 Phemie. 81 
 
 approaching footsteps. It was Mary, draggled 
 and dejected, coming to look to her baby. She 
 entered, softly weeping, and said : They have 
 not found her, and I can go no farther. I am 
 of little use in the woods. We sat and waited 
 through the awful hours together. Little 
 could we say. Sometimes a low, half-smoth 
 ered cry would escape her Phemie O, 
 Phemie ! but she sat and wept silently. All 
 that night her father wandered in his wretch 
 edness, calling through the woods Phemie ! 
 Phemie ! and to the hoarse voices of stout 
 men the hills echoed, Phemie ! but she 
 never answered to their call. Hopefully at 
 first, and then despairingly, they uttered that 
 cry, but in vain. 
 
 "Day after day they renewed their quest, 
 and every foot of the wilderness, and the coun 
 try round was tramped and beaten over; but, 
 in life or in death, they never found her, and 
 no man to this day knows where she went." 
 
 The mad fire burned in his eyes, and, raising 
 his voice, he exclaimed, passionately, "Sir, she 
 never came, nor have we ever heard of her till 
 this hour! O empty, lonely world! O God! 
 if we could only have known ! She was fit for 
 heaven, and the angels have claimed her; she 
 6
 
 82 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 was God s child ! Yet if he had called her, and 
 taken her, in our plain sight, and we had heard 
 her adieu, and seen the saintly smile of the 
 dying, we might have been more reconciled to 
 let her go. We would have looked out to the 
 sunset, and down to the meadow in its early 
 green, and, in our thought, she would have 
 become a part of that 
 
 " Loveliness 
 Which once she made more lovely, 
 
 and we would have enshrined her in that radi 
 ant Valhalla of Love, to await the immortal 
 greeting. 
 
 "But, O ! sir, to lose her so ! We could not 
 believe we had lost her ! Where could she 
 have gone? No swampy glade, no tangled 
 thicket, no hidden nook or wilderness recess 
 no, not one hollow place, or well, or stream, 
 in all this region but has been searched for 
 her again and again ; yet never so much as a 
 ribbon, or shred of lace, or tatter of her little 
 dress, or a bit of lint or floss, or strand of 
 golden hair, has any one found. The bird in 
 his flight leaves a plume behind upon the nest ; 
 the lamb, pressing through brambles, leaves a 
 woolly figment ; but she in her passing left no 
 sign.
 
 Phemie. 83 
 
 "The Angel of Life gone, the Angel of 
 Death came instead, and our desolate house 
 was made more desolate. The babe faded into 
 that realm to which, even from the first, she 
 seemed to belong, and where our tender chil 
 dren, having safely entered, seem to us babes 
 eternal the ineffable and unchangeable. The 
 heart-broken mother waned, and soon followed 
 her child. Three years the grass has crept 
 in springtime over the longer, beside the 
 shorter, grave in Ardoise Churchyard. 
 
 "Then, Robert having to be abroad during 
 the day, I was left much in solitude and you 
 know, sir, solitary life is not good for us if 
 we are confined to it closely. But always I 
 have felt as if she was near, and I have been 
 in the mood of expectancy. Still I look for 
 Phemie s corning. If I fancy a light tap 
 comes on the door, quickly my heart leaps up, 
 and I say, It is our darling ! When I take my 
 slow way up yonder slope, in some evening of 
 early October, when the far gleam lingers in 
 the west, growing ever dimmer, and the young 
 moon hangs above the hill, and the short, thick 
 grasses grow dark and cool then, while a 
 feeling of mingled hope and longing takes pos 
 session of me, I dream I see her coming
 
 84 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 towards me, and I reach out my aching arms 
 to enfold her ! 
 
 "Sometimes, when the wintry shadows have 
 fallen early, and I sit lonely, waiting for my 
 son s return, I brighten up the fire and set the 
 table freshly, as if for a guest ; then I start 
 up, half-believing that I hear the sound of her 
 light feet on the crispy snow outside. 
 
 "What delays her ? She must know the fire 
 side awaits her ; that here linger her sad father 
 and the lonely old man that loved her so 
 who still loves her !" 
 
 He paused, gave me a piteous look, and 
 resumed: "O, sir, she must come she must 
 come, some time ! Yet where can she have 
 gone to have staid so long? Surely no ill can 
 have happened to her. No gipsy band was 
 known to have been in the neighborhood ; and 
 she must, if seized and taken by force, have 
 uttered her cry ; yet no one heard it. No al 
 lurement on earth could have tempted her lov 
 ing heart to leave us. Had she fallen into 
 them, the waters of our many-winding creek 
 could not have borne her out to sea some 
 where, in cove, or on outlying point, or along 
 muddy shore, the receding tide must have left 
 her. Somewhere, in brake or bush, on knoll,
 
 Phemie. 85 
 
 or in hollow, we must have found her, if near 
 us she had perished. 
 
 "Sir" and the muscles about eyes and 
 mouth twitched, while his voice became shrill, 
 and the gleam lightened his eyes "How can 
 she have perished ? It is quite impossible !" 
 
 Then, while his face brightened, his voice 
 sank to an intense whisper : "I believe she is 
 alive ! I know she is ! I have seen her ! Many 
 a time, just at sunset, have I beheld her flying 
 figure down by yonder shore. She has skipped 
 airily along, just as she used to do in the years 
 before she went away ; and as she has gone 
 before me through the furze and alders, I have 
 seen the dancing gleam of her garments, and 
 her golden hair; but before I could reach her 
 she vanished away. She is our Kilmeny, and 
 she haunts yonder slope and shore ! Often, in 
 calm summer evenings, I hear her away down 
 by the brook, with snatches of song and wild 
 aerial laughter. But will she not come back 
 to be at home with us ? Loving heart that she 
 is, why does she not come to me, who so long 
 for her?" 
 
 His plaintive voice ceased, and, with an air 
 of dejection, he returned to the gate, and sur 
 veyed the highway, whereon no creature was 
 visible.
 
 86 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 As I sauntered on toward Ardoise village, 
 musing how thought so similar should come 
 to poet and madman, I crooned the ballad of 
 that "sweetest thing that ever grew beside a 
 human door:" 
 
 "Yet some maintain that to this day 
 
 She is a living child; 
 That you may see sweet Lucy Gray 
 Upon the lonesome wild. 
 
 O er rough and smooth she trips along, 
 
 And never looks behind, 
 And sings a solitary song 
 
 That whistles in the wind."
 
 Bental 
 
 i. 
 
 "Hark ! T is the bluebird s venturous strain 
 High on the old fringed elm at the gate 
 Sweet-voiced, valiant on the swaying bough, 
 
 alert, elate, 
 
 Dodging the fitful spits of snow 
 New England s poet-laureate 
 Telling us Spring has come again." 
 
 T. E. Aldrich. 
 
 I AWOKE this morning to the silver flute of 
 the robin, as that industrious minstrel des 
 canted of freedom and cheerfulness in the 
 bare apple-tree outside my window. How my 
 past and present in the very ether of love were 
 blended by that artless, reassuring strain ! In 
 the old lyric measure he seemed to be repeat 
 ing the enamored Hebrew s rhapsody, and say 
 ing: "Now, indeed the winter is over and 
 gone; the snow has departed; ceased are the 
 chilly rains. Softly, newly green is the earth ; 
 the elm and maple are putting forth their ten- 
 87
 
 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 der leaves; in the fields you love the flowers 
 reappear ; the time of the singing of birds has 
 come. Be glad ! for the violet is in its olden 
 scented nook, and the arbutus is alive, and like 
 a new-born infant creeps on the floor of the 
 forest." How can my heart fail responsive 
 to such a call ! The season that wakens all 
 things vital, with its indefinable charm is upon 
 us. Somehow it is enough for us that spring 
 is at hand. What if we are depleted by the 
 days of darkness and storm? We will be de 
 jected no longer! The sap of the world bub 
 bles up, the blood of the heart warms, the 
 ichor of joy oozes at a thousand pores ; the 
 first faint shows have the prestige and bespeak 
 the fullness of the well-bloomed summer ; we 
 smile, for we know the pageant that is at hand. 
 Soon shall be enacted that magic seen and 
 spoken so aptly by the poet of the South :* 
 
 "Spring, with that nameless pathos in the air 
 Which dwells with all things fair, 
 Spring, with her golden suns and silver rain, 
 Is with us once again. 
 
 Out in the lonely woods the jasmine burns 
 In fragrant lamps, and turns 
 Into a royal court with green festoons 
 The banks of dark lagoons. 
 
 * Henry Timrod.
 
 Vernal Notes. 89 
 
 In the deep heart of every forest tree 
 The blood is all aglee, 
 
 And there s a look about the leafless bowers 
 As if they dreamed of flowers. 
 
 Yet still on every side we trace the hand 
 Of winter in the land, 
 
 Save where the maple reddens on the lawn, 
 Flushed by the season s dawn; 
 
 Or where, like those strange semblances we find 
 That age to childhood bind, 
 The elm puts on, as if in nature s scorn, 
 The brown of autumn corn. 
 
 As yet the turf is dark, although you know 
 
 That, not a span below, 
 
 A thousand germs are groping through the 
 
 gloom, 
 And soon will burst their tomb. 
 
 Already here and there, on frailest stems 
 Appear some azure gems, 
 Small as might deck, upon a gala day, 
 The forehead of a fay. 
 
 In gardens you may note amid the dearth 
 The crocus breaking earth ; 
 
 And near the snowdrop s tender white and green, 
 The violet in its screen. 
 
 But many gleams and shadows need must pass 
 Along the budding grass, 
 And weeks go by before the enamored South 
 Shall kiss the rose s mouth.
 
 go Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Still there s a sense of blossoms yet unborn 
 In the sweet airs of morn ; 
 One almost looks to see the very street 
 Grow purple at his feet. 
 
 At times a fragrant breeze comes floating by, 
 And brings, you know not why, 
 A feeling as when eager crowds await 
 Before a palace gate 
 
 Some wondrous pageant ; and you scarce would 
 
 start, 
 
 If from a beech s heart 
 
 A blue-eyed Dryad, stepping forth, should say, 
 Behold me ! I am May ! " 
 
 II. 
 
 Ye who put your faith in visions of the 
 Muse, and of such revelations of musical god 
 desses as Thalia, Urania, or even the Scottish 
 Coila, listen to the story that I shall tell you : 
 
 Your would-be entertainer perhaps your 
 brother of the quill had a singular rencontre 
 not long since, when he had gone out for an 
 evening s walk, hoping to get from the hand 
 of nature s sweet apothecary a fresh bottle of 
 ozone. While his nerves were being toned, 
 and his chest was being expanded, and the
 
 Vernal Notes. 91 
 
 knots and nettles were being taken out of him, 
 whom should he see crossing the pasture 
 knolls wherever their mossy nebs were stuck 
 above the snow (for this was before the ad 
 vent of June s leanness, and an extraordinary 
 rainy season, so that there was not so much 
 as one green blade) but a solitary, fagged, 
 and bedraggled maiden, who was nevertheless 
 wildly, bewitchingly beautiful. Tired, though 
 she was, and dispirited, I never saw a fairer 
 face, nor a more queenly bearing; cheek and 
 brow showed the rose and the lily, and her dis 
 heveled locks the thready gold, where its 
 abundance fell over her white neck and shoul 
 ders. Noting, under all her weariness, her 
 sylphid shape and native airy movement, quite 
 unlike any of our village maidens, he drew up 
 and accosted her. "Gentle lady, may I bid 
 you a good evening, and inquire whither you 
 wander so far from the public way, and why 
 you are so strangely clad?" Fixing her eyes 
 on him eyes so wildly, wonderfully light 
 some and beautiful, he had never dreamed of 
 such she answered him in accents as clear 
 and musical as any he ever heard : "I love the 
 wilderness ; it is my home. I steal harmlessly 
 into quiet dwellings; I wander over old bat-
 
 92 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 tlefields ; hover above the cataracts ; crown me 
 with wreaths of pine and maple; track the 
 raftsmen down foamy rivers, and the voy 
 agers into the Far West ; I leap with glad chil 
 dren, and dance in groves with light-hearted 
 maidens ; I haunt many places, from the prai 
 ries to the lakes, and the Laurentian River; 
 but I build my house among green leaves. I 
 am the Canadian Muse, banished from my 
 native country and wandering down to the 
 Acadian lands, to the shores that answer to 
 my beloved hills and forests. Truly, I have 
 found the land, what I had heard of its be 
 ing, a choice region of varied loveliness. 
 No wonder if men love it ; and from all other 
 places whither they have strayed turn their 
 footsteps back, that they may once more be 
 hold it !" Would you not, reader, have been 
 astonished, as was Felix? who replied: "But 
 you have passed the boundary of the country 
 that claims you, and are now in a strange, 
 though a goodly and noble, land, albeit it 
 once formed a part of your cherished Acadia. 
 Why, dear lady, have you left that youthful 
 nation, just now in its hopeful spring, free and 
 unimcumbered, where, if ever, the native Muse 
 should be entertained ?" "Alas !" she faltered,
 
 Vernal Notes. 93 
 
 the tears rushing to her eyes, while she 
 looked so lovely in her grief I longed to soothe 
 and comfort her; "I have been discouraged. 
 All is beautiful without, and the soul within 
 me reflects that beauty ; but it is not enough, 
 my soul hungers for approval and human sym 
 pathy. Yet the poet is a thing apart, by the 
 constitution of his nature, and the force of a 
 will stronger than his own ;* and so it follows 
 that men will look askance and strangely at 
 him. Lacking all other occasion, they call this 
 almost a crime, that he is a forsaker of his 
 kind, and much by himself. Then, where is 
 the poet who is content to sing long for sing 
 ing s sake, who wishes to be heard of none, 
 and who sorrows not at despite and cold dis- 
 
 *"Men consort in camp and town, 
 But the poet dwells alone. 
 God, who gave to him the lyre, 
 Of all mortals the desire, 
 For all breathing men s behoof, 
 Straitly charged him, Sit aloof : 
 
 Yet Saadi loved the sons of men, 
 No churl immured in cave or den; 
 In bower and hall he wants them all 
 Nor can dispense with Persia for his audience." 
 
 Emerson.
 
 94 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 suasion? I have flown from long neglect. 
 Besides, there has recently come from abroad 
 a spirit called Scientific Criticism, that scorns 
 me, proclaiming that I am inconsistent and out 
 of harmony with the time. I have been in 
 structed that there is no need of me ; that, in 
 deed, my presence is anomalous and not de 
 sired, or desirable; that nothing distinctive 
 exists in my character, and nothing heroic in 
 my spirit. We want dissecters, engineers, 
 analysts, not orators or poets. The earth is 
 to be ripped up, re-examined, reconstructed ; 
 not talked about, ever so beautifully. And 
 what I deemed they said is this Canada, 
 anyway, but an extension of England ; and 
 what do we presume to have to ourselves, and 
 from ourselves, alone? Are we not well pro 
 vided for, if poetry is desired? Can we hope 
 to excel Shakespeare or rival Milton? and 
 it is folly to seek for less. We tre to expect 
 no native, no individual voices ; or to drown 
 them in the heartiness of our mocking dis 
 praise. There are no birds singing among 
 these trees, no flowers blooming in our fields, 
 but British bards have sung them better than 
 can any fictitious native muse. Besides, we 
 have of song a sufficiency ; the bobolinks have
 
 Vernal Notes. 95 
 
 long ago had their caroling season ; now let 
 them betake to the rice-swamps and feed them 
 selves, while we who have leisure for such 
 things reawaken foregone melodies. So, what 
 have I and my followers to hope for ? We are 
 to be ignored ; or, if attention is called to us, 
 we must be objects of mistrust and disdain. 
 There is my friend, Davin, who told me that 
 he pleaded in the House at Ottawa for my 
 favorite, Lampman, that, being in the govern 
 ment employ, they might award him an office 
 more congenial to his mind, and affording him 
 more leisure. But they said : Are not his 
 wares on the market, in competition with 
 others? We can not afford to bestow patron 
 age; there are too many to claim it. Who is 
 to decide upon merit? Roberts might come 
 forward with his claim, and Campbell, and 
 Scott; and who can tell where this thing will 
 end? So, henceforth, there is commended to 
 me, on native ground, nothing save self-sup 
 pression ; while that ground is being pre 
 empted in the interest of a certain canonized 
 spirit, known as Epical Antiquity; and men 
 are to be instructed to admire more wisely, 
 and to distrust their own ability to produce 
 worthy of admiration; but rather to devote
 
 96 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 their paralytic energies to the payment of a 
 well-known debt due the elders of song. So, 
 as it is in my nature to vanish from men whose 
 words and deeds are harsh, and whose hearts 
 are cold, I have fled from my country and am 
 seeking the South, in hope of a blander, more 
 cheery, and open welcome." I moved forward 
 and grasped her hand : "Lady, go no farther ! 
 Whom could I more gladly meet with? If 
 you had not another friend in the whole of 
 creation, you may beheld one in me." So I 
 brought her with me into the village ; and, 
 reader, this fair being, whom I have learned 
 to love, at least as a sister, is entertained at 
 my home ; while I am more and more delighted 
 with her. For the present, she will not leave 
 me ; nor will she go farther South, until she 
 finds the iron powers can not be propitiated. 
 Like Dante, it may be her doom to wander in 
 exile; yet, like him, she has a longing to re 
 turn home, if she can do so honorably. So, if 
 the gentlemen above Ottawa, and elsewhere, 
 whose frowns sent her away, will make the 
 fair amende and give her a smiling welcome, 
 she may consent to return. And if the Society 
 of Canadian Letters at Montreal will remit 
 half her car fare, Felix will furnish the residue,
 
 Vernal Notes. 97 
 
 and will put her in their hands in good flesh 
 and with unimpaired beauty. 
 
 III. 
 MARCH. 
 
 (IN THE SOUTH.) 
 
 From Theophile Gautier. 
 
 Yet where changeful man is found, 
 Nature keeps her ancient round : 
 March, while laughing at our cares, 
 Silently the spring prepares. 
 
 Slyly, ere the daisies peep, 
 From their coverlet of sleep, 
 Comes the former of the buds, 
 Chiseling their golden studs. 
 
 Cunning dresser ! on he goes, 
 Under vineyard, orchard-close ; 
 With his swan s-puff snowily 
 Powders every almond-tree. 
 
 Nature in her bed reposes : 
 He goes down among her roses, 
 Laces all their new buds in 
 Corsages of velvet green, 
 
 While he solfeggios sings 
 To the blackbirds, lo ! he flings 
 Snowdrops to the greening meadows, 
 Violets to the purpling shadows.
 
 98 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 By the side of cressy brook, 
 Where the stag with startled look 
 Ceases drinking, he compels 
 Scented lilies silver bells. 
 
 Rude without, but deft within, 
 He hath arts our love to win ; 
 Winter s hand he gently looses, 
 Jocund guests he introduces. 
 
 Soon his secret work complete 
 April s coming he doth greet : 
 "Dearest Spring!" he, smiling, says, 
 "Bring in your delightful days." 
 
 IV. 
 
 O Voice ! that of old we heard, singing this 
 song of the hopeful season, 
 
 "The winter is over and gone, 
 
 The thrush whistles sweet on the spray, 
 The turtle breathes out her soft moan, 
 The lark mounts and warbles away." 
 
 Among all the sounds for which we wait and 
 listen shall we never hear thee more? Will 
 thy peculiar tone, that before we never lacked, 
 still be missed by us ; and with it shall not the 
 Spring have lost something of its ancient 
 melody? And thou, to whom that voice be-
 
 Vernal Notes. 99 
 
 longed, shall we look upon a new garnished 
 world, and into yon crystal cup of the sky, 
 brimming with glory and delight ; shall we see 
 the swallows come again, look into the face 
 of the dear dandelion, the arbutus, and the 
 rose, and behold the gamboling of the young 
 lambs, 
 
 "And the green lizard and the golden snake 
 Like unimprison d flames out of their trance 
 awake ;" 
 
 yet see thee no longer? This beautiful world 
 was ever dear to thee, and the spirit of the 
 springtime was ever in thy heart, even when 
 thy days were hinting upon the "sere and yel 
 low leaf," and the first flakes of Time s win 
 ter had begun to visit thy brow. Thou wast 
 a mother beloved, rich in all the goodliness 
 of life and the joy of being; the voice of the 
 brooding dove was ever in the land while thou 
 didst hover over that nest we call Home. 
 Thou didst not lose out of thy life that sensible 
 charm which is never lost out of the inex 
 haustible universe : we shall not deem that thou 
 could st ever cease to look and listen, to feel 
 and to reflect. Thou hadst the soul of a poet, 
 living out thy years in silent accumulation of 
 thy sentiments and emotions ; thou hadst the
 
 ioo Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 brave and buoyant heart, and, though thou 
 didst not bespeak them, all gentle thoughts 
 and memories, all beautiful imaginations did 
 wait upon thee and were thine. 
 
 But O, it is so strange to miss thee now ! 
 The spring comes, but thou comest not. 
 
 "The south wind brings 
 
 Life, sunshine, and desire, 
 And on every mount and meadow 
 
 Breathes aromatic fire; 
 But over the dead he has no power, 
 The lost, the lost he can not restore ; 
 And looking over the hills I mourn 
 The darling who shall not return." 
 
 Thy grave, mother, was made at the thresh 
 old of the spring, and after a sadder and more 
 tempestuous voyage than we deemed we might 
 have taken together. The red clods of that 
 Acadian hillside, with the white of Easter 
 lilies, and of untimely April snows, were 
 mingled together over thy quiet bosom ; and 
 now around thee the grasses and flowers thou 
 didst love are springing. 
 
 V. 
 
 " T is past ; the iron North has spent his rage ; 
 
 Stern winter now resigns the lengthening day; 
 The stormy howlings of the winds assuage, 
 And warm o er ether western breezes play.
 
 Vernal Notes. 101 
 
 loosed from the bands of frost, the verdant ground 
 Again puts on her robe of cheerful green, 
 
 Again puts forth her flowers ; and all around 
 Smiling, the cheerful face of spring is seen." 
 
 So sang the young poet of Kinnesswood,* 
 filled with the joy of vernal seasons gone; 
 while his wan face and wasted figure, from 
 which health had departed forever, gave em 
 phasis to the plaint of his expressive muse : 
 
 "Thus have I walked along the dewy lawn ; 
 
 My frequent foot the blooming wild hath worn ; 
 Before the lark I ve sung the beauteous dawn, 
 And gathered health from all the gales of morn. 
 
 Now, spring returns : but not to me returns 
 The vernal joy my better years have known; 
 
 Dim in my breast life s dying taper burns, 
 
 And all the joys of life and health are flown/ 
 
 Spring never comes to me but with the 
 memory of that Scottish minstrel, pathetic 
 in his song as in his fate; a memory sweeter 
 than the wild flowers that spring in the Port- 
 moak Churchyard, where his grave was made 
 and his cenotaph reared. They tell us that 
 "he was pious and cheerful to the last;" and 
 that in the Bible, found lying upon his pillow, 
 
 * Michael Bruce.
 
 102 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 were found marked the words of the prophet : 
 "Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan 
 him." His were twenty-one golden and fra 
 grant years. 
 
 I think of one who resembled him, in his 
 longing, his pious resignation amid dire dis 
 tresses, if not in his gift of song, so un 
 adorned, so simple and sincere; John Mc- 
 Pherson, the consumptive Acadian school 
 master, who, amid the rigors of a Nova Scotia 
 winter, with the snow sifting through the 
 chinks of his miserable cabin, sang his "wood- 
 notes wild," with something of the sweetness 
 and artlessness of a Bruce, or a Logan, and 
 uttered a chord of the strain unutterable in his 
 "Longing for Spring:" 
 
 "I long for spring enchanting spring! 
 
 Her sunshine and soft airs. 
 That bless the fever d brow, and bring 
 
 A balm to sooth our cares ; 
 I long for all her dear delights, 
 
 Her greening forest bowers, 
 Her world of cheerful sounds and sights, 
 
 Her song-birds and her flowers." 
 
 While the "brumal king" has maintained his 
 rude dominion, the poet has not been unmind 
 ful of his permitted delights, albeit in his
 
 Vernal Notes. 103 
 
 case largely imaginative, he can not longer 
 restrain his desire for warmer airs and milder 
 skies : 
 
 Then while the snow drifts o er the moor, 
 
 And drowns the traveler s cry, 
 The charities of poor to poor 
 
 Go sweetly up on high ; 
 Then, while the mighty winds accord 
 
 With Mind s eternal lyre, 
 Our trembling hearts confess the Lord 
 
 Who touch d our lips with fire. 
 
 Yet give me spring inspiring spring! 
 
 The season of our trust, 
 That comes with heaven-born hope, to bring 
 
 New life to slumbering dust; 
 Restore, from winter s stormy shocks, 
 
 The singing of the birds, 
 The bleating of the yeaned flocks, 
 
 The lowing of the herds. 
 
 I long to see the ice give way, 
 
 The streams begin to flow, 
 And some benignant, vernal day 
 
 Disperse the latest snow ; 
 I long to see yon lake resume 
 
 Its breeze-kissed, azure crest, 
 And hear the lonely wild fowl boom 
 
 Along its moonlit breast.
 
 104 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Ah, I remember one still night 
 
 That blessed the world of yore, 
 A fair maid, with an eye of light, 
 
 Was with me on that shore! 
 I look upon the same calm brow, 
 
 While sweeter feelings throng; 
 She, wedded, sits beside me now, 
 
 And listens to my song. 
 
 The robin has returned again, 
 
 To rest his wearied wing, 
 But makes no music in the glen, 
 
 Where he was wont to sing; 
 The bluebird chants no jocund strain, 
 
 The tiny wildwood throng 
 Still of the searching blasts complain, 
 
 And make no joyous song. 
 
 The plowman cheering on his team 
 
 At cheerful morning prime, 
 The milkmaid singing of her dream 
 
 At tranquil evening time; 
 The shrill frog piping from the pool, 
 
 The swallow s twittering cry, 
 The teacher s quiet walk from school, 
 
 Require a kinder sky. 
 
 O month of many smiles and tears ! 
 
 Return with all thy flowers! 
 Come, with the light of astral spheres, 
 
 To gild Acadia s bowers!
 
 Vernal Notes. 105 
 
 Young children go not forth to play, 
 
 Life hath no voice of glee. 
 Till thy return, O genial May ! 
 
 Bring back the murmuring bee." 
 
 VI. 
 
 I lift my eyes from this rustic volume, with 
 its tattered and faded garb, repeating over 
 again this early song of my loved Acadia: 
 
 "My cheek is wan with slow disease, 
 
 My heart is full of care, 
 And, restless for a moment s ease, 
 I pine for sun and air. 
 
 I long to see the grass spring up, 
 The first green corn appear; 
 
 The violet ope its purple cup, 
 And shed its glistening tear." 
 
 Simple and unpretentious songs ; not the 
 noblest, not the most ornate, the lovers of the 
 spring have sung ; yet they touch me, for they 
 are the product of genuine emotion. I have 
 tomes of greater elegance, and strains tran 
 scending these in lyric fire, evincing a more 
 cunning art and a subtler hand, yet no deeper 
 sincerity; for the masters, and the apter dis-
 
 io6 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 ciples I secure the incense of praise, when I 
 bring them out before my friends. But in 
 solitude I look upon this homely and neglected 
 book, you may despise, and a tear falls un 
 bidden. My heart turns back to this forgotten 
 muse of the wilderness, who restores the hopes 
 and dreams of my youth ; and whose humble 
 ambition it was to inspire some happier min 
 strel, who should "strike the harp of Acadia 
 with less feeble hands." His notes come to 
 me, like the voice of the cuckoo in spring, w r ith 
 something of the primitive sweetness and 
 plaintiveness of songs of an elder time. 
 
 Here was one who truly longed for the 
 spring, and who had greater reason than some 
 poets have had for this longing; for was he 
 not doomed to a miserable pallet, and to the 
 spitting of his life-blood, throughout the mel 
 ancholy winter, and to the wasting of the 
 flesh, while through the rifts of his wretched 
 unclapboarded cabin the snow sifted upon his 
 coverlet ! An Acadian minstrel, say you, of 
 the nascent tribe, whose voice is newly tuned 
 after the rude shocks of a Nova Scotia win 
 ter; whose song is rather primitive and curi 
 ous, but not otherwise remarkable. This will 
 do for romance. Literally, a poor, sick school-
 
 Vernal Notes. 107 
 
 master, with a turned head, and ambitions 
 hopeless of any realization ; a dreamy, helpless 
 man, with a wife and child depending upon 
 his life ; one not very dollar-wise, without the 
 traditional silver spoon, and living in a new, 
 unbroken country, crude and provincial, 
 wherein the chief problem must be how to 
 keep the literal wolf from the door, and to bar 
 out hunger and cold. To get and keep a roof 
 over his head, and to get a crust ahead against 
 the day of starvation, while he sought to in 
 struct the rustics of the neighborhood, some 
 times against their will, this was his suffi 
 cient task ; but a poet he must deem himself, 
 for this at heart he was, and, pity s sake ! 
 would there and then devote himself, soul and 
 body, to the Muses ! Indeed he never surren- 
 dered this dream of childhood; yet, though he 
 did a deal of pining, most of his songs are full 
 of a reasonable trust and cheerfulness. Poesy 
 was the one star set in his sky, which went not 
 down behind the dark wall of the forest until 
 the sinking of that other star which was his 
 life. The guerdon that brings ease and lux 
 ury, or even comfort, time could not on him 
 bestow. Let us not harshly blame him. 
 
 "The light that led astray, 
 Was light from heaven."
 
 io8 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 So it is I hearken back to catch again a 
 few snatches of his tearful song, his phoebe- 
 note at dawn, preluding a rapture-chorus yet 
 to be heard from minstrels more complex and 
 various, hinting at art s maturer triumphs. 
 His compass may have been a narrow one, and 
 his notes few ; but his song was genuine and 
 without affectation, full of his heart and fra 
 grant, artless in its simplicity as the joy or sor 
 row of a child. I hear through him the brooks 
 and birds of my native country, where they 
 abide remotely familiar, and filled with an in 
 definable sweetness. "The love of flowers," 
 as he said, "was deep within his soul," and 
 every "wilding of the waste" was dear to him, 
 as a babe with eyes appealing from the bosom 
 of his mother. Ever at this season I hear him 
 singing of their swift return, and hail with- 
 him the budding of new leaves, 
 
 "Waving their Eden-scented wings 
 To bid the earth rejoice." 
 
 His more than good will sought out all living 
 creatures; he was at one with dwellers in the 
 sylvan abodes; his most passionate yearning 
 was toward all fair ideal existence. For is 
 not the poet s heart a golden bowl full of life s 
 richest wine? He is lavish of it, for he does
 
 Vernal Notes. 109 
 
 not fear it can easily be spent. So was this 
 forest minstrel s spirit full of that wine that 
 is called Love, and he poured it out over all 
 things. He made a sanctuary of the forest, 
 and of the solitary heath and the secluded 
 glen ; and on the leaf-browned carpet of his 
 native woods, where, under beech and maple 
 and pine creeps the Mayflower, 
 
 "Delight and wonder of a thousand eyes !" 
 
 it made him kneel with a worship and rever 
 ence warm as any. It was a consecrating dew 
 on his native fields ; on lake and river his 
 own dear Lily, and the wider Rossianol (lake 
 of the robin) ; on the ripples of Lahave and 
 Liverpool, and on his Fairy Stream. Its 
 pearls fell on the brier rose and the violet, 
 and every blossom gilding our Acadian fields. 
 Chide not my praise of this simple minstrel, 
 whose heart was so pitiful to all, and whose 
 life was so solicitous of pity. The mightiest 
 of the bards affirms, 
 
 "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin ;" 
 
 and, if we may credit the writer of his me 
 moirs, the story of poor McPherson "has 
 many touches of nature."
 
 no Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Ah, could I have known thee, sweet and 
 tender poet ! in the day of thy longing and 
 sorrow, I would have given thee cheer, and 
 have taken the blossoms of thy early poesy 
 under my most gracious and loving tendance, 
 that they might haply have known a gladder 
 and a sunnier growth. But thou dost belong, 
 in thy sympathies at least, to a precious com 
 pany, and art of kin with others, who, after 
 all their sighing and despairing, as time has 
 proved, "were not born for death ;" who, like 
 thyself, were singers and lovers of song. 
 Thinking of thee, I seem to blend with thine 
 his plaintive memory whose complaint of im 
 mortal pathos might have moved thee. Yes, 
 for Michael Bruce was of thy brotherhood ; 
 and Timrod and Lanier could share thy long 
 ing and improve thine art. And another ! ah, 
 can I forget him ! who yearned also for "the 
 delicate-footed spring," to tread out fragrance 
 and beauty from the bosom of the awakened 
 earth, and on his Scottish moorland invoked 
 her in language most appealing for pathos and 
 loveliness : 
 
 "O God ! make free 
 This barren shackled earth, so deadly cold, 
 
 Breathe gently forth thy spring till winter flies 
 In rude amazement, fearful and yet bold,
 
 Vernal Notes. in 
 
 While she performs her custom d charities ; 
 I weigh the loaded hours till life is bare, 
 O God ! for one clear day, a snowdrop, and sweet 
 air!" 
 
 Poor McPherson ! Very gentle was his 
 spirit, and very pathetic his history. Sad, we 
 may think, that his rejoicing in the bloom and 
 brightness of this breathing world ended so 
 soon; but, from his place, more congenial to 
 song, and singing souls, it may not seem sad; 
 for there, we deem, 
 
 "Everlasting spring abides, 
 And never-withering flowers." 
 
 They laid him to rest, at evening, on the bank 
 of the beautiful Lake Tupper, whereof he sang 
 in the sweet verses we have recited, and where 
 his quiet figure, grown familiar, would, dur 
 ing his life, scarcely have startled the wild 
 fowl from its margin. The setting sun shone 
 into his open grave. 
 
 VII. 
 
 "Dip down upon the northern shore, 
 O sweet new-year delaying long : 
 Thou doest expectant nature wrong; 
 Delaying long, delay no more." 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 "The iron north hath spent its rage," after 
 a reign of unusual rigor and duration ; but the
 
 H2 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 gentler season comes not with decision. We 
 waken to the peevish day, and behold a gen 
 eral blankness. Everything is dowie and gray ; 
 a gray air, filled with a faint odor of budding 
 things ; a gray blanket of mist, fringed with 
 silent rain. Through this everything is gray : 
 the fence rails and pickets are gray; the barn 
 in yonder field is gray; so are the apple-trees, 
 from the bottom of each scabby bole to their 
 topmost twigs ; the stubble fields are gray, save 
 where in low moist places a tender tint of 
 green is coming, like a flush of delight on the 
 earth s sensitive cheek ; the little birds that 
 come in sight are all gray, on this sober-suited 
 morning. But this Quaker-colored season, so 
 recluse and frugal, is full of unseen treasure, 
 and is prelusive of a more than Roman splen 
 dor a very papal magnificence, soon to be. 
 Under the gray blanket of the mist the infant 
 spring is being softly born. 
 
 I never longed more for its coming. The 
 russet fields never seemed fairer than now, 
 when snows and icy airs take such reluctant 
 departure. The scents of pine, fir-wood, and 
 budding birches were never sweeter. The 
 jolly robin s note, the bluebird s carol, the 
 "slender whistle" of the pewee, were never
 
 Vernal Notes. 113 
 
 a more joyous intoxication. To stand near the 
 edge of a waning snow-wreath, and smell the 
 fresh wood where the fruit-tree limb has been 
 lopped off, brings a more spicy satisfaction 
 than the summer airs from banks of flowers 
 can do later. 
 
 A sun-burst a space of blue sky! How 
 heaven rejoices with the earth! A thousand 
 hearts break forth into singing ; the woods are 
 
 in full chorus. It is joy joy joy! 
 
 "Joy> in the laughing valleys, 
 
 Joy, in each echoing glen, 
 Wherever nature rallies 
 And leaps to life again !" 
 
 VIII. 
 THE MAKING OF MAY. 
 
 What is it makes the May? The coming birds, 
 
 Brimful of mirth and gladness, as of yore, 
 With notes far sweeter than a poet s words ; 
 
 Earth s matin bards, with immemorial lore ; 
 The mounting sun, who will the green restore, 
 
 And wake the dandelion ; the white thorn ; 
 The delicate arbutus, seen once more; 
 
 The lengthening eve, the swift returning morn: 
 8
 
 ii4 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 The bleating of young lambs ; the lowing herds, 
 Going to pasture ; the old chime of the shore, 
 
 When, wave on wave, the freshening seas inroll ; 
 Bluest of skies; soft clouds, as white as curds? 
 
 Nay ! The blithe heart, we thought would leap no 
 
 more; 
 The gladness and brightness of the soul ! 
 
 IX. 
 
 Under the boughs of the thick wood a poet 
 sat listening. Over his head every twig hung 
 bare from the late winter, but the leaves were 
 coming. There was no sound but the lisping 
 laugh of the brook that ran at his feet. He 
 held in his hand a dainty Mayflower blossom 
 that he had found creeping among the with 
 ered forest rubble of last year, and often he 
 inhaled its fragrance. Suddenly he heard a 
 musical flutter, and a chorus of the tiniest, 
 sweetest voices his ear had ever heard, say 
 ing, "Let us come in !" And looking up he 
 saw a multitude of little sylphid forms floating 
 down through the branches, and scattering a 
 shower of shining arrows, like a golden dust, 
 harmlessly around him. "We are the children 
 of the sun," they sang; "we are the messen 
 gers of spring. Our little arrows waken all
 
 Vernal Notes. 115 
 
 the sleeping buds, and call forth all the flowers. 
 Our silken wings hover over the earth, and 
 you have the crocus and the dandelion, and the 
 bluebird and the robin and the swallow are 
 suddenly here." 
 
 Under the boughs of the thick wood the 
 poet sat listening. The limp leaves clustered 
 motionless, and the air was like that issuing 
 from a heated furnace. The moss beneath him 
 was crisp and dry, and the flowers of the for 
 est were drooping wan and faint, parched 
 down to their deepest rootlets; while the 
 brook, shrunken to a rivulet, was almost with 
 out a sound. The poet s heart also languished. 
 Suddenly a breeze stirred the branches, and 
 again he heard a musical flutter, and then a 
 chorus of the tiniest, sweetest voices his ear 
 had ever heard, saying, "Let us come in !" 
 And looking up he saw a multitude of little 
 sylphid forms floating down through the 
 branches, and they uttered an elfin laughter 
 as they scattered on the leaves a shower of 
 crystal drops, that pattered on the moss and 
 the dried leaves and danced in the waters of 
 the brook. O how sweet and cool the earth 
 became! The trees seemed to draw a longer, 
 deeper breath, and the heart of the poet was
 
 n6 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 revived. The fast-falling drops searched to 
 the parched rootlets, and the palest, tiniest 
 flower looked up and smiled. "Let us come 
 in," sang the sylphids : "we are the children 
 of the air, the cloud, and the sea ; at our touch 
 the flowers of field and forest revive, and the 
 hearts of men are glad. Let us come in, for 
 we are come to do you good, we are come to 
 bless you." 
 
 Under the boughs of the thick wood the 
 poet lay listening. The first touch of autumn 
 was upon the forest, and among the darker 
 greens some of the leaves were resplendent. 
 A silver rime laced the brook, and the tender 
 flowers that loved the sun and the rain were 
 no longer there. Suddenly he heard a musical 
 flutter, then a chorus of the tiniest, sweetest 
 voices his ear had ever heard, saying, "Let 
 us come in !" And looking up the poet saw 
 once more a multitude of little sylphid forms 
 floating down through the branches, and tear 
 ing and scattering what seemed to be bits of 
 a rainbow, and silver stars, which fell all 
 around him ; and some of them touched his 
 eyes and his forehead ; and at once he saw far 
 away into the forest, where the fays were 
 dancing, and Robin Goodfellow took off his
 
 Vernal Notes. 117 
 
 purple cap and laid it at his feet. Then the 
 sylphids sang, "We are the children of the 
 upper firmament, the dwelling-place of the 
 clouds and the stars; we are the messengers 
 of the Muse, and we come to bring you dreams 
 and inspirations. We will deck for you the 
 soberest world with light, and fill the most 
 barren solitude with music. Let us come in, 
 for we bring you delight, and the enchantment 
 of our presence shall linger after we have gone 
 away." 
 
 X. 
 
 "Sumer is i-cumen in, 
 
 Lhude sing cuccu ; 
 Groweth sed and bloweth mede, 
 
 And springth the wde nu, 
 
 Sing cuccu, cuccu. 
 Awe bleteth after lomb, 
 
 Lhouth after calve cu ; 
 Bullock sterteth, bucke verteth, 
 
 Murie sing, cuccu. 
 Wei singes thy cuccu, 
 He swik thou nauer nu. 
 
 Sing cuccu, cuccu." 
 
 Old English Poem. 
 
 "The lily of the vale, of flowers the queen, 
 
 Puts on the robe she neither sewed nor spun ; 
 The birds on ground, or on the branches green, 
 Hop to and fro and glitter in the sun.
 
 n8 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Soon as o er eastern hills the morning peers, 
 From her low nest the tufted lark upsprings ; 
 
 And cheerful singing up the air she steers ; 
 
 Still high she mounts, still loud and sweet she 
 sings. 
 
 On the green furze, clothed o er with golden 
 
 blooms 
 
 That fill the air with fragrance all around, 
 The linnet sits and tricks his glossy plumes, 
 
 While o er the wild his broken notes resound." 
 Michael Bruce. 
 
 "Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove ! 
 
 Thou messenger of spring ! 
 Now Heaven repairs thy rural seat, 
 And woods thy welcome sing." 
 
 John Logan, "To The Cuckoo." 
 
 Thank heaven ! there is a springing season 
 to nature to life to feeling to poesy ! 
 The "Flower and the Leaf" of Chaucer be 
 long to the Muse s spring. In his green field 
 the daisy blooms forever; in his dewy dingles 
 the merle and mavis sing through all the 
 year. The birds come hastening to our woods, 
 or gather for their flight ; but, while the poet 
 lives, they shall not desert us: "Sing on, sing 
 on, O thrush !" The "gay green wood" wakes
 
 Vernal Notes. ng 
 
 .the pipe of the English ballad-singer. Therein 
 the drama of love is enacted. Under the first 
 green mist o the woods the merry men of 
 Robin Hood go blithely, and Maid Marian 
 walks, some homelike beautiful thing, never to 
 fade. 
 
 "Beauty in the woodland bides, 
 Waiting for her wedding day. 
 
 Hie thee hither, Bonnie May ! 
 Time, let not her footsteps stray 
 Far from this way."* 
 
 Surely Death can not come here. Any dole 
 ful event must happen in the sodden fall, or 
 under the wild winter branches ; not when the 
 forests are in their springtide magnificence. 
 So we are glad of the thousand voices that cry 
 out: "Here it is spring! Here it is spring!" 
 Let us go to the woods. Now we are under 
 the trees generous cover. How hospitable is 
 the forest! Full suits of wealthy greenery 
 rustle on all the branches. Underfoot ran the 
 blushful Mayflower before these leaves were 
 out. Yet it peeps out of the moss, and crisp 
 last year s foliage at you. See how the sun- 
 
 * Alexander Rae Garvie.
 
 I2O Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 light leaps and laughs among the thousand 
 little twinkling murmurers ! How the rays 
 are toned and softened amid these myriad 
 green disks ! There are arabesques, and gro 
 tesques little bits of light and shade, on tiny 
 knolls and in wee hollows, where oak and 
 beech stretch their roots so indolently. A 
 colored butterfly flits into light. A redbreast 
 hops, and hops. Ha ! that s a thrush, deep in 
 the hollow among the cedars ! And that 
 that s a bobolink, out in the clearing ! "Hear 
 the little tipsy fairy !" You stretch out, say 
 ing, "It is good to be here, for six hours, more 
 or less;" and pulling the fresh manuscript of 
 a poem what else? out of your pocket, read 
 the yet unpublished beauties a friend has lent 
 you: 
 
 "Now while the lilies glisten, 
 
 And they who sing not listen 
 To singers of the May, 
 
 What visions we remember, 
 
 Of murderous December, 
 That lived but yesterday. 
 
 Our day has had its dolor; 
 Now comes the happy color, 
 
 The zephyr, and the lay 
 Of singers used to sighing, 
 The truth of death denying, 
 
 The herald of the May." * 
 
 * Edwin R. Chaplin.
 
 Vernal Notes. 121 
 
 XL 
 THE SONG SPARROW. 
 
 "When the sweet-scented cherry is snowing, 
 And fed the maple-keys are growing, 
 And golden the dandelion is blowing, 
 I listen to hear the silence stirred 
 By the sweet, sweet, Canada-bird. 
 
 Other birds are here, and are singing sweet ; 
 But the voices of spring are not complete 
 Till we hear him his golden notes repeat; 
 
 Most liquid song ear ever heard 
 
 Of the sweet, sweet, Canada-bird. 
 
 O the world seems dark, and the range seems 
 
 narrow 
 
 Of our life, when the wintry winds do harrow ; 
 But t is changed with the note of the first song 
 
 sparrow ! 
 
 Our boundless, far-away dreams are stirred 
 By the sweet, sweet, Canada-bird. 
 
 His silver clarion exalts the day, 
 
 And his music charmeth evening away, 
 
 Ay, night is broken with his glad lay ! 
 
 As if he could never enough be heard 
 
 Our sweet, sweet, Canada-bird!"
 
 122 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Sad is his fate who has lost the relish of 
 his life, and to whom the spring comes no 
 more with its wonted freshness ; who has so 
 dulled and blunted the fineness of his nature, 
 and so bedrugged the original composition of 
 his once virgin soul, that its very element has 
 become corrupt; and who has come to inherit 
 "the worm, the canker, and the grief," unable 
 to respond heartily and entirely to any of the 
 fair and beautiful, the rapturous and holy 
 things that make their appeal to him, and 
 which once stirred his warmest emotions. 
 Unhappy he who, when the wild pear is in 
 blossom and the elmtips are greening, when 
 arbutus glances from the wood, when the sun 
 is setting in the sea, or a little child looks up 
 in his face, realizes a disturbed sense of in 
 completeness, and thinks of that little one of 
 God within his own bosom which once he 
 slew ; who cries aloud, like that lamenting sui 
 cide, the tablet of whose grave from Lone 
 Mountain overlooks the Golden Gate, * 
 
 * More than twenty years after his death, by his own hand, 
 in a hotel at San Francisco, a volume of the poetry of Richard 
 Realf has appeared, with a memoir by his friend, Colonel 
 Hinton. It is the record of a life, now passionate, now mel 
 ancholy, and afflicted with some sort of an intermittent moral 
 dementia. His poetry is genuine, abounding in pure and 
 noble sentiments; but much of it, sweetly musical as it is, 
 is the poetry of regret and sorrow. To live obscurely, to die 
 and to be forgotten, is often the bane of melodious spirits.
 
 Vernal Notes. 123 
 
 There is no little child within me now, 
 
 To sing back to the thrushes ! to leap up 
 When June winds kiss me ; when an apple bough 
 
 Laughs into blossom, or a buttercup 
 Plays with the sunshine, or a violet 
 
 Dances in the glad dew alas ! alas ! 
 
 The meaning of the daisies in the grass 
 I have forgotten ; or, if my cheeks are wet, 
 It is not with the blitheness of a child, 
 
 But with the bitter sorrow of past years." 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Best of all the spring flowers I love our 
 Acadian Mayflower, the favorite and emblem 
 of that land the dearest to me; whose signifi 
 cant legend is, "We bloom amid the snows." 
 No sooner is the retreat of winter followed by 
 softer showers and a few days of the sun, than 
 that darling of the forest, Hpigaa repens, puts 
 up her little pink face, giving the first tint 
 and fragrance the white forest knows, to 
 
 "Make a sunshine in a shady place." 
 
 Look down among the debris of last year, 
 and there is the infant beauty, with a smile on 
 its face and a tear in its eye ! The girls come 
 seeking, to adorn their May-day festival, the 
 "trailing evergreen, with rusty hairs and pink-
 
 124 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 ish white flowers, which are sweet scented."* 
 They know the sandy soil under the pine- 
 trees, where they grow the best. Our poets 
 have not been silent about little Epigsea, but 
 have named her with other of the tender chil 
 dren : 
 
 "The frail spring-beauty with her perfumed bell, 
 The wind-flower, and the spotted adder-tongue." 
 
 Lampman. 
 
 "The Mayflowers shy 
 
 And sun-loving blossoms their way to light winning 
 Through strewn leaves of autumn, mute emblems 
 
 of death 
 
 Perfume with their breath, 
 
 The zephyrs released from their fetters of frost." 
 
 Weir. 
 
 "Sunshine flecked the bank 
 Happy with arbutus." 
 
 Mrs. Hensley. 
 
 "Wreaths of wild arbutus round the brows 
 of Blomidon." Eaton. 
 
 "Hid, like some laughing child, shy Mayflower fair, 
 Beneath the leafy shield, with face aglow, 
 Thy pearly self the coy spring s first tableau, 
 Come to the day and yield thy fragrance there." 
 
 Rand. 
 
 * Sir James McPherson Le Moine.
 
 Vernal Notes. 125 
 
 But among all who have celebrated shy ar 
 butus, none have loved her more than he who 
 was to an earlier circle of readers known as 
 Alleyne :* 
 
 "Watched by the stars the sleeping Mayflower lies, 
 On craggy mountain slope, in bosky dell, 
 Beneath the red and yellow leaves that fell 
 Ere autumn yielded to bleak winter s reign : 
 But when at spring s approach the tyrant flies, 
 Our Mayflower wakes, and buds and blooms again : 
 Queen of the forest flower of flowers most sweet ! 
 Delight and wonder of a thousand eyes ! 
 Thou dost recall a day that flew too fleet, 
 A hope that perished in a sea of sighs ! 
 We all have hoped for that which might not be, 
 But thou, sweet flower! forbiddest to despair: 
 After the winter comes a spring to thee, 
 And waves retire when storms to rage forbear." 
 
 The songs of birds are interpreted accord 
 ing to the ear and fancy of the listener, and 
 none more variously than that of the song 
 sparrow. One singer of the Dominionf hears 
 in the minor mood, and renders a note of sad 
 ness : 
 
 "From the leafy maple ridges, 
 From the thickets of the cedar, 
 From the alders by the river, 
 From the bending willow branches, 
 
 * Hiram Ladd Spencer, of St. John, N. B. tJ- D. Edgar.
 
 126 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 From the hollows and the hillsides, 
 Through the lone Canadian forest, 
 Comes the melancholy music, 
 Oft repeated, never changing, 
 All is vanity vanity vanity. 
 
 Where the farmer plows his furrow, 
 Sowing seed with hope of harvest 
 In the orchard white with blossom, 
 In the early field of clover, 
 Comes the little brown-clad singer, 
 Flitting in and out of bushes, 
 Hiding well behind the fences, 
 Piping forth his song of sadness, 
 
 Poor hu manity manity manity. " 
 
 Another* hears the whitethroat, with his 
 heart all aglow with patriotic emotion, and the 
 bird gives him an accordant refrain: 
 
 "Shy bird of the silver arrows of song, 
 
 That cleave our Northern air so clear, 
 Thy notes prolong, prolong, 
 
 I listen, I hear, 
 
 I love dear Canada, 
 
 Canada, Canada. 
 
 O plumes of the painted dusky fir, 
 
 Screen of a swelling patriot heart, 
 The copse is all astir, 
 
 And echoes thy part ! . . . 
 
 Dr. Theodore H. Rand.
 
 Vernal Notes. 127 
 
 Now willowy reeds tune their silver flutes 
 As the noise of the day dies down; 
 And silence strings her lutes 
 
 The whitethroat to crown. . . . 
 
 O bird of the silver arrows of song, 
 Shy poet of Canada dear, 
 
 Thy notes prolong, prolong, 
 
 We listen, we hear, 
 I love dear Canada, 
 Canada, Canada. " 
 
 A sweet singer of Maine listens in her native 
 woods, on the headwaters of the Piscataquis, 
 and construes the notes into some illusive 
 summons of a spirit of fantasy : 
 
 "Far away a wood-bird sings 
 
 In the spruce s purple shade, 
 And I follow at the call 
 
 From a leafy cool arcade. 
 O how far, how clear, how pure 
 
 Is his liquid floating song ! 
 Sweet bird-spirit, vain my quest, 
 
 Though I hear you all day long, 
 Come, come, follow me, follow me ! " 
 
 Anna Boynton Averill. 
 
 Often, on some outskirt of the Whiting 
 woods, have I listened to this bird, or per 
 chance, in the Connecticut Mills hollow, by
 
 128 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 the lake. I have lingered long upon its en 
 ticing, plaintive note, "O-dear-y-me ! Pitee- 
 me, pity-me !" This is the song-sparrow, one 
 of the shyest children of the woods. Here 
 she 
 
 "Builds her home 
 In the creviced mossy ledge, 
 
 And the startled red-wing flies 
 Like a fire-spark in the hedge ; 
 
 And the dusky wood is filled 
 With clear songs and flapping wings, 
 
 While I follow, wrapt in dreams, 
 Where this lovely spirit sings, 
 
 Come, come, follow me, follow me ! " 
 
 XIV. 
 
 "From the wild 
 
 Spic d with dark cedars cried the whip-poor-will." 
 Isabella V. Crawford. 
 
 "Through the low woods, 
 Haunted with vain melancholy, 
 A whip-poor-will wanders, 
 Forcing his monotonous song. 
 
 The wind moves on the cedar hill, 
 Tossing the weird cry of the whip-poor-will." 
 Duncan C. Scott.
 
 Vernal Notes. 129 
 
 When one of these birds had found its way 
 into an outlying orchard tree of the Clement 
 Farm, at Hampden; and, forsaking his native 
 wood close by, was, after night-fall threshing 
 away industriously enough, I exclaimed, 
 "There is a whip-poor-will !" "Ay," said the 
 old man at my side, shaking his head, "I 
 never like to hear one of those fellows. My 
 wife believes some one of the family is going 
 to die when he comes so nigh the house." The 
 minstrel of evening was to him the harbinger 
 of evil, and he found little pleasure in this 
 innocent creature of God, in 
 
 "The hermit thrush and the whip-poor-will 
 Haunting the wood." 
 
 This is one of the shyest of the eremites of 
 the forest, one of the most solitary among 
 birds ; and fortunate indeed is the lover of 
 the feathered kinds, who, visiting them in 
 their favorite haunts, can set his eyes upon 
 this brooding creature of the brown back and 
 white breast, dear to the dreamer and the poet. 
 
 I first heard the note of the whip-poor- 
 will in the lonely Franklin Forest, riding at 
 night, and had an uncertain glimpse of its 
 uplifted bosom on a log or stump by the way 
 side. I felt the fascination that has given it 
 9
 
 130 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 to song, and recalled the verse of Carman, 
 who has given it such prominence: 
 
 "What ails the fir-dark slopes, 
 
 That all night long the whip-poor-wills 
 Cry their insatiable cry 
 
 Across the sleeping Ardise hills?" 
 
 Its peculiar thrashing note haunts the mem 
 ory long after it has been heard, and seems 
 the very expression of loneliness and sorrow. 
 
 XV. 
 
 "Beechen buds begin to swell 
 And woods the bluebird s warble know." 
 
 Bryant. 
 
 Nor is the bluebird a tardy comer. He, 
 too, has a gleesome flute to announce the sea 
 son beautiful. The robin shall not sing his 
 song alone. Though redbreast may come 
 nearer to us, we love the little darling who has 
 made sweetly vocal for us how many an 
 Acadian spring! 
 
 "Because I was a tiny boy 
 
 Among the thrushes of the wood, 
 And all the rivers in the hills 
 
 Were playmates of my solitude;
 
 Vernal Notes. 131 
 
 Because in that sad time of year, 
 With April twilight on the earth 
 
 And journeying rain upon the sea, 
 
 With the shy wind-flowers was my birth." 
 
 While March is yet brusquely crackling the 
 stream-side bushes, the minstrel, "with a tinge 
 of earth on his breast, and the sky-tinge on 
 his back," assures us the reign of winter is 
 over, his scepter broken, and that the hill 
 sides will soon be vocal with the "sound of 
 many waters." 
 
 XVI. 
 
 "It is a wee sad-colored thing 
 
 As shy and secret as a maid, 
 That, ere in choir the robins sing, 
 Pipes its own name like one afraid. 
 
 Phcebe! it calls and calls again. . . ." 
 
 Lowell. 
 
 And there is another much beloved bird 
 that comes with April. We have heard it so 
 often here in Maine; and never do we hear 
 it, in these days, without recalling Lowell s 
 exquisite lines: 
 
 "Ere pales in heaven the morning star, 
 
 A bird, the loneliest of its kind, 
 Hears Dawn s faint footfall from afar, 
 While all its mates are dumb and blind.
 
 132 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 It seems pain-prompted to repeat 
 The story of some ancient ill ; 
 
 But Phoebe! Phoebe! sadly sweet, 
 Is all it says, and then is still." 
 
 Does its name, though domestic, suggest 
 the shy and lonely thing the poet makes it 
 to be? Or is it that we knew a maiden who 
 bore that name, and who was shy, and had 
 an air of loneliness about her? Come, little 
 Phoebe, or "Pewee," from thy nook of re 
 treat by the water-course perhaps under 
 some ramshackled old bridge, or caved bank 
 and show thyself! The poets have desired 
 thee, and the hearts of the children will leap 
 gladly to see thee near them, darling, and to 
 hear thee calling, "Pewee, pewee, pirch, pe- 
 wee !" 
 
 XVII. 
 
 "Ringing from the rounded barrow 
 Rolls the robin s tune." 
 
 D. C. Scott. 
 
 We have a settled partiality for Jack Robin. 
 He is to us the certain harbinger of spring, 
 and convinces us of sunnier days and greener 
 fields, with the abundance of flowers. He does
 
 Vernal Notes. 133 
 
 not wait for the leaves, but comes to make 
 fellowship with us among the budding twigs; 
 and for his dear familiarity we love him. He 
 may claim like praise with the English cuckoo, 
 for, before the snow-wreaths are wasted out 
 of the hollows, his "certain voice we hear." 
 Out of his clump of evergreen in the cedar 
 swamp he comes, and undertakes a nest close 
 to our door, prepared to run the gauntlet of 
 cats and children. 
 
 For three successive seasons a pair of robins 
 have lodged in a crotch of the maple in front 
 of our house. The friendly couple do not seem 
 to consider our street a public place at all. 
 Yesterday I had a good look at Jack and his 
 quarters. This winged habitant appeared with 
 a worm in his beak, gave a sidelong glance 
 at me, and was speedily beside Jill, who re 
 ceived the butcher s meat from him, and dealt 
 it out to the gaping mouths eagerly protrud 
 ing above the brink of the nest. Meanwhile 
 Jack skipped away, presumably to refurnish 
 his larder. Does he not raise choice worms in 
 his muck-beds? O yes, and his factor, Provi 
 dence, breeds the best ; and he knows the places 
 where they lie, and how best to pluck them 
 out. Later in the day we heard a sound of
 
 134 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 consternation, when a whole brood ours, not 
 the birds rushed to the door, and saw the 
 redbreasts circling round, going madly from 
 tree to tree, uttering bird shrieks and chidings 
 innumerable ; and we also saw the reason, for 
 there was young Jamie, with more of mirth 
 than mischief in his eyes, hugging the tree 
 and looking into the nest. "There ! why will 
 that boy go up and down that tree, just to 
 frighten those birds?" Dear querist, you 
 must put that to Him who ordained birds and 
 boys. I think the birds will suffer little from 
 him, only the temporary annoyance of his 
 teasing. They seem to know that, from the 
 manner of their going on. How they berate 
 him ! How they screech his ticket of leave, 
 and cry : "Jim ! Jim ! Go away, Jim !" in terms 
 of which our less passionate speech is incap 
 able. Slowly, as he commenced to descend, 
 they plucked up courage to come at him, as 
 if they had a mind to put out his eyes, while, 
 with less of terror in their tones, they up 
 braided him resentfully for his idle concern 
 about their affairs. They are not likely to 
 grow into a thorough assurance that he medi 
 tates no evil, and will do them no injury, 
 though they seem to suspect the truth that
 
 Vernal Notes. 135 
 
 beast and bird may grow in perfect safety 
 with him. They shake their wise heads, and 
 say, "O, we know boys!" 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 "Then from the honeysuckle gray 
 
 The oriole with experienced quest 
 Twitches the fibrous bark away, 
 
 The cordage of his hammock-nest, 
 Cheering his labor with a note 
 
 Rich as the orange of his throat." 
 
 Lowell. 
 
 Then the feathered gentry must arrive, the 
 plumed gay gallants. We are always glad 
 to see them, too. The earth has donned her 
 richest attire to greet them. The dandelions 
 have spotted the grass with their golden disks 
 before the gentleman swallow is seen revolv 
 ing in the sunny air, or the oriole puts in his 
 flashy appearance. This oriole swings his 
 shapely cradle from some elm-tip. He does 
 not mean his domicile shall be molested. He 
 is too wise a bird to put his beautiful person 
 in danger, and he takes good care of his nest 
 lings. 
 
 All bird-sounds are sweet to me, whether
 
 136 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 interpreted cheerfully or mournfully. The 
 sharp call of the jay, the chatter of the black 
 bird, the delicate softness of the purple finch s 
 note, the honk of the wild goose, the whistle 
 of the robin, the harsher ejaculation of the 
 crow, subdued by distance all are sweet to 
 my ear. The "whitethroat s ecstasy," the blue 
 bird s carol, clear as ever, under the blue April 
 sky, "the first song-sparrow brown," never fail 
 to delight us, but all the feathered tribe con 
 tribute something indispensable to the fullness 
 of the grand concert. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 "Hark ! 
 Was that ... the bobolink? 
 
 The garrulous bobolink s lilt and chime. 
 Over and over." D. C. Scott. 
 
 Now another visitor launches himself into 
 song, like an arrow out of spring s quiver. 
 Who does not know the saucy, glancing, mu 
 sical fellow, since Bryant introduced him? 
 "Robert of Lincoln is telling his name" to the 
 smiling hills and the rejoicing meadows. 
 What a magical tangle ! What a gibberish
 
 Vernal Notes. 137 
 
 of melody ! This bird was a favorite of Whit- 
 tier s hero, Hugh Tallant: 
 
 "Of all the birds of singing, 
 Best he loved the bobolink." 
 
 He is also a favorite of ours. Lowell puts 
 the bird s rapturous spirit into his song: 
 
 "Gladness on wings, the bobolink is here." 
 
 And Bryant forgets his composure, and is no 
 longer cold, when he listens to this well-spring 
 of music, "bubbling over with exhilaration 
 and quivering with delight." 
 
 "Bobolink, bobolink, 
 
 Spink, spank, spink, 
 Nice good wife that never goes out, 
 Keeping house while I frolic about, 
 
 Chee, chee, chee !" 
 
 The Canadian poets have a loving acquaint 
 ance with the rollicking songster. So, Rob 
 erts, in his "Ave :" 
 
 "Again I heard the song 
 Of the glad bobolink, whose lyric throat 
 Pealed like a tangle of small bells afloat" 
 
 So, Carman : 
 
 "Bobolincolns in the meadows, 
 Leisure in the purple shadows."
 
 138 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 So, Lampman : 
 
 "Where the restless bobolink loiters and wooes 
 Down in the hollows and over the swells, 
 Dropping in and out of the shadows, 
 Sprinkling his music about the meadows. 
 Whistles and little checks and cooes, 
 And the tinkle of glassy bells." 
 
 And now is the "high tide of the year." 
 The woods run over with song; every field 
 has its minstrelsy, every grove is vocal. 
 Surely these joyous ones are set to give us 
 good cheer, to banish melancholy! They are 
 akin to humanity ; we miss them, as we should 
 some gentle, sweet-voiced householder re 
 cently departed ; we feel as if part of our 
 selves had vanished when the naked hills stand, 
 silent, and the birds have disappeared. How 
 aptly has Burroughs put his thought : "The 
 song-birds might all have been brooded and 
 hatched in the human heart, since nearly the 
 whole gamut of human passion and emotion 
 is expressed more or less fully in their varied 
 songs. There are the plaintive singers, the 
 soaring, ecstatic singers, the gushing and volu 
 ble singers, and the half-voiced, inarticulate 
 singers."
 
 Vernal Notes. 139 
 
 XX. 
 
 "There, when the gradual twilight falls, 
 
 Through quietudes of dusk afar, 
 Hermit antiphonal hermit calls 
 
 From hills below the first pale star." 
 
 Carman. 
 
 I shall never forget my first hearing of this 
 songster on the edge of a thicket in the vil 
 lage of East Corinth. I had recently read 
 Burroughs s account of him, and was then and 
 there enabled to verify that rare description 
 of a strain that "realizes a peace and a deep 
 solemn joy that only the finest souls may 
 know." Heard at sunset, or in the quiet of 
 evening, or with "the full moon just rounding 
 from the horizon," its "Spheral, spheral! O 
 holy, holy! O clear away, clear away! O 
 clear up, clear up I" might render a chanting 
 cathedral choir and the rolling pomp of an 
 organ superfluous and vain. 
 
 That lover and intimate acquaintance of the 
 birds, the master of Spencer Grange,* has 
 a partiality for this songster. "How often, 
 too," he writes, "have I not listened to the 
 ethereal, flutelike tinkle of the Orpheus of 
 
 *Sir James M. LeMoine.
 
 140 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 our deep woods, the hermit thrush, homeward 
 wafted from the green domes of Spencer 
 Wood at dewy morn, when the sun-god suf 
 fused with purple and gold the nodding pin 
 nacles of my dear old pines and spreading 
 elms, or at the close of those gorgeous sun 
 sets, with which spring consoles us for our 
 January storms ! And yet, have I not been 
 told that in Canada there were no song-birds !" 
 One more ! We heard through the ear of 
 naturalist and poet long ago; but we have 
 heard also through our own. No bird song is 
 more exquisite than that from the throat of 
 the wood thrush, heard on the edge of the 
 thicket at twilight: 
 
 "Call to me, thrush, 
 
 When night grows dim, 
 When dreams unform 
 
 And death is far ! 
 When hoar dews flush 
 
 On dawn s rath brim, 
 Wake me to hear 
 
 Thy wildwood charm." 
 
 Carman. 
 
 Evening fills her cup with its most delicious 
 melody, and at morning the heart gives re 
 sponse, with Anna Boynton:
 
 Vernal Notes. 141 
 
 "Clear is thy message, O woodland bell, 
 
 Ringing soft in the echoing dell, 
 
 Under green arch and golden spire ; 
 
 When dawn s first radiant arrow fell 
 Into the dim wood s dusky choir, 
 Thy notes uprose, nor the rising fire 
 
 Of day doth hush thy heavenly swell. 
 
 Ever unspoken on earth must be 
 
 The dawn-blown message borne by thee, 
 
 Bell of the wilderness, soft and clear ! 
 There s a language lost and sweet, that we 
 
 May never speak in our veiled sphere; 
 
 But thrushes sing it, and, lo, we hear! 
 The lilies blow, and behold, we see!" 
 
 Now, let us take reverently the sacrament 
 of the spring ; let us thank God for birds, and 
 for bird songs.
 
 ^e Jftinigtet g 
 
 H Symposium. 
 
 "Blest be that spot, where cheerful guests retire 
 To pause from toil, and trim their evening fire : 
 Blest that abode, where want and pain repair, 
 And every stranger finds a ready chair : 
 Blest be those feasts with simple plenty crowned, 
 Where all the ruddy family around 
 Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail, 
 Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale ; 
 Or press the bashful stranger to his food, 
 And learn the luxury of doing good." 
 
 Goldsmith, "The Traveler." 
 
 THE minister s sermon had been written, 
 conned, and put away. The hearth was newly 
 dusted, and its antique hollow was merry with 
 the brightest thing in the house, unless, in 
 deed, "his thrifty wifie s smile" be a brighter. 
 Usually the quiet hours that border on the Sab 
 bath were by him devoted to sedative occu 
 pations, preparatory to the more strenuous toils 
 of the Sabbath ; he relaxed himself with music, 
 or with dreaming over easy rhymes, after a 
 142
 
 Minister s Saturday Evening. 143 
 
 walk in the open air, or in casual fireside con 
 versation. Perhaps, with him the reclusive im 
 pulse had become too powerful ; for there is 
 danger of excess in pursuits the saint and the 
 scholar affect, and the normal life requires fre 
 quent alteration and diversion. Somewhat in 
 opposition to the gregariousness of the time, 
 and the predominance of clubs and conven 
 tions, he magnified the home, deploring what 
 seemed to him its decay. It was his palladium, 
 his especial sanctuary, his fountain of virtue; 
 it was the hallowed center of radiant and happy 
 calm, about which the outer world, with its 
 shows and storms, like an immense panorama, 
 forever rotated. A Presence made it a shrine ; 
 a vestal spirit lit its altar, and bright beings 
 they had invoked were in joyous ministry 
 there. Yet whatever attractions or comforts 
 it might inclose, to all of them the transient 
 comer was openly welcome ; and he chiefly who 
 most could need or could best enjoy them. 
 
 The place had upon it the mellowing touch 
 of anciency. The preacher lived in the oldest 
 house the village could boast, with a history 
 extending back into pre-Revolutionary times. 
 Squarely, with naked weather-worn walls it 
 stood, in the vicinity of a fort, long since dis-
 
 144 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 mantled, the rubble of which protruded from 
 the thin soil; and throughout it had what has 
 been termed "a general flavor of mild decay." 
 On a little eminence, the lights of its windows 
 and its tw r o great chimneys were beacons 
 toward the sea, and warders looking inland. 
 As with the sea-winds, and the briny odors, 
 and the tides that went and came, the house 
 was a memory-haunted place, where walked 
 the ghosts of the buried generations, whose 
 ashes were in the "field of graves" just be 
 yond. Eyes from its windows had watched 
 the masons of Phips, rearing their mural de 
 fenses; and had seen the ships of D Iberville, 
 while with trembling hearts their owners lis 
 tened to the bellowing of his cannon. Within, 
 its thick walls, filled with such substances as 
 made it impenetrable when bullets were 
 bandied and Indian war-yells made the place 
 dismal, the huddling settlers had more than 
 once been gathered, as to a convenient shelter 
 from the storm of battle. Its recent traditions 
 had been more pacific, social, and friendly. It 
 had been in the possession of a family cele 
 brated for their widespread doors and tables, 
 and their excellent openhandedness.
 
 Minister s Saturday Evening. 145 
 
 "In that mansion used to be 
 Free-hearted hospitality ; 
 The great fires up the chimney roar d, 
 The stranger feasted at the board." 
 
 The good master of the house went abroad and 
 hailed them in, until in truth the feeder and 
 the lodger were seldom wanting. 
 
 But on a winter evening, if the sleet bit, or 
 the cold white spume leaped white over the 
 sounding rocks, or if the "cold round moon 
 shone deeply down," and the frosty fields 
 sparkled, it was cozily warm and bright within 
 the minister s study ; where the glow out of 
 that huge cavern of brick, in which the oak butts 
 were burning, laughed upward over the backs 
 of cherished tomes and the pictures upon the 
 walls. In the presence of this jocund Lar 
 and his genial attendants, the casual dropper-in 
 forgot himself, and was not in haste to go. And 
 this evening the program of silence and soli 
 tude must be laid aside, for the minister has 
 agreed to entertain his friends, whom he has 
 invited to a literary symposium. In an appro 
 priate nook near his desk, and at the right 
 hand from the hearth, in a high-backed chair 
 covered with cretonne, reposed the slender 
 10
 
 146 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 figure of the host. His face, long, smooth- 
 shaven and pale had, for its distinguishing 
 features, a well-rounded brow and dark glanc 
 ing eyes. Fifty years had not dimmed their 
 luster, and they instantly expressed each phase 
 of his changing mood. Beside him, where the 
 firelight fell full upon his face, sat the high- 
 school teacher; a stirring, energetic man, of 
 keen intelligence, who combined, during the 
 winter months, the duties of a pedagogue with 
 those of an editor, both of which, by the aid 
 of a competent assistant, he satisfactorily dis 
 charged. To a stocky, well-compacted body 
 was annexed a squarely-molded head ; and in 
 his whole person were indicated resolution and 
 aggression. His opinions were pronounced 
 decisively. He easily assumed the critical at 
 titude, and the salt of his wit was at times 
 slightly corrosive. At the left of the fireplace 
 sat the village doctor. He, too, was a man 
 slenderly proportioned, and with a darkly- 
 bearded face, which was capable of much grav 
 ity at times. A genial spirit, however, was 
 masked under a veil of caution and reticence; 
 while at times, and with his friends especially, 
 his eyes and his whole face grew radiant with
 
 Minister s Saturday Evening. 147 
 
 humor, and round them were "the busy 
 wrinkles." The three united in their love of 
 chat and in their love of literature. 
 
 "What a charm there is in an open wood- 
 fire !" said the teacher. "I am half inclined to 
 believe, with Shelley, that we are scarcely 
 aware of its beauty. But one may acquire a 
 hint of it, upon coming in from a walk upon 
 a frosty night such as this." 
 
 "What charm abides," responded the min- 
 inster, "in all the simple, elemental things of 
 the world, and of human life, to all whose 
 natures are sincere ! I am more and more in 
 duced to rely upon them as the divinely-ap 
 pointed instruments of our temporal well-being. 
 Let us cultivate a closer acquaintance with, 
 and a keener appreciation of, the elemental 
 powers by which we are environed, and by 
 which we live, for they exist within us. Let 
 us understand our proper relations to the uni 
 verse, and let us preserve them inviolate. It 
 is an old story how corrupt and distraught 
 human souls become by luxury, by haste and 
 tumult, by violence and greed, and by the 
 whirlpool-like complexity of things. I love 
 and court the primitive life, with its serene
 
 148 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 joys and its long relish. We are getting to be 
 a people too suddenly jaded and outworn. It 
 is as true now as ever, amid the multiplicity of 
 things, that few are needful, while the task of 
 selection is becoming burdensome. Thank 
 God, this world has not for me yet lost its 
 harmony or beauty! It may be true that 
 youth rayed a peculiar splendor on me and on 
 the world ; yet, with all the years of dimness 
 and tarnish, it has never been robbed of its 
 own proper glory : 
 
 " The innocent brightness of a new-born day 
 Is lovely yet. 
 
 The older I grow, the more sacredly beautiful 
 this universal frame becomes to my eyes. Is 
 it not, after all, a part of God s great house, 
 an ante-chamber to his rooms of state ; which 
 his hands have adorned with shapes and hues 
 no painter or jeweler can equal? Why ask 
 for stone walls, as if here we sought our city 
 of continuance? Why sigh for Plato s let 
 tered ease, the elegant appointments of Seneca, 
 or the Epicurean villa of Lucullus? Why 
 should these artifices be thought necessary to 
 our well-being ; when, coming out of our mod-
 
 Minister s Saturday Evening. 149 
 
 est dwelling on a spring morning, we stand 
 in the midst of the King s palace a mansion 
 indeed ! a glorious structure ! with its meadowy 
 floors and flowered carpets, its green-foliaged 
 pillars, its blue ceiling; an edifice like that 
 above, unbuilt by human hands, on which no 
 mason has clinked his trowel or carpenter 
 struck his chisel? The beggar in his rags, 
 who sinks to sleep under a haystack, amid the 
 golden haze of a September evening, has over 
 him an azure arch more deeply starred and 
 sprinkled with celestial dew than ever bent 
 over Nero in his Roman palace. He gazes 
 upward, and his rustic eyes encounter 
 
 " The splendid mooned and jeweled night, 
 The loveliest-born of God ; 
 
 whereupon he may forget that he is one of 
 earth s homeless outcasts. What shall bring 
 joy to us, if there be none in the work of His 
 hands, in the light of his smile, and in the 
 breathing of his life? For he is more than 
 the Architect, the Fashioner of these wheels, 
 terrestrial and celestial ; he is also the Spirit 
 who moves within them, 
 
 " And where he vital breathes there must be joy.
 
 150 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 You remember what he said, who was the 
 most tirelessly hopeful and energetic soul of 
 song in our century : 
 
 " God tastes an infinite joy 
 In infinite ways one everlasting bliss, 
 From whom all being emanates, all power 
 Proceeds ; in whom is life for evermore, 
 Yet whom existence in its lowest form 
 Includes. 
 
 But," he said shortly, checking himself, "I 
 must not forget myself, and anticipate the de 
 livery of my sermon." 
 
 "I can not believe," said the teacher, "that 
 God designed our unhappiness ; for in him and 
 in his works there is doubtless a boundless 
 store of enjoyment; but men will persist in the 
 manufacture of misery. If you want troub , 
 you must have troub / as the irate countryman 
 said, when he squared up to his tormentor, 
 with blazing face and with doubled fists. It 
 seems to me that he has yet only religion s 
 smaller half, who can not exult in all this glory 
 and beauty by which we are surrounded, and 
 for it thank God daily. I think God will lay 
 it to his charge who will not, and therefore can 
 not, inherit this universal portion ; who never 
 comes to the Mountain of Joyful Appreciation,
 
 Minister s Saturday Evening. 151 
 
 but always to the Mountain of Hate and Ter 
 ror ; who never at some Gilgal partition of lots 
 puts in his well-established claim to arduous 
 delight and glorious difficulty ; but who, in all 
 this domain once the location of a Paradise, 
 beholds only a farm a market a manufac 
 tory a drill-ground ; and who would, perhaps, 
 if he had his way, change, if we may use 
 Ruskin s phrase, himself and his race into 
 vegetables. " 
 
 "Let us hold in restraint the language of 
 scorn," said the minister, "nor overindulge any 
 sense we may have of our own superiority. 
 The elements of contentment and of the sim 
 pler unencumbered life are sown in every 
 breast ; but unhappily the good seed is choked. 
 Let us lament this, and labor to correct it. 
 And let us, above all things, cast out the ma 
 lignant spirits, the spites and the follies ; for 
 from them the harvest of human unhappiness 
 is great upon the earth. Who would sneer at 
 his kind, or hate his fellow-men? I had sooner 
 sow cockle or darnel than hatred and scorn. 
 I would not, as Tennyson avers, shut myself 
 from my kind. Who of us would share the 
 unblest solitude of a Vathek, or dwell agoniz 
 ingly, with Arouet, in a false society? Surely,
 
 152 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 not I ! Poor Voltaire ! so keen-sighted toward 
 the earth ; so purblind toward heaven ! But 
 I am talking rather stiffly and austerely. We 
 are here to unbend, and to exhibit some of our 
 lighter wares. Doctor, you have been silent. 
 We await the content of that paper you hold, 
 be it song or story." 
 
 "I have heard the theory advanced and ex 
 pounded," began the doctor, "that the reign of 
 the poet is ended, and that the reign of the 
 realist and the scientist has begun. Let this 
 be so, if it is so, or can be ; but I am a stead 
 fast believer that poetry, like gold and fire, 
 lies at the root of the universe ; and that, as 
 the German lyrist has it, when the last man 
 marches out of the world the last poet will go 
 with him. This faith I have endeavored to 
 express in some simple rhymes : 
 
 THE END OF SONG. 
 
 Of Song s divine succession sweet, 
 Say, can there ever be an end ? 
 
 Apollo s golden reign complete 
 The Muses latest sonnet penned? 
 
 Nay ! not while rosy morning breaks, 
 Or evening bathes her wings in dew ; 
 
 Not while from slumber Love awakes, 
 
 And Heaven again makes all things new.
 
 Minister s Saturday Evening. 153 
 
 Not till the spring no more returns, 
 And hushed is Robin s cheery note, 
 
 And no man more of summer learns 
 From Bob-o -Lincoln s madcap throat. 
 
 Not while the bluebird s carol still 
 
 From winter thrills our greening vale ; 
 
 Not while we know our whip-poor-will, 
 England, her lark and nightingale. 
 
 Because our Shakespeare lies in dust, 
 Because our Milton sings no more, 
 
 Fails Song s supreme, immortal trust? 
 Is her harmonious mission o er? 
 
 By all the passion of our heart, 
 
 By all our yearnings, all our dreams, 
 
 Suns may decline, and suns depart, 
 Still on, the sacred luster streams. 
 
 Still music lives for waking ears, 
 
 Still beauty glows for opening eyes : 
 
 The bard, the minstrel, disappears, 
 The race of poets never dies. 
 
 "We can but regret," said the teacher, "that 
 the poet is ordinarily so poorly rewarded, and 
 that he is so reluctantly applauded, and still 
 more reluctantly paid. Poetry has fared but ill 
 in the market-place, from the time of Spenser 
 down. Think of the beggarly life of Gold-
 
 154 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 smith, and the squalor and gloom of his sur 
 roundings ! He is obliged to say of Poesy, 
 loveliest maid/ 
 
 " My shame in crowds, my solitary pride, 
 Thou source of all my bliss and all my woe, 
 That found st me poor at first and keep st me so. 
 
 Think of that scrimping measure to Spenser s 
 prodigal genius ! I declare, I hope it was no 
 misrepresentation of Elizabeth s spirit that Lan- 
 dor gives us, when lie makes the queen say to 
 that parsimonious Cecil : I would not from the 
 fountain of honor give luster to the dull and 
 ignorant, deadening and leaving in its tomb the 
 lamp of literature and genius. I ardently wish 
 my reign to be remembered : if my actions 
 were different from what they are, I should as 
 ardently wish it to be forgotten. Those are 
 the worst of suicides, who voluntarily and pro- 
 pensely stab or suffocate their fame, when God 
 hath commanded them to stand on high for 
 an example. . . . Edmund is grave and 
 gentle: he complains of fortune, not of Eliz 
 abeth ; of courts, not of Cecil. I am resolved, 
 so help me, God ! he shall have no further 
 cause for repining. Go, convey unto him those 
 twelve silver spoons, with the apostles on them,
 
 Minister s Saturday Evening. 155 
 
 gloriously gilded; and deliver into his hands 
 these twelve large golden pieces, sufficing for 
 the yearly maintenance of another horse and 
 groom. How about all this? Fine words/ 
 we are told, butter no parsnips. I suspect 
 that Burleigh withheld this bounty, to let 
 Spenser starve, if he must. I would like to 
 recite to his injurious shade a quaint old legend 
 of Allan Ramsay, which I must perforce offer 
 you in my own poor phrase : 
 
 "The Eagle once gave to all his feathered 
 subjects a great reception and banquet. Im 
 mediately upon the issuance of his order they 
 came nocking to his high palace of the rock, 
 his courtiers and his loyal people ; the Tersels, 
 the Corbies, the Gleds, the Pyes, the Daws, 
 the Peacocks, and hundreds more out of the 
 most illustrious families ; and all, without ques 
 tion, having made their obeisance to their mas 
 ter, took their places at his board, and fell to 
 together gorging themselves and making witty 
 speeches, amid uproarious laughter. While 
 they sat feasting upon fawn, and drinking the 
 warm blood of lambs, a tuneful little Robin 
 came fluttering near them, and, resting himself 
 on the bough of a bour-tree, began singing 
 most sweetly.
 
 156 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 "He sang the royal line of the Eagle ; his 
 kingly right, his valiant spirit, his voice of 
 terror, and the piercing luster of his eye ; his 
 age renewed, his sublime flight into the heav 
 ens, his martial prowess ; but loudest of all he 
 celebrated his Monarch s noble mind, his heart 
 of clemency, his guardianship of the dread 
 Jovian thunderbolts, and, sweetest of all, his 
 ardency and tenderness of love. The royal 
 entertainer listened in delight to this lay of the 
 little sylvan poet who, not venturing to sit at 
 the table, had entertained the revelers with his 
 music; whereupon, calling the Buzzard, his 
 favorite chamberlain, he commissioned him to 
 carry to the minstrel as much of the current 
 coin of the realm as would suffice for a twelve 
 months support. We can well spare it, said 
 the Eagle, and it is clearly his due. 
 
 "Forth, with deceit in his heart, and a lie 
 in his beak, went the Buzzard ; and, having 
 reached the Robin s perch, he said: Begone 
 from this place. Your voice is so harsh and 
 tuneless you have deafened His Majesty, and 
 put him out of all patience. His Majesty has 
 an exquisite ear, and can no longer endure 
 you. I counsel you, as a friend, to depart from 
 this place, and to return hither no more. So
 
 Minister s Saturday Evening. 157 
 
 into his own pouch the Buzzard put the gift 
 of the grateful king, and sullenly departed. 
 
 "Then suddenly Robin s bosom began to 
 swell, and the tears trickled out of his eyes. 
 Low drooped his wings, and he moved not, but 
 was silent. But most it grieved him, not that 
 he had lost the tinsel of reward, but that his 
 song was scorned, and that his person had been 
 affronted. Still he sat till the guests had de 
 parted ; when, spreading his wings for the 
 wood where he had built his nest, he resolved 
 to sing for kings and courts no more." 
 
 "And should you choose to be the Buzzard 
 or the Robin?" the minister asked him. "No 
 more than another can the poet have every 
 thing; and he has much in his endowment, 
 and the power and the joy which it gives him. 
 Should he meet with rebuffs, he should be best 
 qualified to endure them ; the grace of magna 
 nimity should be his, for he has in himself 
 a royal heritage. Your legend from Ramsay 
 recalls to mind another quite to my purpose, 
 which I will also endeavor in unrhymed terms 
 to render. I think you may find it in the pages 
 of Schiller : 
 
 "Once upon a time Jove put the Earth into 
 Mankind s possession, and bade them to share
 
 158 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 it wisely and like brothers. True to his in 
 stinct, and often as false to his reason, each 
 one appropriated what he most desired, and 
 that with little delay. The Usurer scrambled 
 after his gold ; the Farmer secured his field ; 
 the Merchant laid hold on his merchandise ; 
 the King seized on crown and throne and all 
 his coveted lands. At the last came the Poet ; 
 but he was too late : nothing remained to him 
 but the sky, and he was esteemed as a pauper 
 in the world. Ascending to the palace hall of 
 Jove, and prostrating himself at the foot of 
 his throne, the disappointed Poet exclaimed : 
 O Great Master! is there no portion for me? 
 Laggard ! replied the Sovereign of the Stars, 
 when he looked upon him, where were you 
 when the world was apportioned, that you did 
 not consider your interests? / ivas close be 
 side you, said the Poet, your most devoted 
 one ; I was close beside you, Great Master, en 
 raptured with the beauty of your presence and 
 the glory of your house. Then/ sighed the 
 King of Heaven, I would not you should re 
 main in poverty ; but, alas ! I have given the 
 Earth away : nevertheless the door of my house 
 stands open, and you are free to come and go 
 and to abide whenever you will. And so it
 
 Minister s Saturday Evening. 159 
 
 comes to pass that the Poet has been a sort of 
 celestial vagrant ever since." 
 
 "Heaven bless him !" exclaimed the doctor. 
 "He is welcome at my door!" 
 
 "Do you know," continued the minister, 
 "whom I believe to have been the happiest man 
 of his generation? It is John Wesley. And 
 that is precisely because there was no man 
 who so incessantly gave the wealth of his spirit 
 to others; no man who cared so little for 
 honors and effects for himself alone, being 
 ashamed to die with too much of any good still 
 in his exclusive possession. The fire of poetry 
 gave its warmth to his blood, that seemed to 
 flow so calmly, but, more triumphantly, the 
 spirit of piety. I hear him singing : 
 
 " No foot of land do I possess, 
 No cottage in this wilderness : 
 
 A poor wayfaring man, 
 I lodge awhile in tents below ; 
 Or gladly wander to and fro, 
 
 Till I my Canaan gain. 
 
 Nothing on earth I call my own; 
 A stranger, to the world unknown, 
 
 I all their goods despise ; 
 I trample on their whole delight, 
 And seek a country out of sight, 
 
 A country in the skies.
 
 160 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 There is my house and portion fair ; 
 My treasure and my heart are there, 
 
 And my abiding home ; 
 For me my elder brethren stay, 
 And angels beckon me away, 
 
 And Jesus bids me come. 
 
 May we not believe that this illustrious way 
 farer has long since seen the King in his 
 beauty/ who in the days we share with him 
 testified: The little birds have nests, and the 
 foxes have their dens also, but the Son of man 
 hath not where to lay his head? Indeed, the 
 poet who is true to his high vocation has little 
 need to be commiserated ; and, to show this a 
 little more clearly, I adduce this antique legend, 
 plucked from some German wastebasket : 
 
 A RHYME OF THE MAGIC BOOK. 
 The student was faint and hungry, 
 
 He was gaunt, and lean, and pale ; 
 He left his book and his garret nook 
 
 For a loaf and a flagon of ale. 
 
 His cloak was so faded and tattered, 
 
 He felt the sharp wind blow; 
 And where he trod, his feet, ill-shod, 
 
 Shrank from the frosty snow. 
 
 *In English, this transposition of subject and object is 
 confusing. We don t know whether "the nests have the 
 birds," or " the birds have the nests." Transpose the subject 
 and object here, to express the exact meaning.
 
 Minister s Saturday Evening. 161 
 
 He counted his few poor pennies ; 
 
 He sighed : "It is starve or freeze : 
 My fire may fail, yet to bread and ale 
 
 I must add a bit of cheese." 
 
 So, as he stood in the market, 
 
 And waited for his fare, 
 His eyes did scan the marketman, 
 
 Who a poet s book did tear. 
 
 The cheese in a golden leaflet 
 
 He wrapped right carelessly : 
 "Pray, let me look at that old book," 
 
 Said the student eagerly. 
 
 He seized and pored upon it : 
 
 "Now, what have you done !" he cries ; 
 "You wrap with a poet s perfect page 
 
 Your paltry merchandise ! 
 
 The tin and the dross you favor 
 
 At every rood may abound; 
 But the priceless thought, like your gold, may 
 not 
 
 So easily be found." 
 
 "A fig for your song!" laughed the huckster; 
 
 "Your word it is most unwise; 
 You better might seize on my good cheese 
 
 Than that parcel of poet s lies." 
 ii
 
 1 62 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 "How say you so ?" quoth the student ; 
 
 " T is a soothfast saw, well worn : 
 To the merry monarch his prized pearl ; 
 
 To the peasant his barleycorn. 
 
 T is true, I am cold and hungry, 
 And I have but pennies three ; 
 
 But, if you please, take back your cheese, 
 And give the book to me." 
 
 "Ay, ay, as you please," scoffed the huckster ; 
 
 "Go, starve on your poet s lay !" 
 With a joyous look, the student took, 
 
 And bore the book away. 
 
 Now a kindly heart had the shopman, 
 And his mind was ill at ease : 
 
 "Is it well," quoth he, "though a fool he be, 
 That the fellow should starve and freeze?" 
 
 He called his little son to him 
 
 A gentle lad and rare : 
 "Now, hasten, Ben, to that student s den, 
 
 To see how he doth fare. 
 
 His head is full of his notions, 
 As a puppy s jacket with fleas: 
 
 Yet, here," he said, "take this loaf of bread, 
 Along with this bit of cheese." 
 
 Then through the streets of the city 
 
 The gentle youth did go, 
 Where from dark walls to the lamplight falls 
 
 A sparkling dust of snow.
 
 Minister s Saturday Evening. 163 
 
 He climbed to the student s garret; 
 
 The place looked mean and bare; 
 Then he stood before a battened door, 
 
 And looked through a knothole there. 
 
 The coals in the grate were dying ; 
 
 One candle burned dim and low ; 
 While a broken chair and a table bare 
 
 Were all the room could show. 
 
 But the boy, as he stood gazing, 
 
 Did feel a sudden stound; 
 His brain did reel, and like a wheel 
 
 His head seemed turning round. 
 
 He heard strange whirring voices, 
 Strange lights flashed in his eyes ; 
 
 Then, in a swound all sense was drowned : 
 At last he did arise. 
 
 T was the open door of a palace 
 
 That then he deemed he saw; 
 And a scene within where the cherubin 
 
 Might bend in holy awe. 
 
 There sat the poor, pale student, 
 Enthroned in that splendid place; 
 
 While a mystic light from the book shone 
 
 bright, 
 And lit up his pallid face. 
 
 W T ith a lovely starlike luster 
 
 His eyes entranced shone; 
 With seerlike sight into Art s Delight, 
 
 He dwells no more alone.
 
 164 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 The poets in long procession, 
 
 Moved round his dais high ; 
 While music s pages, of all the ages, 
 
 Made their soft melody. 
 
 "Sure, I am only dreaming," 
 
 Said the boy, and withdrew his eyes ; 
 
 Then he rubbed them amain, and he looked 
 
 again, 
 In wondering surmise. 
 
 Yes, there was the royal palace, 
 
 And the kingly man on his throne ; 
 
 And the bards were found still moving round, 
 And singing with dulcet tone. 
 
 And ever, as they kept singing, 
 
 And sweeping their harps with grace, 
 
 Their magical skill made brighter still, 
 And ampler, seem the place. 
 
 Then came a beauteous maiden, 
 In her hand a wreathen crown ; 
 
 On the student s brow she lays it now, 
 And by his side sits down. 
 
 In her hand a wand, star-pointed, 
 
 She held, and lifted high ; 
 On her hair was set a coronet, 
 
 With the legend Poesy. 
 
 Then changed was the face of the student, 
 
 And a nobler mien he bore 
 Than ever on earth, since the day of his birth, 
 
 The bov had seen before.
 
 Minister s Saturday Evening. 165 
 
 The book, once stained and tattered, 
 Now glowed like a sunset sea, 
 
 As it lay there, as a missal rare, 
 Open upon his knee. 
 
 Home went the lad to his father, 
 
 And unto him he said : 
 "Poor and unknown he lives alone, 
 
 And his dwelling is a shed. 
 
 But, father, let me go with him, 
 
 For the student hath found a prize ; 
 
 And, father, he can use a talisman, 
 And he sees with a poet s eyes; 
 
 And he than a monarch is richer 
 His cup flows full to the brim; 
 
 And the wealthy and great, in their splendor 
 
 and state, 
 Have reason to envy him !" 
 
 "I would," pursued the minister, "empha 
 size the doctrine of the Utility of Art. It has 
 been currently reported that song will not 
 bring bread; and has not this hard maxim been 
 strained into us, my brethren, with icy argu 
 ment, and many painful examples of perishing 
 poets in their attics, and starved, forlorn, mel 
 ancholy minstrels? Who would have been a 
 Homer, to hold his hat for an obolus? What
 
 i66 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 a doom was that of Chatterton ! How signifi 
 cantly sorrowful the close of the career of 
 Burns ! But has it never been heard by any 
 that song is bread? and that, though men will 
 spend their money for that which is not such, 
 give their gold for some like hard, heavy sub 
 stance, heart and spirit have a food and cur 
 rency of their own? What is the true singer 
 but the quickener? Turn the pages of that 
 Southern minstrel* who, amid disease, pov 
 erty, and neglect, was able to nourish and build 
 up his own spirit and none can do that with 
 out leaving a legacy, and bringing a benedic 
 tion to the world turn his precious pages, I 
 say, till you come to Corn, and then turn on 
 until you come to The Bee; and then pause 
 there, like the bee s self, atilt on a flower, to 
 hear what the singer has to say : 
 
 "Wilt ask, What profit e er a poet brings? 
 He beareth starry stuff about his wings 
 To pollen thee and sting thee fertile. 
 
 Hast ne er a honey-drop of love for me, 
 In thy huge nectary? " 
 
 Blame, praise, do what you will, in reason, 
 but pity not the poet, as such; the man may 
 
 * Sidney Lanier.
 
 Minister s Saturday Evening. 167 
 
 need your pity, and crave it ; but the poet? 
 never ! A desert is not destitute to him ! 
 
 " The dark hath many dear avails ; 
 
 The dark distills divinest dews ; 
 The dark is rich with nightingales, 
 
 With dreams, and with the heavenly Muse. " 
 
 "True it is," said the doctor, "the poet is 
 forever hearing something more than meets 
 the outward ear, and seeing something diviner 
 than the natural eye ever discerns. Like Keats, 
 his eye being filmed with the ointment of 
 beauty, he can see a dryad in every green tree. 
 He can never see a forest glade, or the white 
 sand of the shore, without imagining a pro 
 cession of beautiful forms ; stately as those that 
 Milton saw, or of Shakespearean grace and 
 loveliness. Did you ever stand at the entrance 
 of some woody glen, and listen to the laugh 
 ing fall of musical water, how like it is to the 
 voice of a child? The Celtic legend of Kil- 
 meny, the beautiful maiden who was wiled 
 away into the faerie world of thought and 
 dream, is repeated among the primitive people 
 on our shores. The Indians in the mountain 
 region of New Hampshire tell us the story of 
 a little child who, wandering into the forest,
 
 1 68 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 was met by the fantastic denizens of the place, 
 and changed into one of their own kind. I 
 have tried to put the legend into metrical form, 
 with the following result : 
 
 THE WATERS OF CARR. 
 
 O do you hear the merry waters falling, 
 
 In the mossy woods of Carr? 
 O do you hear the child s voice calling, calling, 
 Through its cloistral deeps afar? 
 T is the Indian s babe, they say, 
 Fairy stolen, changed a fay : 
 And still I hear her calling, calling, calling, 
 In the mossy woods of Carr ! 
 
 O hear you, when the weary world is sleeping, 
 
 (Dim and drowsy every star), 
 This little one her happy revels keeping, 
 In her halls of shining spar? 
 
 Clearer swells her voice of glee, 
 While the liquid echoes flee, 
 And the full moon through deep green leaves 
 
 comes peeping, 
 In the dim-lit woods of Carr. 
 
 Know ye from her wigwam how they drew her, 
 
 Wanton, willing, far away, 
 Made the wild-wood halls seem home unto her, 
 Changed her to a laughing fay? 
 Never does her bosom burn, 
 Never asks she to return ; 
 Ah, vainly care and sorrow may pursue her, 
 Laughing, singing, all the day !
 
 Minister s Saturday Evening. 169 
 
 And often, when the golden west is burning, 
 
 Ere the twilight s earliest star, 
 Comes her mother, led by mortal yearning 
 Where the haunted forests are ; 
 Listens to the rapture wild 
 Of her vanished fairy child : 
 Ah, see her then, with smiles and tears, returning, 
 From the sunset woods of Carr ! 
 
 They feed her with the amber dew and honey, 
 
 They bathe her in the crystal spring, 
 They set her down in open spaces sunny, 
 And weave her an enchanted ring ; 
 They will not let her beauty die, 
 Her innocence and purity ; 
 They sweeten her fair brow with kisses many, 
 And ever round her dance and sing. 
 
 O do you hear the merry waters falling, 
 
 In the mossy woods of Carr? 
 O do you hear the child s voice calling, calling, 
 Through its cloistral deeps afar? 
 Never thrill of plaintive pain 
 Mingles with that ceaseless strain ; 
 But still I hear her joyous calling, calling, 
 In the morning woods of Carr ! 
 
 "It is fortunate for us," said the teacher, 
 "when our fantasies are so full of light and 
 grace and happy music. Some that I wot of 
 are full of Hadean gloom or of sepulchral 
 ghastliness. When I think of the dismal su 
 perstitions that once dominated the human
 
 170 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 spirit, I feel glad to remember that we live in 
 an age when we are relieved of some of them ; 
 even though we may have been delivered into 
 the hands of that other demon of doubt. Here 
 is a legend of the days of spiritual terror, 
 which I found in the pages of Heine ; and 
 which, while he gives it to us in his perfect 
 prose, I have perhaps spoiled by my clumsy 
 versifying : 
 
 THE NIGHTINGALE OF BASLE. 
 
 MAY, 1433. 
 
 In august council sternly set, 
 
 The reverend fathers once were met, 
 
 At Basle s ancient town : 
 Prelates were there of high degree, 
 And many a learned society, 
 
 That wore the cope and gown. 
 
 Then, in some session s interval, 
 In converse, abbot, cardinal, 
 
 Together strolled along 
 A sheltered path, where from the trees 
 Came the wind s softest melodies, 
 
 And many a wild bird s song. 
 
 But to their ears seemed nature mute; 
 Engaged in many a fierce dispute, 
 They heard her music not :
 
 Minister s Saturday Evening. 171 
 
 Long-moldy dogmas they restated ; 
 And these, most furiously debated, 
 Filled all their round of thought. 
 
 Whether Aquinas greater were 
 Than Doctor Bonaventura ; 
 
 If pause in heaven might be: 
 Shrill were their tones, their looks were glum ; 
 Vexed, as of old, with tweedledum, 
 
 And puzzling tweedledee. 
 
 But, on an instant, rapturously 
 Forth from a blooming linden-tree, 
 
 Such throbbing notes did start, 
 As fill at eve some moonlit vale, 
 When pours the passioned nightingale 
 
 The fullness of her heart. 
 
 Surprised by that delicious flood, 
 Transfixed before the tree they stood, 
 
 And listened in delight ; 
 Such golden melodies were trolled, 
 A little space their dogmas old 
 
 Evanished from their sight. 
 
 The scents and sounds of spring again 
 Did penetrate the misty brain 
 
 Of each tanned theologue : 
 Till one cried : "Cease ! Enough we ve heard ! 
 The devil may be in a bird, 
 
 As well as in a dog !"
 
 172 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Before them yawned Hell s dark abysm ! 
 With many a muttered exorcism, 
 
 Himself each brother crossed : 
 "From pious themes, from counsels pure, 
 He draws us with voluptuous lure : 
 
 Hasten ! or all is lost !" 
 
 With that, the tree seemed all aflame, 
 And sounds of mocking laughter came 
 
 Out of the linden gay : 
 "Yes, I m a fiend," a sweet voice said ; 
 "So you do well to be afraid !" 
 
 Then flew the bird away. 
 
 But, in that very eventide, 
 
 The legend saith, each brother died, 
 
 Whose ears that song assailed ; 
 Not the exorcist s muttered spell, 
 Not all the pattering beads they tell, 
 
 Nor e en the cross, availed. 
 
 But, if the truth might be believed, 
 (For slowness of our faith hath grieved 
 
 The bravest souls that be), 
 No evil in the bird o erthrew 
 Those pious monks of old, nor slew 
 
 Those doctors of degree. 
 
 Dark souls, alas ! and prostrate age, 
 That superstition s bitterest rage 
 
 Could ever so assail ! 
 They slandered nature s loveliness, 
 Darkened the linden s flowery dress, 
 
 Proscribed the nightingale!
 
 Minister s Saturday Evening. 173 
 
 Ah ! happier souls ! with fearless eyes 
 Who find delight in seas and skies, 
 
 Who earth s green realms explore ! 
 No more such haunting shadow falls 
 Down the sun-rifted woodland halls, 
 
 Or the sea^beaten shore. 
 
 But true it ever is, in day 
 Like that of Basle, far away, 
 
 Or time, like ours, more near; 
 One step there is surer than fate 
 The step from theologic hate 
 
 To superstitious fear. 
 
 "I have been thinking of your priest," said 
 the doctor, "and of his remark concerning the 
 dog. I wonder if the canine breed is more 
 susceptible to demoniacal than to divine pos 
 session. I have indeed seen dogs that were 
 vile enough, wild, mad, hideous, hateful dogs, 
 that might well have had a devil in them ; and, 
 again, I have seen them with a sweetness of 
 temper and a constancy of devotion almost 
 superhuman. These are the nobility of dogs. 
 If dogs have not souls, these at least deserve 
 them, for they live as if they had them. On 
 a recent evening, when I read my Bible, and 
 came upon these words, Without are dogs I 
 could not forbear this comment : Good Carlo 
 shaggy Caesar, from Newfoundland honest
 
 174 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Luath Owd Roa Flush, my dog thou dog 
 of St. Bernard and each other decent mem 
 ber of the canine brotherhood, surely this 
 sentence of celestial banishment has no refer 
 ence to you. It is the currish, unclean, ignoble 
 tribe that shall be excluded. And, as for the 
 warning, "Beware of dogs !" neither can that 
 be fairly applied to you. O Rab! O Maida! 
 and thou for whom Sheelah pleaded in dying ! 
 fear nothing: it may go ill with some of your 
 masters ; but surely it shall be well with you. 
 You were not excluded from this green earth 
 of God s, and from his blue sky : so bark glee 
 fully, and take courage. 
 
 "A talkative woman, who carried with her 
 a dismal face and a poodle, called on a good 
 minister in his last illness a minister who was 
 notorious for his wit and his clear sense. The 
 woman chattered tediously; but to the poodle, 
 who looked silently and sympathetically upon 
 him, the old man in a weak voice addressed 
 most of his conversation. When the woman 
 arose to go, he shook the doggie s paw, and 
 said, with a little sigh : Well, good-bye, Fido. 
 Be a good dog, and you 11 go where the good 
 dogs go. 
 
 " Where is your dog?
 
 Minister s Saturday Evening. 175 
 
 "The question was answered hopefully, and 
 by a clergyman : 
 
 " In heaven, if he has been a good dog. 
 
 "I have no objection. 
 
 "So, when I read in that final summing up 
 of the Apocalypse, Without are dogs I am 
 inclined to put a liberal interpretation upon its 
 reference to the antipodes of the faithful." 
 
 "I do not know," observed the minister, 
 "that the dog is anywhere in Scripture asso 
 ciated with the mystic, the spiritual, or the 
 supernatural, as are the lamb and the dove. 
 We must come to the Gael or the Scandinavian 
 for that association; and I suppose it to be 
 wholly owing to the inferior Oriental breed. 
 But the dog figures mainly in the realm of 
 superstition ; and here I recall the Celtic legend 
 of the Banshee, the female fairy who, in Irish 
 peasant homes, is supposed, by her wailing, 
 or singing, under the windows at night to fore 
 tell the death of one of the family. With this 
 midnight cry the howling of the house dog 
 was associated. So, Allingham: 
 
 " I heard the dogs howl in the moonlight night, 
 And I went to the window to see the sight ; 
 All the dead that ever I knew 
 Going one by one and two by two.
 
 176 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 A similar legend is, in our own country, asso 
 ciated with the cry of the whip-poor-will. One 
 evening, in the early autumn of 18 , I had 
 left the Nobleboro Camp-meeting Ground for 
 a quiet walk along a lonely road that led 
 through a pine wood. As I moved along, with 
 that pleasing feeling of awe and alluring dread 
 which unfamiliar, shadowy places will inspire, 
 in the deep woods not far away from me I 
 heard a whip-poor-will, whose intermittent 
 lament awakened in me the most indefinable 
 sensation that a bird has ever inspired. And 
 when I awoke at midnight, to hear through 
 my open window the same sound, I aver it 
 tested some latent capacity that is in me for 
 superstitious feeling. 
 
 "If you will bear with me, I will give you 
 some account of the matter in the following 
 rhapsody : 
 
 "THE WHIP-POOR-WILL. 
 
 Mine is the solitary road. 
 
 Glooms of evening deepen all around me ; 
 
 Distant gleam the lights of the encampment; 
 
 The rain-portending zephyr caresses me, 
 
 Blown out of the shadowy East : 
 
 A long dimming tract ; a path fading at eventide ;
 
 Minister s Saturday Evening. 177 
 
 A poet s book the singer of wonderful child- 
 songs, 
 
 Smiling out upon me from the Vale of Har : 
 A dream-world all around me ; 
 The assembled ghostly companions, 
 And guests of Memory. . . . 
 . . . The voice of the whip-poor-will ! 
 
 A path that turns aside into the pine woods 
 
 A sanctuary of the night-breathing wind ; 
 
 An infinite, satisfied sigh 
 
 The entering of a soul into eternity s repose. 
 
 Then comes a susurrus a longer surge 
 
 A sound of far-off seas 
 
 A billowy echo voices of haunted shores . . . 
 
 Hark! What sound rises out of the wildwood? 
 
 It is the wail of my heart, 
 
 A mingled utterance of longing and regret . . . 
 
 . . . The song of the whip-poor-will ! 
 
 Up through the brown floor of the pine woods 
 
 Have arisen the spirits of the place 
 
 The pale-green, delicate ferns, 
 
 The sisterhood of this forest nunnery. 
 
 They tremble and wave, 
 
 Like sentient, living creatures, 
 
 And nod, conversing with one another. 
 
 I can almost hear their elfin voices ; 
 
 Their faces are pale in the dim arbor 
 
 Where they are clustering; 
 
 They stand, like the choristers of a temple 
 
 When the anthem is about to begin ; 
 
 They fill me with awesome delight.
 
 178 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Then, out of the thicket s deep comes forth a ten 
 der lamentation, 
 
 A weeping note, repeated and repeated . . . 
 . . . The song of the whip-poor-will ! 
 
 And I hear it, again and again, 
 
 As I wander back to the encampment . . . 
 
 Then again, at midnight, 
 
 I start out of my sleep, as if some one near me 
 had spoken, 
 
 Forsaking my dream ; 
 
 When through the open window comes the self 
 same sound, 
 
 The plaintive call, the threshing wheep-to- 
 wheep! . . . 
 
 . . . The voice of the whip-poor-will ! 
 
 What meanest thou, O bird? 
 
 bird, or haunting Spirit, 
 Pursuing my wandering feet, 
 Breaking my lonely slumber, 
 Here in the wilderness ! 
 
 Grievest thou for the grief that must rend my 
 
 bosom ; 
 For the beloved and the beautiful that are reft 
 
 away ? 
 
 Ah ! no, sweet bird ! 
 It is for the solace of thy love thou singest : 
 
 1 will not accuse thee, and call thee a prophet 
 
 of ill. 
 
 Still will I listen at evening to the sound that has 
 been my delight 
 
 The voice of the whip-poor-will.
 
 Minister s Saturday Evening. 179 
 
 "Ay, that is a true account of the whip-poor- 
 will," said the doctor. "One summer evening 
 I had made a call on a sick girl at a farm 
 house near a tract of woods. I was just leav 
 ing, and the farmer followed me out into the 
 yard ; when, on one of the outlying apple-trees 
 of his orchard, a whip-poor-will from the 
 near-by thicket set up its threshing note. The 
 farmer looked ruefully in the bird s direction, 
 shook his head, and said, in a tone half petu 
 lant, half disconsolate: There, I wish that 
 thing would keep away ! I have always heard 
 it before the death of my friends. I fear now 
 
 that M will not get up again. I said, 
 
 Did you ever lose any in the winter? He 
 answered affirmatively. Then, I asked, did 
 you hear the whip-poor-will? He laughed, 
 and said, I guess not. The fact was, his 
 daughter recovered, and is yet living. But, 
 since you have given us this touch of mysti 
 cism and superstition, let me, by way of an 
 alterative, bring forward a more cheerful 
 legend. More than twenty years since, I was 
 walking with a quaint old minister through a 
 bit of sweet pasture land, in the edge of a June 
 evening, when suddenly a sturdy robin set up 
 his evensong. What is that fellow saying?
 
 i So Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 asked my companion. I listened intently and 
 reflectively for a moment or two, and then said : 
 I can not tell you. Anything you wish to 
 hear, I suppose. Well, I will tell you: He 
 says But what he said, I think I will ven 
 ture to put in rhyme : 
 
 DOCTOR ROBIN. 
 
 Forth, one evening, bent on ranging, 
 When winter into spring was changing, 
 I went with blues still deeper bluing, 
 And all the ghosts of night pursuing: 
 Through April clouds the sun was breaking, 
 But O, my head my head was aching, 
 My feet were cold, my ears were ringing, 
 When Doctor Robin set up singing : 
 
 "O, cheer-er up, chee-er! 
 
 See here! See here! 
 What is the matter what is the matter, 
 That you are so glum, and not any fatter? 
 
 What is it! What is it! 
 
 Is it phthisic ? Is it phthisic f 
 Keel im, cure im, gecve im phy-sickc!" 
 
 "Doctor !" I cried, "In an abysm 
 
 I m plunged of gout and rheumatism ! 
 
 I ve meningitis and paresis, 
 
 And half a score of dread diseases ; 
 
 Dyspepsia, and consumption, too, 
 
 My hesitating steps pursue;
 
 Minister s Saturday Evening. 181 
 
 Low fever to my blood is clinging: " 
 But Doctor Robin kept on singing: 
 "O cheer-up, cheer-er," etc. 
 
 "No, sir! however you may watch me, 
 So napping you shall never catch me ! 
 Throw physic to the dogs and fishes," 
 I said, with many pshaws and pishes: 
 "Besides (himself each mortal pleases), 
 I have, and like, my pet diseases : 
 Worse am I, alway, by my notion, 
 With every pesky pill or potion 
 The doctor or the nurse are bringing:" 
 But Doctor Robin would be singing: 
 "O cheer-up, cheer-er," etc. 
 
 "Well," said I, yielding, "cease your jibing, 
 And presently begin prescribing." 
 "I will," said Doctor Bob, benignly : 
 "Abstain from swats that drink divinely; 
 Take three bread-pills, upon retiring; 
 Use one old saw, until perspiring; 
 Your sulky spleen remember never, 
 And do not overload your liver : 
 When in the morning round you potter, 
 Drink one good quart of clear cold water; 
 Take exercise, up to the letter ; 
 Then, in a fortnight you 11 be better. 
 Good-night, sad sir, I must be winging, 
 But first, I 11 take my pay in singing: 
 
 So cheer-er up, chee-er! 
 
 See here! See here!
 
 1 82 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 What is the matter what is the matter, 
 That you are so glum, and not any fatter? 
 
 What is it! What is it! 
 
 Is it phthisic? Is it phthisic? 
 Keel im, cure im, geeve im phy-sicke! " 
 
 "In matters of hygiene and the matcria 
 medica," said the teacher, "there appear to be 
 two classes of infatuated errorists, both bent 
 on an extreme ; those who think they need the 
 doctor all the time, and those who think they 
 never need him ; and those who, when they do 
 call him, neglect his prescription, like that 
 witty fellow who said to his physician that, 
 had he followed his prescription, he must have 
 broken his neck, since he thre\v it out of an 
 upstairs window. There is a foolish, as well 
 as a wise, bent of the will ; and some persons 
 seem never so determined as when they are in 
 the wrong. They thought so once, and that is 
 enough : you come back three ages afterwards, 
 and find them saying the same." 
 
 "I use food when I hunger ; and when I need 
 it I use medicine," said the minister. "In the 
 one case I employ the farmer, and in the other 
 the doctor ; but in both cases I most intimately 
 rely on my Infinite Physician and Nourisher, 
 who gives life and maintains its processes. I
 
 Minister s Saturday Evening. 183 
 
 do not thereby neglect or discredit him, for 
 he puts bread into my hands through the 
 course of nature and of human industry; and 
 it is he who has put their healing and curative 
 properties into plants and minerals. But let 
 me read to you an almost sacramental passage 
 from the pages of Pastor Wagner, upon the 
 growth of wheat: By the bread that Christ 
 broke one evening in sign of redeeming sacri 
 fice and everlasting communion, we can say 
 that wheat entered into its apotheosis. Noth 
 ing that concerns it is indifferent to us. ... 
 From the day that it comes out of the earth 
 to the last rays of the October sun, through 
 out the long sleep of winter, the awakening of 
 the spring, to the harvest in August, our atten 
 tion follows the evolution of the tender green 
 blade, destined to become the nourishment of 
 men. In time it is a swelling sea of green, 
 constellated with poppies and bluebottles. . . . 
 In July the fields look like gold. And when 
 the wind blows and rustles the stalks together, 
 we seem to hear the grain running in the bushel 
 measures. The bread sings in it in fine 
 weather; but if the horizon darkens a shiver 
 runs through the stalks, as in the heart of the 
 peasant. ... At last is the harvest, the
 
 184 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 barn, the threshers. Then comes the grinding 
 in the mill, and the kneading by bakers and 
 housewives. The bread is on the table. Be 
 fore eating it, think that it is the fruit of the 
 labor of men and of the Son of God. Take it 
 in gratitude and fraternal love. Do not suffer 
 a crumb to be lost. Break it willingly with 
 those who have none. As the wind blows, as 
 the fountain gushes, as the morning brightens, 
 so wheat grows for all. But come, since the 
 Sabbath approaches, let us, before parting, 
 greet its coming with devotion. The Greek sage, 
 who was master of the purest philosophy, put 
 up his orison under the open sky and amid the 
 green fields with his disciples ; how much more 
 our Master, when amid the hills and by the 
 waters of Galilee? The morning of thy day 
 rises upon us, O thou Heavenly One! Come 
 thou with thy joyous symbol, which is for the 
 enlightening of the Jewish and the Gentile 
 lands. So art thou for all human hearts. We 
 shall rejoice in his beams, and in thine. But 
 if, perchance, he should be hidden from our 
 eyes, or should cease before the closing of the 
 day, let not thy light fail us. nor thou, our 
 adored, our most hallowed, and beauteous One,
 
 Minister s Saturday Evening. 185 
 
 withdraw thyself, leaving us weary wayfarers 
 on a benighted road. 
 
 Leave us not to storm and terror, 
 Leave us not to doubt and error, 
 
 Light and healing of our hearts ! " 
 
 Then, taking a Bible from the desk, he con 
 tinued : "Ah, how I love this Book ! Many 
 books are good to me ; but this is like a daugh 
 ter of the gods amid a bevy of common beau 
 ties. I love this Book with my heart, for it 
 answers the cry of my heart ; I love it with my 
 intellect, for I am awed before it, and it com 
 mands the suffrage of mightiest minds ; I love 
 it with my will, for I, too, can say, in my meas 
 ure of power, I delight to do thy will, O God ! 
 I love it with my aesthetic perception, for it is 
 like honey under my tongue, and nothing is 
 like its wondrous expression. I say with 
 Bacon, that no agency has done so much to 
 exalt our race ; with Milton, that there are no 
 songs like the Psalms of David; with Fuller, 
 How fruitful are the seeming barren places 
 of Scripture! . . . Wheresoever the sur 
 face of God s Word doth not laugh and sing 
 with corn, there the heart thereof within is
 
 1 86 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 merry ; and with Hamilton, The pearl is of 
 great price ; but even the casket is of exquisite 
 beauty. The sword is of ethereal temper, and 
 nothing cuts so keen as its double edge ; but 
 there are jewels on the hilt, and exquisite in 
 laying on the scabbard. The shekels are of 
 the purest ore ; but even the scrip which con 
 tains them is of a texture more curious than 
 the artists of earth could fashion it. The 
 apples are gold ; but even the basket is silver. 
 Yesterday I read some of the noblest passages 
 written in our English tongue ; but when I had 
 done so, and had come at evening to the Book, 
 the words my eyes dwelt upon seemed more 
 divinely beautiful than all. I will read them, 
 and then we will sing a hymn : 
 
 "Now these be the last words of David. David 
 the son of Jesse said, and the man who was raised up 
 on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the 
 sweet psalmist of Israel, said : 
 
 "The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his 
 word was in my tongue. 
 
 "The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake 
 to me, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling 
 in the fear of God. 
 
 "And he shall be as the light of the morning, 
 when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds ; 
 as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear 
 shining after rain."
 
 Minister s Saturday Evening. 187 
 
 The minister closed the Book, and named 
 the hymn, which the three united to sing: 
 
 "Bread of the world, in mercy broken, 
 
 Wine of the soul, in mercy shed, 
 By whom the words of life were spoken, 
 And in whose death our sins are dead ; 
 
 Who wast made flesh our souls to cherish, 
 Who godlike tread st Time s angry wave ; 
 
 Who, lest the sons of men should perish, 
 Became omnipotent to save ; 
 
 Whose sacred wounds aloud are crying, 
 These bleeding tokens, Father, see ! 
 
 Our living Lord, our hope in dying, 
 We cast our helpless souls on thee ! 
 
 Look on the heart by sorrow broken, 
 Look on the tears by sorrow shed ; 
 
 And be thy feast to us the token 
 
 That by thy grace our souls are fed." * 
 
 Having finished the singing, they went forth 
 into the open air. The stars were vivid, while 
 yet the full moon rode high in the naked 
 heavens. A peculiar softness and balminess 
 in the air, with a sense of the gracious sub 
 limity of that great house of God, with its roof 
 sparkling over them, constrained them to bare 
 their brows for a moment ; whereupon, taking 
 the minister by the hand, with a good-night, 
 his guests departed. 
 
 *The first stanza and the last are by Bishop Heber.
 
 Winter on t^e $enob$cot 
 
 i. 
 
 "The white glory overawes me ; 
 The crystal terror of the seer 
 Of Chebar s vision blinds me here." 
 
 Whittier. 
 
 A SCATTERED flight of snowbirds. All day 
 the feathery flakes have softly fallen, and 
 before evening the fields and roads are beau 
 tifully muffled. The trees and fences are im- 
 pearled. I think of one poet s spiritual inter 
 pretation : 
 
 "The troubled sky reveals 
 The grief it feels." 
 
 Silence settles with the night; the earth lies 
 entranced. Afterward comes the rain. 
 
 Hark ! it is the rising wind ! It bespeaks 
 the arrival of change the entrance of a trans 
 forming spirit. What a Protean nature is this ! 
 The Arctic sculptor is in his studio; this 
 builder is busy with "the frolic architecture" 
 188
 
 Winter on the Penobscot. 189 
 
 of the frost. Could we see, we might note how 
 the gray cloud has darkened. By and by the 
 moon is a bright knot in a swirl of frosty 
 vapors. The little moon-people will be danc 
 ing down the Sowadabscook, and will hold 
 high revels on the glassy plain of the Penob 
 scot to-night. Yet dreaming mortals little con 
 ceive what the daybreak shall disclose. 
 
 II. 
 "O winter ! ruler of the inverted year 
 
 I crown thee "King" of intimate delights, 
 Fireside enjoyments, homeborn happiness." 
 Cowper, "The Task." 
 
 Madam Januarius alights from her coach 
 with more than her usual bustle ; with a breezy 
 impertinence she unpacks her wardrobe and 
 spreads her frosty sheets for the night. Cold 
 is the comfort of that traveler she entertains. 
 She is an immaculate termagant ; and, turn 
 ing from the window, I manage to seat myself 
 far enough from her humors to enjoy, in 
 philosophic composure and imaginative com 
 fort, that milder clime the fireside. Jessica 
 draws the blind a clean linen veil between 
 light and darkness, storm and calm that
 
 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 magic hem separating the garments of fulgent 
 Therma and flinty-hearted Zero, that most un 
 feeling crystal ! I give the fire another poke 
 between the bars, and then take down from 
 its place on the shelf my volume of "Spare 
 Hours," or my Lowell, or Burroughs, at a 
 venture. To-night no guest will come ; this is 
 entertainment for an evening. Again I will 
 get to thinking: Who makes Rab the jewel he 
 is ; and Mar j one that bright child-shadow un 
 dying ? 
 
 III. 
 "Return, sweet evening, and continue long! 
 
 Composure is thy gift." 
 
 Cowper, "The Task." 
 
 I muse over this book of peculiar charm, 
 and venerate an overfamiliar, much-honored 
 name, borne by peoples so diverse. John 
 Brown ! At Harper s Ferry it meant war ; 
 on Calton Hill it signifies peace. Dear Rab, 
 and dear Marjorie ! how will you resolve me 
 the peculiar subtlety of their spell ? The style 
 seems felicity itself. There are no double rain 
 bows, no sun-bursts to dazzle you, but this 
 author sets you down at the feet of quieter
 
 Winter on the Penobscot. 191 
 
 beauty, and makes you feel at home. Enumer 
 ate, if you please, the list of his generous ele 
 ments, so deftly combined. Give us a sort of 
 inventory. Imprimis: "A well of English un- 
 defiled;" a certainty of touch; strength and 
 gentleness ; clarity of sense, with poetic color ; 
 a turn for the practical, well united to his taste 
 and his genial fancy ; tenderness of heart, sym 
 pathy with all life at depth with human life ; 
 a tendency to humanitarianism ; a partiality for 
 dogs, like that of Scott, yet different; per 
 vasive bookishness, with a genuine love of na 
 ture and a deep attachment to the "land of 
 brown heath and shaggy wood," and a liberal 
 acquaintance therewith. Well, is this all? 
 And is not this a list sufficient to stock the 
 man of your choice, withal? We will suppose 
 others : A breathing sweet with poetic odors 
 of all time, his thought exhaling the effluvia 
 of richest minds, of old fragrant writings 
 the musk and lavender of anciency; a per 
 ception of best things ; a delicate appropri 
 ateness in quotation, as if Milton or Shake 
 speare had just coined a brand-new text fit 
 for his purpose ; a passion for the child and 
 the maiden, pure as dew ; filial honor and 
 devotion, as he shall say who reads the mono-
 
 192 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 graph on his father a pattern of all such 
 things; an appreciation, a portraiture; a 
 deep enjoyment of Scott and Thackeray ; an 
 unfailing freshness and wholesomeness, tonic 
 and stimulant ; a bracing morality a morality 
 never prudish or pharisaical. All these things 
 we find, with a peculiar gratefulness in the 
 finding. But the charm, always present and 
 chiefly felt, is that of a delightful personality, 
 which gives a flavor to his style, as distinctive 
 as that of Lamb or Irving. His self-revela 
 tions are the opening of a veritable heart-Eden. 
 He is in all he has written a delicious sauce 
 to every dish. His child-portraitures seem 
 more real than those of Dickens, his child- 
 sympathy as genuine. With the communica 
 tion of his preferences, delights, joys, sorrows, 
 humors, and convictions, you share his gentle 
 enthusiasms, and delight as in the presence of 
 the printed page, and something more that 
 of a choice companion. He touches a few 
 themes selectly, and invests them with a sunny 
 charm, tinged here and there with gentle mel 
 ancholy. With no exhaustion from the ex 
 penditure, he puts the very juice, marrow, 
 nerve, of his life into his rare sentences ; you 
 are conscious of rich reserve. Then he takes 
 you into his confidence in so upright and manly
 
 Winter on the Penobscot. 193 
 
 a way, giving you so few foibles of weakness 
 and vanity, that you instinctively admire and 
 respect this sturdy Scotch character as much 
 as you love his writings. As for that bit of 
 choice biography he has given us, I know noth 
 ing of the kind that pleases me so well. The 
 life of a soul is there, and the spiritual features 
 seem distinct as the physical. Such a piece of 
 writing will hold with its fascination through 
 repeated perusal. In its condensed dimen 
 sions it is a cameo ; in its perfection of beauty, 
 a gem. It is the best of reading for a winter 
 fireside. 
 
 IV. 
 
 I have a freehold in the domain of the old 
 Cavalier poets, and love to wander back be 
 yond the loose times and wanton rhymes of 
 the Second Charles, and his Sedleys, Butlers, 
 and Rochesters, to a more stirring season, 
 wherein the trumpet sounds, and King and 
 Commons clash together; and, perhaps, after 
 the battle to pause beneath that oak which be 
 came a Prince s shelter, wherein he lingered 
 
 "Till all the paths were dim, 
 And far beneath the Roundhead rode, 
 And hummed a surly hymn."* 
 
 * Tennyson The Talking Oak. 17
 
 194 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 There I find a Tyrtasan warrior-music, rous 
 ing with strains like a charge of horsemen 
 with leveled lances; a ringing cry and call of 
 honor, breaking love s rosiest chain to embrace 
 an embattled brother, affirming, if this were 
 not done 
 
 "I could not love thee, dear, so much ;" * 
 
 and then a w r aving of the sword aloft, and the 
 shout at the onset : 
 
 "Our business is like men to fight, 
 And hero-like to die."f 
 
 There I find an expressed nobleness, a chiv 
 alry, never so antique as to be useless: there 
 such matchless songs of love and compliment, 
 as Lovelace sang to Althea from prison, and 
 Suckling, of her whose 
 
 "Feet beneath her petticoat, 
 Like little mice, stole in and out, 
 As if they feared the light." 
 
 There is a sinuous, gliding, and dancing 
 grace of verse, like a child, lithe of limb, and 
 golden-locked, flinging itself jubilantly in the 
 sun; there are brightest flashes of honest wit, 
 
 -Lovelace Lucasta, on Going to the Wars, 
 t Motherwell The Song of the Cavalier.
 
 Winter on the Penobscot. 195 
 
 and glancings of most starry poesy, that have 
 their charm even after the bracing thought, 
 severe, the elevation of style, solemn harmony, 
 and heroic magnificence of Milton. There 
 Herbert, Quarles, and Vaughan sing their 
 sage and quaint and religious songs, giving 
 us some peeping insight "into that world of 
 light," where to the full recognizance of all 
 forms immortal the soul shall "need no glasse." 
 There we shall get from the Roman Catholic 
 Crashaw some rare, peculiar verse. But there 
 was one who was the sport of fortune and dis 
 aster s child, but whose name suggests to me 
 fields of tedded grass, with which all wild 
 flowers and the dead-ripe strawberries mingle ; 
 a most homely-fragrant, sweet-briery mem 
 ory dear old George Wither, the man of an 
 unwithering fame, among those with whom 
 such fame is of any consequence. He comes 
 down upon the poetry of his time like showers 
 on the grass, so fresh, so vivacious, so feast- 
 ing-full he is. Amid the changing fortunes 
 of the time this singing Cavalier \vas alter 
 nately elevated or depressed; according to the 
 prevalence of Puritan or Royalist he had lack 
 or abundance, so that his was a very apostolic 
 diversity of experience. As truest poets do,
 
 196 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 he trod the winepress, and expressed rich juice 
 of bruised hopes and affections. He was a 
 lark at liberty, but a nightingale caged ; for 
 when his artist-soul wrought in the crucible 
 of the prison into which his foes threw him, 
 and where he dwelt for years, his golden ara 
 besques of rhyme speak of dungeon stones as 
 of gems, and of gloomy cells as if they had 
 been palaces. The radiant, imperial mind con 
 jured blank walls into blazoned pictures, and 
 converted the creaking of unoiled hinges and 
 closing of iron doors into joyous music. Shut 
 in from the green fields, the ghosts of daisies 
 came to dance before his eyes, and the dull 
 floor sprang verdant before him. We must 
 repeat some of his verses rich, if not the rich 
 est offering ever in such a place made at the 
 shrine of Poesy : 
 
 "Though confined within these rocks, 
 Here I waste away the light, 
 And consume the sullen night, 
 She* doth for my comfort stay, 
 And keeps my many cares away. 
 Though I miss the flowery fields, 
 With those sweets the spring-tide yields. 
 Though I may not see those groves 
 Where the shepherds chant their loves, 
 And the lasses more excel 
 Than the sweet-voiced Philomel. 
 
 The Muse.
 
 Winter on the Penobscot. 197 
 
 Though of all those pleasures past, 
 
 Nothing now remains at last, 
 
 But remembrance, poor relief, 
 
 That more makes than mends my grief : 
 
 She s my mind s companion still, 
 
 Maugre envy s evil will. 
 
 (Whence she would be driven, too, 
 
 Were t in mortal s power to do.) 
 
 She doth tell me where to borrow 
 
 Comfort in the midst of sorrow : 
 
 Makes the desolatest place 
 
 To her presence be a grace ; 
 
 And the blackest discontents 
 
 Be her fairest ornaments. 
 
 In my former days of bliss, 
 
 Her divine skill taught me this, 
 
 That from everything I saw 
 
 I could some invention draw, 
 
 And raise pleasure to her height 
 
 Through the meanest object s sight; 
 
 By the murmur of a spring, 
 
 By the least bough s rustleing. 
 
 By a daisy, whose leaves spread, 
 
 Shut when Titan goes to bed; 
 
 Or a shady bush or tree, 
 
 She could more infuse in me, 
 
 Than all Nature s beauties can, 
 
 In some other wiser man. 
 
 By her help I also now 
 
 Make this churlish place allow 
 
 Some things that may sweeten gladness, 
 
 In the very gall of sadness.
 
 198 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 The dull loncness, the black shade. 
 
 That these hanging vaults have made; 
 
 The strange music of the waves 
 
 Beating in these hollow caves; 
 
 This black den which rocks emboss 
 
 Overgrown with eldest moss; 
 
 The rude portals that give light 
 
 More to terror than delight: 
 
 This my chamber of neglect, 
 
 Walled about with disrespect. 
 
 From all these, and this dull air, 
 
 A fit object for despair, 
 
 She hath taught me by her might 
 
 To draw comfort and delight. 
 
 Therefore, thou best earthly bliss, 
 
 I will cherish thee for this. 
 
 Poesy, thou sweet st content 
 
 That e er Heaven to mortals lent : 
 
 Though they as a trifle leave thee, 
 
 Whose dull thoughts can not conceive thee, 
 
 Though thou be to them a scorn, 
 
 That to nought but earth are born, 
 
 Let my life no longer be 
 
 Than I am in love with thee! 
 
 Though our wise ones call it madness, 
 
 Let me never taste of gladness, 
 
 If I love not thy maddest fits 
 
 Above all their greatest wits, 
 
 And though some, too seeming holy, 
 
 Do account thy raptures folly, 
 
 Thou dost teach me to contemn 
 
 What makes knaves and fools of them."
 
 Winter on the Penobscot. 199 
 
 I love a man who appreciates his Muse ; 
 and so did gentle Elia. I marvel not Charles 
 Lamb found sweetness in the meat of Wither. 
 Here we have something of Wordsworth s 
 placidity, his mild philosophy, and all his sim 
 plicity. 
 
 Dear old Cavalier Poet ! he did get release 
 from prison, and fell into his last sleep at Lon 
 don on the 2d of May, 1667. 
 
 V. 
 FROST-WORK. 
 
 Past, the chill night, with wannest smile the morn 
 Looks forth, white-veiled. What charm from mid 
 night drear 
 Hath now earth reft, and o er chaste features 
 
 worn ? 
 
 The tardy sun his cloudy face doth clear : 
 Behold ! what maze of fairydom is here ! 
 There s not an elm that springs his shaft aloof 
 But gives of winter s stateliest beauty proof! 
 The trees as branching corals all appear ! 
 I stand with eye attent, and wistful ear, 
 Where Silence lays his finger, as I soon 
 Quaint bugles blown from Elfinland may hear. 
 But, lo ! the magic scatters ! the pure boon 
 Is quickly gone ! Each tall tree s powdery crown 
 Does mid th applausive stillness tremble down.
 
 2oo Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 VI. 
 
 "There was a roaring in the woods all night." 
 
 That type of mystery, whereof He spake 
 who made it, came forth to smite the corners 
 of the house. What was that? We are 
 startled from our slumbers by a crackling 
 sound, followed by a sudden rushing sound. 
 It is not Pentecost, and there are no fiery 
 tongues, and yet there is a voice ! A thud and 
 a tinkle, as if some crystalline thing had been 
 suddenly shattered and dispersed. That rush 
 ing is of snow, dislodged from the roof, and 
 of icicles and crystal splinters swept away. 
 What cry is that what groan ! Does the ear 
 give a true report? I feel it is the distress of 
 a tree, a burden that fell two evenings ago 
 with the darkness. How can the trees endure 
 the added fury of the wind? I seem to hear 
 the agony of a dryad ! Again, and again, the 
 rush, the thud, the tinkling. 
 
 At dawn our valley is one living crystal ; 
 but the hills are not yet lamps of tinted splen 
 dor held up and lighted of the sun. Old High 
 Head is a cape projecting into the world of 
 Faerie. Our willows, stout and aged, show a
 
 Winter on the Penobscot. 201 
 
 melancholy beauty, an uncomfortable magnifi 
 cence. It was their report we heard through 
 the night, and the complaining of the elms ; 
 their icy coats are rent, here and there, and the 
 crusted snow is darkened around them by their 
 shredded twigs and branches 
 
 "By hoary winter s ravage torn." 
 
 The numerous brittle boughs are tense with 
 frost ; the icy burden can not be borne ; all day 
 they continue to lay their weighty honors 
 down. 
 
 "Woe doth the heavier sit, 
 Where it perceives it is but faintly borne." 
 
 So do the prizes of this world more in show 
 than sense become to us splendid infirmity. 
 These burdened trees shall prosper yet the 
 more : this may be a necessary lopping off. But 
 surely, with his keen frost-scimitar, the in 
 visible forester has been at work busily ! 
 
 The resilient elms that noble colonnade 
 that makes a vista of shade toward the river 
 have their strength and pliancy taxed to the 
 utmost, but they do not yet surrender. The 
 furze-woods, with their contrasted decoration, 
 have a patient, shrouded, shrunken, overbur 
 dened mien. They stand so forlornly, and with
 
 2O2 Papers of Pastor Felix, 
 
 such distinctness, against the pallor of earth 
 and sky, like dispirited men herded together, 
 with their hands thrust in their pockets ! They 
 are kings of the north crushed under a weight 
 of pearls. One might be pleased with a gem 
 here and there ; but who would be covered with 
 them, like Tarpeia with shields? How would 
 the woods shine now, should the sun let loose 
 its radiance! 
 
 Take now a stroll into the woods : there is 
 a lane we know, that leads between two rough 
 stone walls out toward an open pasture, and the 
 rein is a grove of beeches. Let us go thither, 
 and we shall see what the poet has pictured ! 
 
 "Look ! the massy trunks 
 
 Are cased in the pure crystal ; each light spray, 
 Nodding and tinkling in the breath of heaven, 
 Is studded with its trembling water-drops, 
 That glimmer with an amethystine light. 
 But round the parent-stem the long low boughs 
 Bend, in a glittering ring, and arbors hide 
 The glassy floor. O, you might deem the spot 
 The spacious cavern of some virgin mine, 
 Deep in the womb of earth where the gems grow, 
 And diamonds put forth radiant rods and bud 
 With amethyst and topaz and the place 
 Lit up most royally with the pure beam 
 That dwells in them. Or haply the vast hall 
 Of fairy palace that outlasts the night
 
 Winter on the Penobscot. 203 
 
 And fades not in the glory of the sun ; 
 Where crystal columns send forth slender shafts 
 And crossing arches ; and fantastic aisles 
 Wind from the sight in brightness, and are lost 
 Among the crowded pillars. Raise thine eye ; 
 Thou seest no cavern roof, no palace vault; 
 There the blue sky and the white drifting cloud 
 Look in. Again the wildered fancy dreams 
 Of spouting fountains, frozen as they rose, 
 And fixed, with all their branching jets, in air, 
 And all their sluices sealed. All, all is light; 
 Light without shade. But all shall pass away 
 With the next sun. From numberless vast trunks 
 Loosened, the crashing ice shall make a sound 
 Like the far roar of rivers, and the eve 
 Shall close o er the brown woods as it was wont." 
 
 VII. 
 
 "When o er Canadian plains 
 
 The frosts of winter yield, 
 And on the snowy firs 
 
 The green s again revealed, 
 When April, child of change, 
 
 Is here in wanton sway, 
 The snow-bird s twitter tells 
 
 That spring is on the way. 
 
 Afar from balmier skies, 
 
 Afar from flowerier groves, 
 
 Where other winged companions 
 Hide now their nests and loves,
 
 204 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 They turn their dauntless flight 
 
 Towards our paler day, 
 With word of the arbutus 
 
 And message of the May. 
 
 When cheery voice and eye 
 
 And ash-gray wing appear, 
 Now many a heart that grieved 
 
 Is glad that they are here ! 
 Ay, to how many a heart 
 
 The doors of joy they ope! 
 T is God who sends them hither 
 
 Lest we forget to hope. 
 
 When storm-winds sweep 
 The bitter deep, 
 Bird of the snow, 
 May God thee keep." 
 
 From the French of Frechette. 
 Translated by Charles G. D. Roberts. 
 
 If we enter our winter woods we shall find 
 them not altogether silent and tenantless ; at 
 least, the stillness of the quietest day may be 
 broken by well-defined bird-tones, and the 
 desolate places may be made glad by their 
 flitting forms. In your walks you will be apt 
 to meet the familiar snow-bunting, rarely 
 wanting in his due season in the forest lands 
 of Maine, or of Canada. These rollicking little 
 holiday-makers love the flying flakes and the
 
 Winter on the Penobscot. 205 
 
 heaped snowdrifts, as the petrel loves the crest 
 of the climbing wave. Our Canadian poets 
 have loved this little darling of the bleak wil 
 derness ; and rarely has poet described more 
 accurately the habitude and environment, the 
 atmosphere and motion of a bird, than Lamp- 
 man has described the snow-bunting: 
 
 "Along the narrow sandy height 
 
 I watch them swiftly come and go, 
 
 Or round the leafless wood, 
 Like flurries of wind-driven snow, 
 Revolving in perpetual flight, 
 A changing multitude. 
 
 Nearer and nearer still they sway, 
 And, scattering in a circled sweep, 
 
 Rush down without a sound; 
 And now I see them peer and peep, 
 Across yon level bleak and gray, 
 
 Searching the frozen ground, 
 
 Until a little wind upheaves, 
 
 And makes a sudden rustling there, 
 
 And then they drop their play, 
 Fla?h up into the sunless air, 
 And like a night of silver leaves 
 
 Swirl round and sweep away." 
 
 That last stanza, or, indeed, the entire lyric, is 
 almost photographic in its accuracy. 
 
 "In New England it is styled the Snow-
 
 206 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 flake ; it comes and goes with these beautiful 
 crystallizations, as if itself one of them, and 
 comes at times only less thickly. The Snow 
 bird is the harbinger and, sometimes, the fol 
 lower of the storm. It seems to revel, to live 
 on snow, and rejoices in the northern blast, 
 uttering overhead with expanded wing its 
 merry call, "preete-preete!" reserving, as trav 
 elers tell us, a sweet, pleasant song for its sum 
 mer haunts in the far North, where it builds 
 its warm, compact nest on the ground, or in 
 the fissures of rocks on the coast of Green 
 land. The Snow-bird is part and parcel of 
 Canada. It typifies the country just as much 
 as the traditional Beaver, recently abstracted 
 as an emblem, from Jean Baptiste by the Scotch 
 descendants of the Earl of Sterling, on whose 
 arms it figured as early as 1632, according to 
 Douglass Brymner. 
 
 "Thousands of these hardy migrants, borne 
 aloft on the breath of March storms, come each 
 spring, whirling round the heights of Charles- 
 burg, or launch their serried squadrons over 
 the breezy uplands of the lovely isle facing 
 Quebec, the Isle of Orleans ; one islander alone 
 last spring, to my knowledge, having snared 
 more than one hundred dozen for the Quebec, 
 Montreal, and United States markets.
 
 Winter on the Penobscot. 207 
 
 "The merry, robust Oiseau Blanc is indeed 
 the national bird of French Canada : It suc 
 cessfully inspired the lays of more than one 
 of its native poets. In his early and poetical 
 youth the respected historian of Canada, Gar- 
 neau, found in the Snow-bird a congenial sub 
 ject for an ode, one of his best pieces ; and the 
 Laureate, Frechette, is indebted to his pindaric 
 effusion, L Oiseau Blanc, for a large portion 
 of the laurel crown awarded him by the 
 Forty Immortals of the French Academy. 
 
 "Had I, like Garneau and Frechette, been 
 gifted with a spark of the poetic fire, I, too, 
 might have been tempted to immortalize in 
 song this dear friend of my youth. Right well 
 can I recall those, alas ! distant, those en 
 chanted, early days, whose winters were colder ! 
 sunshine brighter! snowdrifts higher! than 
 those of these degenerate times ! Right well 
 do I remember Montmagny (St. Thomas, as 
 it was then called) and its vast meadows, peer 
 ing out under the rays of a March sun, swarm 
 ing with Snow-birds, Shore-larks, and occa 
 sionally some Lapland Longspurs, feeding 
 there in the early morning, or with the de 
 scending shadows of eve. Those far-stretch 
 ing fields, facing the Manor House to the
 
 208 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 north, how oft at sunset have I not stalked 
 over them, bearing home to my aviary the 
 numerous captives found fluttering in my 
 horse-hair snares, listening as I sauntered 
 along to the low, continuous warble of my 
 feathered friends taking their evening meal ! 
 
 With what zest boyhood can recall those 
 animated, fleecy clouds darting across whit 
 ened fields, or hovering in a graceful cluster 
 over distant tree-tops, and defying with their 
 glossy, wintry plumage the icy blast of the 
 north ! Methinks I can yet recall on a bright 
 April morning a myriad of these hardy little 
 fellows dropping from the summit of a large 
 elm, a shade-tree in the pasturage, and light 
 ing, like a fall of snow, on the meadow, to pick 
 up grass-seed or grain forgotten from the 
 previous summer ! With the ornithologist, 
 Minot, I am quite prepared to recognize the 
 Snowflake as the most picturesque of our 
 winter birds, which often enlivens an otherwise 
 dreary scene, especially when flying, for they 
 then seem almost like an animated storm. "* 
 
 To the retention of its sweetest song to the 
 scene and season of completest solitude, as al- 
 
 *Sir James M. I,e Moine, " The Birds of Quebec.
 
 Winter on the Penobscot. 209 
 
 leged by the foregoing writer, one of the clear 
 est of our Canadian singers* alludes : 
 
 A SECRET SONG. 
 
 "O snow-bird ! snow-bird ! 
 Welcome thy note when maple boughs are bare, 
 
 Thy merry twitter, thy emphatic call, 
 Like silver trumpets pierce the freezing air 
 
 What time the crystal flakes begin to fall. 
 We know thy secret ! When the day grows dim, 
 
 Far from the homes that thou hast cheered so 
 
 long, 
 Thy chirping changes to a twilight hymn. 
 
 O snow-bird, snow-bird, wherefore hide thy song ! 
 
 "O snow-bird ! snow-bird ! 
 Is it a song of sorrow none may know, 
 
 An aching memory? Nay, too glad the note. 
 Untouched by knowledge of our human woe, 
 
 Clearly the crystal flutings fall and float. 
 We hear thy tender ecstasy and cry : 
 
 Lend us thy gladness that can brave the chill ; 
 Under the splendors of the winter sky, 
 
 O snow-bird, snow-bird, carol to us still ! " 
 
 "Far distant sounds the hidden chickadee 
 Close at my side." Lowell. 
 
 Elizabeth G. Roberts McDonald.
 
 210 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Another cheery little tenant of our winter 
 woods is the familiar chickadee, who, more 
 distinctly than Robert of Lincoln, tells his 
 name to all the hills, and pipes it through all 
 the bare arcades of the forest. If you see the 
 plump, downy little fellow, of brisk, pert ways, 
 with his black poll and white face and breast, 
 and yet do not know him, just wait till he 
 speaks he will tell you who he is! If he is 
 not so much as Jack Robin a man-lover, 
 haunting the places of human habitation, yet 
 he is by no means a shy and fearful bird, and 
 can easily be won by the friendly and gentle 
 who approach his haunts. "Perhaps," says 
 Bradford Torrey, "no wild bird is more con 
 fiding. If a man is at work in the woods in 
 cold weather, and at luncheon w T ill take a little 
 pains to feed the chickadees that are sure to 
 be more or less about him, he will soon have 
 them tame enough to pick up crumbs at his 
 feet, and even to take them from his hands." 
 And he assures us that by the practice of scat 
 tering scraps of suet, and such other tidbits 
 as they like, they may be easily enticed and 
 lured about our homes ; where, if well treated, 
 they will become domestic and familiar. A 
 tough little fellow is the chickadee, who bat-
 
 Winter on the Penobscot. 211 
 
 tens in the midst of snow and frost, never fail 
 ing of his daily food, and fearing neither "win 
 ter nor rough weather." He is no prodigal, 
 however, and no absentee from our clime, 
 spending the entire season, and, like the elder 
 brother, never deserting the home folks. He 
 can easily be called by the imitation of his 
 notes, and will put in his appearance; but, as 
 if gifted with a testy sort of a good humor, he 
 will sometimes dart at his impertinent sum- 
 moner, with a laughably indignant little 
 "de-de-de" and then fly off, calling his famil 
 iars into the deeper wood. 
 
 CHICKADEE. 
 
 On a spray of the pine-tree, 
 On a spray of the pine-tree, 
 
 In this keenest winter weather, 
 With thy mate, blithe chickadee, 
 
 Thou canst sit and sing together, 
 Chick-a-dee-dee-dee ! 
 
 Wildest storm, on bitterest day, 
 Can not drive our bird away, 
 
 Hardy little forest ranger ! 
 Here thou sing st thy favorite lay, 
 
 Dreaming not of harm or danger ; 
 Chick-a-dee-dee-dee !
 
 212 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Searching for thy food the trees, 
 Hung like flyer on trapeze, 
 
 Then, erect for blithest singing 
 Thy scant song, that still can please, 
 
 Through the wood s cold arcades ringing- 
 Chick-a-dce-dcc-dee ! 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Out beyond yonder bluff that reaches into 
 the stream, where, under the scales of its icy 
 armor, the serpent-river comes circling, a 
 murky mist is hanging. It is the morning 
 breath of the city, white wreaths of steam, 
 commingled with darker volumes of coal- 
 smoke. Palpitant gushes are belched from the 
 factory behind that most distant point visible, 
 rising into a pallid column skyward. Dark 
 specks are moving on the river ; the larger are 
 horses, the smaller are men. There the crystal 
 floor, swept clean, is being taken up, and a 
 space of black water appears. The smooth- 
 sawn cubes are hoisted up the steep bank into 
 one of the huge buildings that loom above the 
 Penobscot shore from Orrington to Norom- 
 bega town. The harvest of the fields is 
 matched by the harvest of the river. 
 
 Look upon this great world-palace of china
 
 Winter on the Penobscot. 213 
 
 and of crystal ! But this can not linger. Blos 
 som and leaf hasten away, but this beauty is 
 fleeter. Yet a week may not see it utterly 
 vanish, for it seems substantial, even massy. 
 It has seized everything, springs, chutes, 
 bridges, wires, wells, brooks. The foamy falls 
 down yonder ravine are in its grip. A gray 
 mist still hovers and broods over the scene. 
 It is the face-cloth that shall be removed to 
 show not death, but life. 
 
 IX. 
 
 A recent dawn had with it some strange 
 thing of visionary kind, that I do not mind 
 telling you of. Night is the friendly harbor 
 of ghosts, and enigmas that need the after- 
 presence of the magician, or, failing him, of 
 Joseph or Daniel ; but I beg you will not press 
 me hard for my meaning, since mortals have 
 christened mine a day-dream, 
 
 "And morning dreams, as poets tell, are true,"* 
 
 needing no interpretation. 
 
 I saw a wide pasture skirted by the wilder 
 ness, with barren mountains stretching beyond, 
 having spikes of dead trees upon them, and 
 
 *Michael Bruce.
 
 214 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 deep rifts, with gloomy pitfalls between. The 
 plain was dimming in the eventide, but I saw 
 there was little flowering or greenness, only 
 russet stubble, with richer-looking hilltops 
 here and there. Scattered over this wide field, 
 and strayed into the adjacent wilderness, was 
 a great flock of creatures having the bodies of 
 sheep, with human visages, of which there was 
 great variety, as to youth and age, beauty and 
 deformity. In the center of the pasture, where 
 they huddled together in the greatest number, 
 as waiting for the folding, I saw one solitary 
 man, whom I supposed to be the shepherd. 
 He was clad in black, smoothly kept, and his 
 ruddy head was smooth-shaven. I wondered 
 to see him seated beside a wheelbarrow laden 
 with faded manuscripts, one of which he held 
 in his hand, while others were scattered all 
 around the stone on which he sat. He seemed 
 engrossed in perusing, or absorbed in his own 
 thinking, except that now and again he lifted 
 his face, with an air of furtive jealousy, and 
 his keen eyes swept the outskirts of the field, 
 not indeed to see whether any of his flock 
 strayed into the wilderness, which they contin 
 ually did, but to guard against the sudden ap 
 pearance of some rival shepherd. While he
 
 Winter on the Penobscot. 215 
 
 sat there, a tempest broke loose among the 
 mountains, and crashing through the wilder 
 ness upon the plain, drove the sheep this way 
 and that in great confusion. The lightnings 
 flashed upon each other, as swords that are 
 crossed in combat ; the winds were maddened, 
 and the thunders, like wild beasts, roared at 
 one another ; while the sea, not far away, lifted 
 its angry voice all along the shore. Exposed, 
 the flock were shrinking vainly from its fury ; 
 but the shepherd covered his papers and him 
 self with a penthouse, w r hich he suddenly up 
 lifted, and he counted the storm a luxury. By 
 and by it was over, and the moon shone over 
 their dripping fleeces ; when down the moun 
 tain sides, leading over the barren backs of 
 stone the half-perished wanderers, came an 
 other shepherd, bearing the helpless ones in 
 his bosom, and gathering a little flock for lov 
 ing ministry. As soon as he appeared on the 
 outskirts of the wilderness, or touched the field 
 wherein the solitary shepherd sat, he leaped 
 from his seat and commenced herding his flock 
 with great diligence, running out to the bor 
 ders of the plain and seeking to bring them 
 into the center. "Wait," said the new shep 
 herd ; "these be my sheep whom ye are driving
 
 2i6 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 in ; give me chance to collect mine own." Yet 
 he paid no heed, but with greater flourish 
 swept round the field, and made as if he would 
 drive his associate out. "What signifies a few 
 poor sheep," he cries, "whether they be yours 
 or mine? Do we not work both to the same 
 end ? I bid you God-speed !" So he swept 
 the new shepherd s lambs into his woolly mul 
 titude, and went on herding them as before. 
 Just then there strayed up to me an idle comer, 
 of whose cold, curled lip I inquired why this 
 strange shepherd had come upon the other s 
 ground. "Would," he said, "he had come 
 sooner. Every day this man has tarried in this 
 place, and the wilderness has not known him. 
 As for the strayed of the flock, he has not so 
 much as cared for their fleeces, though every 
 day more and more of them have tumbled over 
 the rocks, or got fouled with mud and briers." 
 As I walked near the penthouse I saw that 
 some one had written thereon: "Tnis is THE 
 GUARDIAN OF SHIBBOLETH/ Then, to the 
 sound of a trumpet and the accents of a mighty 
 voice, with words I could not distinguish, I 
 started, and awoke.
 
 Winter on the Penobscot. 217 
 
 X. 
 
 A ride by moonlight ! Surely this is a 
 region where all the creatures of poetry are 
 naturalized and have immemorially dwelt. 
 My steed seems spirit only; never did sledge 
 or sleigh have lighter, easier motion ; never 
 bells a more fairy-sweetness in their jingle. 
 Tens of thousands they are these silver fire 
 flies that seem to cluster and glance amid the 
 crystalline branches. The landscape is etched 
 on ivory. Nay, it has the New Jerusalem 
 whiteness ! Those maiden-birches are Beauty 
 in desolation white nuns, everywhere bowing 
 in agony of prayer. All around me the trees 
 lean, as if wearily, and some seem falling with 
 arms outstretched, like men pierced with bul 
 lets. Some are curled and doubled under their 
 white woe, as if they shrank and cowered in 
 mortal terror. Here are the Laocoons of the 
 forest. The same abounding nature, that ex 
 presses the serenity of beauty, gives here a 
 beautiful awe, and speaks the passion of dis 
 may. 
 
 Mount Hope or High Head may now sat 
 isfy the outward eye, but the inner eye has 
 visions beside. Fancy builds and storms her
 
 2i8 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 ice-palaces on Mount Royal, or goes in a snow- 
 shoe procession to the gates of Ville Marie by 
 wooded paths of the St. Lawrence. We dream 
 of winter glories, like Niagara and Mont- 
 morency, of icicle-beaded woods and moun 
 tains of Laurentia, beyond the frown of the 
 Saguenay, where bleak kings of the forest 
 stand in melancholy grandeur, and glassy 
 scalps hold up a mirror to the moon. We wan 
 der in fancy along the shores of Huron or 
 Superior, and hear the grinding of the tide 
 as it lifts the huge floes, and see the glimmer 
 of the ice-scales on the rocks. 
 
 XL 
 
 The sun breaks forth upon the scene, and 
 makes all beauty manifest. Welcome, Great 
 Revealer! The dazzled world repeats thy 
 glory ! Before, the loveliness below was sub 
 dued ; now it is glorious jubilant! We see 
 God now ! It is no legend : "He causeth the 
 vapors to ascend. He giveth snow like wool ; 
 he scattereth the hoar frost like ashes. He 
 casteth forth his ice like morsels." Yes, and 
 now he kindles every particle ! Over all rides 
 the triumphant sun !
 
 Winter on the Penobscot. 219 
 
 "A splendor brooking no delay 
 Beckons and tempts my feet away. 
 
 I leave the trodden village highway 
 
 For virgin snow-paths glimmering through 
 A jeweled elm-tree avenue; 
 
 Where keen against the walls of sapphire, 
 The gleaming tree-bolls, ice-embossed, 
 Hold up their chandeliers of frost. 
 
 What miracle of weird transforming 
 Is 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!" 
 
 O for a perch to-day, on Kineo or Katahdin, 
 and a moment to stand at gaze ! 
 
 We open our New Testament at the page 
 that looks out from a "mountain apart," and 
 read for our devotions : "He was transfigured 
 before them. And his raiment became shin 
 ing, exceeding white as snow ; so as no fuller 
 on earth can white them." 
 
 Now, if anything but clean light came out 
 of the sky, it seems as if it might be a snow 
 of fire.
 
 22O Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Lowell, in his "Good Word for Winter," 
 paints the frosty and the snowy phase ; he can 
 not do justice to this mingling of ice and fire : 
 "What a cunning silversmith is Frost ! The 
 rarest workmanship of Delhi or Genoa copies 
 him but clumsily. . . . Fernwork and lace- 
 work and filagree in endless variety, and under 
 it all the water tinkles like a distant guitar, 
 or drums like a tambourine, or gurgles like 
 the Tokay of an anchorite s dream. Beyond 
 doubt there is a fairy procession marching 
 along those frail arcades and translucent cor 
 ridors." 
 
 But we return to the visions of the seer of 
 Amesbury, and the earlier seer: 
 
 "This foregleam of the Holy City." 
 
 What was that the poet of Patmos saw the 
 astonishment come down from God out of 
 heaven, adorned as a bride for her husband? 
 Surely this easy miracle might vie with that 
 in its dazzling purity ! But that ah ! that was 
 Permanence. John saw the things that shall 
 remain. But this is Evanescence; yet, not 
 altogether so ; for, though these forms shall 
 perish, the ever-appearing, shadowy, change-
 
 Winter on the Penobscot. 221 
 
 able Beauty shall abide within the renewing 
 body, and be here forever. Then 
 
 "Let the strange frost-work sink and crumble, 
 And let the loosened tree-boughs swing, 
 Till all their bells of silver ring." 
 
 Shine, thou sun ! blow, thou south wind ! 
 
 "Breathe through a veil of tenderest haze 
 The prophecy of summer days. 
 
 Come with thy green relief of promise, 
 And to this dead, cold splendor bring 
 The living jewels of the spring!" 
 
 Amen ! So say we all !
 
 Doctor at 
 
 "Is any sick? the man of Ross relieves, 
 Prescribes, attends, the medicine makes and gives." 
 Pope, "Moral Essays." 
 
 THE school is out for recess ! Or perhaps 
 it is the noon-hour that has come ; for the boys 
 are pouring out of the school-room, with the 
 gurgling glee of water out of a bottle. Why 
 could they not in that day come out with a 
 stately, regular march, as they do nowadays, 
 and to appropriate music; not as "bees bizz 
 out," or as swallows come from under the 
 eaves of a barn? Well now, my dear (it is 
 you, reader, I refer to), you discover your 
 unsophisticated nature. We did not have the 
 telephone and the modern drill in King Ca 
 nute s time; while, as for a grand piano, it 
 could not have been got in at the door of our 
 old school-house, and would have filled up the 
 room when it was in. Then, at the same time, 
 why should not "boys be boys" while they have 
 wit enough? 
 
 222
 
 Our Doctor. 223 
 
 But, to return from our digression, we 
 said the boys are coming out, and the girls, 
 also and plenty of noise they are making, you 
 may be sure. If you ever read Hood s poem 
 of Eugene Aram, why, you know all ; for he 
 tells you in brief measure just how it was 
 done : 
 
 "There were some that ran and some that leapt, 
 Like troutlets in a pool." 
 
 I said they, did I ? That shows me to have 
 ceased from being a boy, and to have become a 
 proper old fogy; though it may be the time 
 for that, as my hair is thinning out. I should 
 have said we for / was surely among them. 
 O school-fellows ! it was we it was our very 
 selves who rushed out at that corner door, just 
 opened, and flung our arms abroad and tossed 
 our caps in the air just as it is done now once 
 a year on Dominion-day, but just as we did it 
 every day then with a whoop and a whoop-la! 
 before we proceeded 
 
 "To chase the rolling circle s speed 
 Or urge the flying ball." 
 
 And, I declare to you, school-fellows, if I could 
 take a week s vacation into boyhood, I would 
 without scruple do the same thing over again ;
 
 224 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 after which, as I am assured, I should return 
 to my staid and proper personality much re 
 freshed. 
 
 Hark ! there is a rattle of wheels along by 
 the roadside apple-trees yonder those crooked 
 old patriarchs that stoop over the fence from 
 the Crowell Farm. Their gnarled and shagged 
 branches gave us an umbrageous shelter on 
 hot days, and dropped part of their fruit where 
 it was most convenient for us. Boys are so 
 indolent they decline to climb a fence, unless 
 there is need for it ; but when the need is great, 
 and the high-top sweeting is in the middle of 
 the orchard and will not come to them, they 
 will sometimes strain a point ; that is, the boys 
 I had to go with would, and I am not an 
 swerable for the superior virtue of these times. 
 But the apples that fell from the Crowell trees 
 O my ! you would n t eat them now ! but 
 now r you haven t the teeth. We were glad 
 then to pick up the crabbedest knurlins, and 
 to pelt the branches for more. 
 
 But I was saying something about "a rat 
 tling of wheels," when, of course, I interrupted 
 myself with a digression a minister s and a 
 pedagogue s unfailing habit. And wheels had 
 cause for rattling on our roads, since in a
 
 Our Doctor. 225 
 
 country village I never knew them better or 
 harder. When, in my later peregrinations, I 
 have had too much occasion to travel over a 
 country where the new road was a good many 
 inches below the old one, I have wished for 
 a few cartloads of our blue Acadian gravel 
 and the diligent hand of the macadamizer. 
 
 "Hullo! here comes the doctor!" (The 
 wheels might have rattled out of sight while 
 I am getting to my story.) It is the general 
 cry; and then all the boys and girls set off to 
 meet the advancing carriage as soon as it is in 
 
 sight. It is Dr. B n, of Grand-Pre, our 
 
 village ^Esculapius, and a venerable favorite 
 among boys and girls. He is a standing re 
 buke to all disease that, where it is possible to 
 disengage itself, spreads its melancholy vans 
 immediately on his arrival. There he is ! with 
 his full, rubicund countenance, and his wig of 
 brown hair ; and not a boy is afraid of him in 
 all the country round. A "noticeable man" is 
 he; though his eyes are not "gray," but blue, 
 and not "large," but of the medium size, and 
 he has a face and figure to command attention 
 at the hustings and in the legislative hall 
 as well as in the invalid s chamber. I know 
 not how many terms he has served his native 
 15
 
 226 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 county in the Provincial House of Assembly. 
 I assure you, reader, he is a man of parts, and 
 of much consideration. He wins many a 
 salute and many a nod and smile as he passes 
 along, sitting stoutly erect in his buggy. But 
 what at this point I would chiefly impress 
 upon the stolid and impenetrable especially, 
 is that when among the "young folks" he is 
 the rollicking incarnation of humorous good 
 nature ; and though his place by right of years 
 may be among the elders, and he can figure 
 there and acquit himself with some credit, 
 yet wanting their tameness and gravity, he is as 
 likely as not to be classed with the boys being 
 a dear friend of the lovers of hopscotch, leap 
 frog, and of bat and ball. 
 
 Under his seventy winters he stands (or sits, 
 as I have not yet got him out of his carriage) 
 in his brown wig, aforementioned, without a 
 visible sprinkle of frost or, for that matter, 
 one flake of the snow that Boreal Age com 
 monly sifts upon us before our threescore years 
 are told. Something was infused into his 
 happy composition that made nugatory the de 
 cree of Time, so far as his appearance is con 
 cerned. He has stood in his time among other 
 than mean men ; but among boys he will assert
 
 Our Doctor. 227 
 
 his former boyhood and maintain a perpetual 
 youth. And well he may do this, for now at 
 this very moment under the aforesaid wig 
 shines his face like a ruddy apple not one of 
 the Crowell knurlins a veritable sun of good 
 humor, whence little rays of cheerfulness come 
 streaming wherever he goes. Tennyson de 
 scribes the "busy wrinkles" round the eyes of 
 his miller : they were round our doctor s eyes. 
 Are they not round the eyes of every practical, 
 sagacious, good-natured man, of sufficient 
 breadth of countenance, who has in him the 
 spice of humor? The wrinkles around our 
 doctor s eyes were "busy" and merry; and as 
 for his ruddy cheeks, he got them, he tells me, 
 on the farm of his father before he was eight 
 een years old, and that too by feeding on 
 wheat bread, with plenty of new milk, avoid 
 ing condiments and carnivorous foods. So it 
 happens that he is a heart of oak. Let him but 
 alight, and, like the farmer of Tilsbury Vale, 
 face and figure will be a pleasant medicine to 
 the eye : 
 
 "Erect as a sunflower he stands, and the streak 
 Of the unfaded rose still enlivens his cheek. 
 Mid the dews, in the sunshine of morn, mid the 
 
 joy 
 Of the fields, he collected that bloom when a boy;
 
 228 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 There fashion d that countenance, which, in spite of 
 
 a stain 
 
 That his life hath received, to the last will remain. 
 A farmer he was ; and his house far and near 
 Was the boast of the country for excellent cheer." 
 
 Yes, and you should hear him talk about that 
 farm-life! Whereupon you would conclude 
 there was one mode only for a scholar and a 
 gentleman ; and that the man who can not be 
 happy in that vicinage and vocation lacks in 
 himself something essential to happiness. His 
 lusty youth was not only nourished on fresh 
 milk and brown-bread, but on a continuous 
 diet of wholesome labor, with scents and sights 
 of barn and byre and clover fields and breaths 
 of spring mornings and crisp November airs. 
 Farmer he still is, as well as doctor and man 
 of affairs ; farmer he will be to the end, bloom 
 ing brightly to the close, and wearing like an 
 everlasting flower. 
 
 But I shall give you the impression that 
 our doctor is not a rapid driver, we are so 
 long in getting him out of sight. Very erro 
 neous such a conception of him would be ; for 
 he is not inclined to creep upon the road nor 
 anywhere else, and has the veritable genius 
 for "getting there." But the boys are just
 
 Our Doctor. 229 
 
 now ready to intercept him, though he should 
 attempt the part of a Jehu. As he comes clat 
 tering up by the schoolhouse, followed by his 
 youthful bodyguard in laughing commotion, 
 he shakes a very mirthful jelly, while that 
 rubicund face flushes ruddier. He knows 
 them, every one, from the hour they were de 
 livered into the hands of the nurse ; he has 
 doctored the people of the village for many a 
 year, and brought their successive tribes 
 through the whooping cough and measles ; so 
 being a bachelor, though I had not hereto 
 fore mentioned that fact he claims a certain 
 proprietary right in the whole of them or, I 
 should have said, the whole of us! As we 
 crowd around him, he leans over in his mirth, 
 and shakes his whip at us on either side and 
 even behind and cries out, amid laughter, 
 "O you whippersnappers! you whippersnap- 
 pers! Get on here if you can!" Then he starts 
 up his horse, and the children stream after him 
 in full cry ; so he slackens up directly, and as 
 his pace comes to a walk, leans over to banter 
 them. In they climb, over the back or in any 
 way they can, till the buggy is full, and they 
 hang on behind, while he is happy. Why did 
 he never have wife and children, while so
 
 230 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 many, of soured or shriveled social and domes 
 tic nature, are scowling on both? "Here, you 
 rogues ! what are you doing ?" he exclaims, as 
 a copy of "Felix Holt, the Radical," that has 
 been lying open on the seat, is thrust to the 
 ground by their shuffling feet, and a wheel 
 passes over it. It is restored; and, as he is 
 already overloaded, he starts up again at a 
 good pace, the rest running still behind, while 
 again he leans laughingly to snap his whip 
 at the stragglers, slowly lagging at last and 
 unable to hold on. "Get away! Get away!" 
 he exclaims, in a new ebullition of spirits 
 buoyant as a cork on the swell of a wave: 
 "Get away! the old mare has had enough of 
 you!" The little fellow with the straw hat, 
 ragged and rimless, is helped to the seat beside 
 him; and the little miss a pert pet is taken 
 on his knee to be kissed, and to have him pull 
 her ringlets, and talk sweet, amusing nonsense 
 to her. So I see him ride on through the vil 
 lage, and down the descending road, dropping 
 his passengers here and there, till he arrives 
 where, from the green hillside, you may notice 
 how Hantsport gleams whitely at the feet of 
 her oaks by the Avon s margin, and how the 
 bending river sparkles in the sun. 
 
 Dear old bachelor-doctor ! You have gone
 
 Our Doctor. 231 
 
 out of our sight now out of all men s sight, 
 and we may speak of you; yet with no ill in 
 tent. Your memory lives with us in a halo 
 of benevolence, and if we had not liked you 
 virtues and faults notwithstanding you had 
 not figured on this page. Dear old bachelor- 
 doctor ! You are among the unforgetables ! 
 When shall we hear again that glorious laugh 
 of yours or one like it? that matchless stut 
 ter, in which you excelled Charles Lamb ! By 
 the way, was it not you who first told me that 
 story about Lamb s vain endeavor to tell the 
 manipulator at the bath how many times he 
 should be dipped? There was laughter when 
 you did it ; where you were and one other there 
 was often reason for laughter. Many a time 
 I ve heard you quote the lines of Goldsmith 
 about the schoolmaster s jokes and the "coun 
 terfeited glee" of the children ; but our "glee" 
 was not "counterfeited" when you uttered your 
 bon mots. What if the jokes were sometimes 
 retorted, you were always ready when occasion 
 came round again.* 
 
 * " Ye 11 find no change in me," he had said, humorously, 
 to one who applied to him, as road commissioner, for " a little 
 change" to repair a bridge. "Faith, Doctor," was the reply, 
 " ye re often changin yer coat since I knew ye." 
 
 "Are you going to vote for me?" he asked an inconse 
 quential colored man, just before election, merely to hoax 
 him. "No, Doctah, I don vote fer no one; I jes Stan s 
 mutual."
 
 232 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Where is that face which shines, even as 
 Katrine s morning mirror,* but sometimes it 
 bears the shadow of a cloud? And so have 
 I seen, even upon your face, and when you 
 deemed them unobserved, looks sadly serious 
 enough. On the day of an amputation, when 
 the boy with whom you had sported, and who 
 had ridden with you on lonely roads in many 
 a gloaming hour, must come under your sur 
 gical hand, the knife you wielded seemed to 
 enter your own heart. When the mother en 
 tered, and saw her child lie pale and bleeding, 
 with eyes closed as one dead, the paleness was 
 on your face also, and your eyes were wet. I 
 hear you say to her: "Some people accuse the 
 doctors of being hard-hearted. It is not so 
 it is not so ! They must master their emotion, 
 they must put it into their hard work." No, 
 you could not cut brother-flesh, nor stand 
 beside a dying neighbor, without emotion. 
 Prompt, executive, when anything must be 
 done ; a man of affairs, dealing closely with 
 
 *"Not Katrine, in her mirror blue, 
 
 Gives back the shaggy banks more true 
 Than every free-born glance confess d 
 The guileless movements of her breast." 
 
 Scott.
 
 Our Doctor. 233 
 
 such as closely deal ; not always and altogether 
 without reproach and the hint of spotted gar 
 ments ; yet you were warm, friendly, compan 
 ionable yes, and generous, too. I owe to you 
 something of my passion for letters ; and you 
 were a free lender of books for which I have 
 often had reason to thank you. But were you 
 not swayed overmuch by your partialities? as 
 witness a dialogue like the following: 
 
 /. Have you a copy of Shelley s poems in 
 your library? 
 
 You. I believe I have (I know you had, 
 for I have found it there) a copy of Shelley. 
 But what of that? You do not want Shelley. 
 
 /. I have seen some of his shorter poems, 
 and like them. I think him one of the most 
 inspired of poets. 
 
 You. Inspired! (Suppress that contempt, 
 doctor!) What are inspired poets ? There are 
 none such. That is nonsense ! Poets, like 
 other writers, express their own ideas in their 
 own way. 
 
 /. Well, my way. I would like to see the 
 book. 
 
 You. Such books are not wholesome for 
 young minds. Shelley is mist and moonshine. 
 Some men have their feet on the earth and
 
 234 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 their head in the clouds ; but Shelley was in 
 the clouds bodily. You could not understand 
 him ; nobody understands him. I will not 
 bring you Shelley. 
 
 And you did not ; but you brought me many 
 a human and humorous tome; and as a sop 
 an atonement for denial you brought me a 
 "Hudibras," with my name written on the 
 title-page. 
 
 Dear old bachelor-doctor! my companion, 
 friend, and comfortable physician in many an 
 hour that delighted or tried my soul ! My 
 host and mentor often my charioteer in sun- 
 bright days and moonlit evenings, when rapt 
 with nature and the muse. Had I the pen of 
 genius I would make you immortal ; you 
 should shine with the gifted Galens of the 
 past, as worthy of them. I care not now that 
 you were too often skeptical in supersensuous 
 matters; you had a firm grip of mundane 
 realities, like old Montaigne, and a hearty 
 relish for earth s joys. I have seen men more 
 noble, more gifted, more admirable ; but the 
 memory that is earliest and tenderest leads 
 back to you. I, at least, have not forgotten 
 you ; and to me your rosy face seems now as 
 real and present to my imagination, as if I had
 
 Our Doctor. 235 
 
 seen it but yesterday. I have a portrait of 
 Halleck, upon which I love to look ; for, besides 
 its own openness and nobleness, there is some 
 thing there that recalls you. Whatever your 
 faults and I am not to disclose them you 
 loved children, and the dumb and helpless 
 creatures of the earth found in you an ever 
 considerate friend. With you dwelt the old 
 humanities; the flavor of by-gone precious 
 books was in your thought and speech, and to 
 you "the poetry of earth was never dead," nor 
 the muse s tongue silent. In my breast you 
 abide tenderly, for you helped to awaken in 
 me the half-slumbering desire of song, and 
 you showed me where many a poetic treasure 
 lay hidden. How you exulted in Poet Butler, 
 and Poet Burns ! How, as the carriage rattled 
 over the summer roads, by the hour would you 
 recite to me the choice passages with which 
 your memory was well stored ! How you ex 
 alted the masters, and alternately petted and 
 scouted the poetlings ! And when I recounted 
 my childish gains and hopes, and poured my 
 schoolboy aspirations and ambitions, or per 
 haps my fears and sorrows, into your ear, you 
 encouraged, praised, or soothed me chiding, 
 if need of chiding arose yet always tenderly
 
 236 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 judicious. You entertained me with the quaint 
 essence of pedagogic lore. Through you I 
 learned to know and to love Goldsmith. The 
 picture, hung in the parlor of your home, of 
 the old Irish schoolmaster, with his severe, 
 frowning face, and the upraised switch, which 
 is soon to come down on Phelim s rueful pate, 
 and your familiar recitation of 
 
 "Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace 
 The day s disasters in his morning face, " 
 
 are they not among the choicest of memory s 
 treasures! Where shall I find in modern elo 
 cution the gusto, the fine eclat, and magnificent 
 abandon with which you endowed the match 
 less, immortal lines of "Tarn O Shanter," as 
 we rode at evening in sweet solitude together 
 by the red winding banks between which the 
 little Gaspereau debouches into Minas, and by 
 the marshes of Avonport, making the old cov 
 ered bridge ring again, as you flourished your 
 whip and shouted, 
 
 "Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious, 
 O er a the ills of life victorious !" 
 
 Then, when I suggested that this was almost 
 equal to Byron, you would most emphatically
 
 Our Doctor. 237 
 
 declare that Byron never saw the day when 
 he could have written such a piece. 
 
 But you were never happier than when the 
 strain turned on your old literary idol, "Hudi- 
 bras!" How suddenly would you break out 
 with, 
 
 "When civil dudgeon first grew high, 
 And men fell out, they knew not why ; 
 When hard words, jealousies, and fears, 
 Set folk together by the ears, 
 And made them fight, like mad or drunk, 
 For Dame Religion, as for punk; 
 Whose honesty they all durst swear for, 
 Though not a man of them knew wherefore ; 
 When Gospel Trumpeter, surrounded 
 With long-eared rout, to battle sounded, 
 Aud pulpit drum ecclesiastic 
 Was beat with fist instead of a stick ; 
 Then did Sir Knight abandon dwelling, 
 And out he rode a coloneling." 
 
 By the time you had reached the last line, you 
 were ready to break into a roar of laughter, 
 and with what gesticulations and wild peals 
 of mirth would you affirm, "O ! but that But 
 ler was a great fellow !" * It matters not that 
 the satirist is lessened in my esteem, and my 
 sympathies are with the Puritan people whom
 
 238 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 he lampooned; I must still enjoy the memory 
 of your deep appreciation. 
 
 Then how you could recite "Willie brewed a 
 peck o maitt" or other of the bacchanal, rol 
 licking, social, tipsy strains of your favorite 
 Burns. And again I hear you compliment 
 Tom Moore, and depreciate him, almost in the 
 same breath. You were often heard hum 
 ming his Irish Melodies, and sometimes you 
 would sing them outright. I hear you now: 
 
 "Keep this cup, which is now o erflowing, 
 
 To grace your revel when I m at rest ; 
 Never, O, never its balm bestowing 
 
 On lips that beauty hath seldom blest. 
 But when some warm, devoted lover 
 
 To her he adores shall bathe its brim, 
 Then, then around my spirit shall hover 
 
 And hallow each drop that foams for him !" 
 
 As soon as you were done singing you would 
 turn to me, saying, in a tone of mock disgust : 
 "There, is n t that pretty nonsense ! One likes 
 to hum it over well enough ; but it is all sound 
 sound, and not a rational idea in it !" Then 
 what laughable stories would you tell of the 
 profession of old Dr. Abernethy, and his 
 rough ways; and of the practitioner at ran-
 
 Our Doctor. 239 
 
 dom, who left behind him this sly bit for 
 epitaph : 
 
 "When folks are sick they send for I ; 
 I physics, bleeds, and sweats em: 
 Sometimes they live, sometimes they die; 
 What s that to I? 
 
 I Letsome." 
 
 Ah! what glorious stuttering and laughter! 
 Did Wilkins Micawber, Esq., ever have better 
 times with his friends, or more entirely for 
 the time being forget or overcome his sorrows ? 
 But all these magniloquent shows end ; this 
 mirth dies in the distance, and a silence falls. 
 Said I not of laughter, it is vain? O know 
 you not, sad Ecclesiastes, that an hour of 
 honest mirth in quieter times is pleasant to 
 remember? yet there is pathos in the mem 
 ory ! It is not far from laughter to tears, and 
 there is a spot at last where pure bonhommie, 
 like animal courage, evaporates. Stay ! stal 
 wart form, mirthful presence ! Did I ever see 
 you sad? Sad for others you had often need 
 to be, and even yours was the end appointed 
 for all living; but where did I ever behold a 
 face that could be so radiant, save one, on 
 which the light of heaven itself was then shin-
 
 240 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 ing? When you return in memory how often 
 it is with a semblance of Wordsworth s "Gray- 
 haired Man of Glee !" 
 
 "The sighs that Matthew heaved were sighs 
 
 Of one tired out with fun and madness ; 
 The tears which came to Matthew s eyes 
 Were tears of light, the dew of gladness." 
 
 Surely the lines might have been written for 
 you ! Still, to me you remain as I used to see 
 you, and as you were on this schoolboy day 
 of mine, your lips, your eyes gave no hint of 
 the "speechless dust" to which they have since 
 gone. 
 
 Perhaps, on some Saturday evening in late 
 October, when printers types were dropped 
 and office cares dismissed, I have stolen away 
 to the sitting-room of your house, to which I 
 had entree, as to a public library or reading- 
 room. The place is empty and quiet ; the 
 lamp unlit, but the firelight in the open grate 
 glances on the floor, and brightens the dark 
 wainscoting. I take up a copy of Black-wood, 
 or The Westminster, maybe, and turn the 
 leaves, not reading much, but musing, and 
 hearing the autumn wind in the shrubbery out 
 side listening for the sounding of your feet
 
 Our Doctor. 241 
 
 upon the flight of stone steps, and the opening 
 of the heavy door. The younger brother, 
 sharer of the home with you, is not here, and 
 I do not see even the domestic. It may be, 
 for the nonce, a delightful solitude; but, ah! 
 doctor, has it not been too much a solitude for 
 you? 
 
 "His wee bit ingle blinkin bonnily, 
 His clane hearth-stane, his thriftie wifie s smile, 
 The little infant prattling on his knee." . . . 
 
 I have heard you give the lines pathetic into 
 nation. But yet no sweet-faced woman swept 
 your hearth, and put the beech- wood on the 
 fire, or kissed you in your hour of weary- 
 heartedness, and called you, "husband." Hap 
 pier for you, I sometimes think it might have 
 been, in your declining years. No little chil 
 dren much as you loved them gamboled 
 in your firelight, or with sweetest looks and 
 words* sat on your knee at evening, and 
 brought heaven a little nearer to your heart. 
 Well, I know not why you failed of this; 
 maybe He withheld this supreme gift who is 
 good not only in that which he gives, but also 
 in that which he denies. At last you come in 
 from some chilly ride over the hills to distant 
 16
 
 242 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 patients; then, after you have supped, we sit 
 by the firelight, until it is time to take the 
 candle and go to bed. 
 
 I left the horse and buggy in the charge of 
 my companion, while I went up the slope to 
 the graveyard of the little Episcopal church at 
 
 W . It rises out of embowering green, 
 
 and the white headstones are ranged in clean 
 lines along the soft grass, and at the head of 
 each mound. Ha! this is yours! A plain 
 upright slab of marble bears the familiar 
 name, 
 
 "E L B." 
 
 And here is a familiar symbol, a white hand, 
 with index finger pointing upward. Has it 
 relation, O departed spirit, to thy aspiration 
 or destiny? 
 
 "Sic itur ad astra." 
 O friend of my boyhood, 
 
 "Can it be 
 That this is all remains of thee?" 
 
 Ha! the wheels have rattled away out of 
 hearing ; the doctor is hastening to his patients ; 
 the bell rings out of the school-house door, and
 
 Our Doctor. 243 
 
 the children come trooping back; from the 
 shelter of the old apple-trees again the little 
 human bees buzz eddying into the hive. 
 
 . . . What is this ? Surely it is the fall 
 ing of the balm-of-Gilead buds! I scent the 
 aromatic memory. Change, and sorrow, and 
 loss, yet, somehow the heart leaps up, as of 
 old, when the spring is here!
 
 CSracc of 
 
 i. 
 
 "Come, lovely and soothing Death, 
 
 Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, ar 
 riving, 
 
 In the day, in the night, to all, to each, 
 
 Sooner or later, delicate Death. 
 
 Praised be the fathomless universe, 
 
 For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge 
 curious, 
 
 And for love, sweet love But praise ! praise ! 
 praise ! 
 
 For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding 
 Death." Whitman. 
 
 "Many a time 
 I have been half in love with easeful Death, 
 
 Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme." 
 
 Keats. 
 
 AND so have I, when, as sorrow s friendly 
 minister, I have stood to gaze silently, where 
 many eyes were looking. And how their 
 glances differ! Some are eager, and curious; 
 some are tender with mist of tears ; some 
 yearn, and dwell long over the image beloved ; 
 244
 
 The Grace of Death. 245 
 
 some are so shaded with crape they can not 
 be seen. Can you tell us how those shaded 
 eyes see? Or if they gaze upon the rosebud 
 babe ; or one whose maidenly charm is best 
 spoken by the flower full-blown ; or the settled 
 content, where all has at last been attained, of 
 one who, "full of years, and ripe in wisdom, 
 lays his silver temples in their last repose?" 
 I have had glimpses of Israfil, in many of 
 his moods, and in many of mine ; variously 
 decked have I looked upon him, and some 
 times grotesquely attired. For our vanities 
 impose strangely upon him, and often we hang 
 his native grace with the solemn mimicry of 
 our woe. Yet, underneath all, there is the gra 
 cious stateliness, such as the marble that was 
 molded by Phidias can not image, and a shin 
 ing attire known best to the angels. 
 
 II. 
 
 "O lovely appearance of death !" exclaimed 
 the hymnist who delighted most in rapture and 
 rhapsody. He was there, where sober Folly 
 dresses in her heaviest sables, just in time ; for 
 this, like all beauty born where flowers fade, 
 is evanescent, and soon 
 
 "Decay s effacing fingers 
 Have swept the lines where beauty lingers."
 
 246 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 A seraph might, perhaps, sing thus, up at 
 the altitude of the jasper foundation : "O just 
 and eloquent and mighty Death," great is thy 
 victorious loveliness, who hast been the pas 
 sion of poets and of saints, and who, like the 
 pyramidal flame, readiest forever upward ! 
 Our evangelical poet was worthy of Israfil, 
 the angel who turns our face toward the morn 
 ing, and the place where "the shadows flee 
 away," rather than the grosser shape from the 
 region of ghastliness. But a more mundane 
 minstrel^ with veins sometimes swelling with 
 unchastened fire, the son of pride and pas 
 sion, who also looked, and saw the grace of 
 death, marked, to portray 
 
 "The mild angelic air, 
 The rapture of repose that s there." 
 
 We returned to dwell once more upon those 
 homely, but striking, features, 
 
 "He looked so grand when he was dead !" 
 
 And this was not the earl, in all his hateful 
 beauty. It was an old farmer, who had ceased 
 to till his scanty acres, waging an unequal 
 war with poverty, and he was then newly 
 laid to that repose which no impertinent morn-
 
 The Grace of Death. 247 
 
 ing can disturb, in a room so barely furnished 
 you would get from it no artistic or literary 
 suggestion. It was one of the tamest farm 
 steads in rustic Maine. Yet he who rested in 
 that plain coffin had such a touch of majesty 
 as death sometimes gives. My friend, who 
 looked with me, drew back, with an air of sur 
 prise, and said to me, after we had gone out : 
 "What a remarkable face! He looked like 
 Emerson, lying there so quietly !" What, then, 
 had you gazed upon the face of Shakespeare, 
 just before it became forever invisible, at 
 Stratford-on-Avon ? What if you had looked 
 into the glorious orbs of Burns, of which 
 "the last minstrel" has given us a tradition, 
 and then had seen them veiled for all time, 
 when the people were about to bear him to 
 his grave in old St. Michael s ? One has said 
 well, who has not always said well.* In speak 
 ing of this world s favorite, he exclaimed: 
 "How that man rose above all his fellows in 
 death ! Do you know, there is something won 
 derful in death ? What repose ! What a piece 
 of sculpture! The common man dead, looks 
 royal; a genius dead, sublime." 
 
 * Robert G. Ingersoll.
 
 248 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 III. 
 
 The grace of death has rarely had a finer 
 illustration that that given us by Eckermann 
 in his memorials of one of the most mag 
 nificent of geniuses : "The morning after 
 Goethe s death, a deep longing came over me 
 to see his earthly shell once again. His faith 
 ful servant, Frederick, opened the door where 
 they had laid him. Stretched upon his back, 
 he lay like one asleep, power and deep peace 
 upon the features of his sublimely noble face. 
 The mighty brow seemed still busy with 
 thoughts. I longed for a lock of his hair, 
 but reverence forbade my cutting it. The body 
 lay nude, wrapped in a white sheet. Fred 
 erick threw the sheet open, and I was amazed 
 at the godlike magnificence of those limbs. 
 The chest was exceeedingly powerful, broad 
 and arched ; the arms and thighs full and 
 muscular; the feet of perfect form, and no 
 where on the body a trace of superfluous 
 flesh, or of emaciation or shrinking. A per 
 fect man lay in great beauty before me, and 
 admiration made me for a moment forget 
 that the immortal spirit had left such a hab 
 itation."
 
 The Grace of Death. 249 
 
 IV. 
 
 When and where did you first read, "The 
 May Queen," of Tennyson, that loveliest 
 idyll of girlhood, dying ere her prime? Was 
 it late in a summer evening, after you 
 had brought the cows home, surrounded by 
 the wide, fern-scented Acadian uplands, 
 fields and pastures whose paths were so 
 sweet with balmy herbs that you have de 
 clared no others are like them? And, when 
 quiet had settled on all the folded hills 
 stretching down toward glimmering Minas, 
 and dimmer and dimmer grew "the long 
 gray fields," would it be any shame if you 
 lifted your eyes from the page, somewhat 
 tearfully, having read, over and over again : 
 
 "There s not a flower on all the hills ; the frost is 
 
 on the pane : 
 
 I only wish to live till the snowdrops come again; 
 I wish the snow would melt and the sun come out 
 
 on high : 
 I long to see a flower so before the day I die. 
 
 The building rook 11 caw from the windy tall elm- 
 tree, 
 And the tufted plover pipe along the fallow lea,
 
 250 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 And the swallow ill come back again with summer 
 
 o er the wave, 
 But I shall lie alone, mother, within the moldering 
 
 grave. 
 
 All in the wild March morning I heard the angels 
 
 call: 
 It was when the moon was setting, and the dark 
 
 was over all ; 
 The trees began to whisper, and the wind began to 
 
 roll, 
 When in the wild March morning I heard them call 
 
 my soul. 
 
 For lying broad awake I thought of you and Erne 
 
 dear; 
 I saw you sitting in the house, and I no longer 
 
 here; 
 With all my strength I prayed for both, and so I 
 
 felt resigned, 
 And up the valley came a swell of music on the 
 
 wind. 
 
 I thought that it was fancy, and listened in my 
 
 bed, 
 And then did something speak to me I know not 
 
 what was said ; 
 For great delight and shuddering took hold of all 
 
 my mind, 
 And up the valley came again the music on the 
 
 wind."
 
 The Grace of Death. 251 
 
 Is this all a fancy of the poet? The sim 
 ple-minded cottager will tell you in good faith, 
 and without embellishment, a like story. It 
 was nearly midnight. An October moon was 
 wallowing in cloud; the wind whitened the 
 wave-crests of the St. Croix, at Bayside. They 
 beat upon the shore just below the cottage of 
 
 Master B , in a chamber of which his 
 
 daughter lay dying of a brain fever. Alice 
 had been the white lamb of the Master s flock, 
 the flower of all his garden; she was one of 
 those gentle and beautiful beings to whose 
 pathway we deem angels might stoop, haunt 
 ing her footsteps, from pure love of her com 
 panionship. She had been delirious during 
 several hours, and was now past any hope of 
 recovery. Her head lay sidewise on the pil 
 low, her golden hair damp with the dews of 
 death; now and then she uttered a moan, and 
 her bosom heaved convulsively. Suddenly a 
 wild aerial melody outside was mingled with 
 the voice of the wind. Every head was up 
 raised, of those who wept and waited, and 
 each looked to the other inquiringly : 
 
 "What harmony is this? my good friends, hark! 
 Marvelous sweet music !"
 
 252 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 The dying girl opened her eyes, and, with 
 outstretched hands, exclaimed, "Angels! beau 
 tiful angels !" Then she collapsed, and ceased 
 breathing; while, at the same moment, the 
 aerial delicious melody seemed in the room, 
 thrilling with a dreadful delight every one who 
 heard it. 
 
 "And once again it came, and close beside the win 
 dow bars ; 
 
 Then seemed to go right up to heaven, and die 
 among the stars." 
 
 Happy were the words of Richter, and a 
 scene like this gives them new meaning: 
 "Music is a bridge over which chastened and 
 purified spirits enter a brighter world." When 
 she was dressed for burial, she seemed beau 
 tiful as Elaine in the hour when, laid in her 
 stately barge, 
 
 "The dead 
 
 Steered by the dumb went upward with the flood, 
 In her right hand the lily, in her left 
 The letter all her bright hair streaming down 
 And all the coverlid was cloth of gold 
 Drawn to her waist, and she herself in white 
 All but her face, and that clear-featured face 
 Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead, 
 But fast asleep, and lay as though she smiled."
 
 The Grace of Death. 253 
 
 One standing beside her, as she lay in the 
 little parlor of Master B. s cottage, might have 
 spoken these words, and they would have been 
 fit for funeral song: 
 
 "Tread lightly lest she sleep ! we did not know 
 
 That death could be so beautiful as this ! 
 Infinite peace, on marble cheek and brow, 
 
 Lies like an angel s kiss. 
 In rapt repose, in sweet unconscious grace, 
 
 She sleeps the fair hands lightly laid to rest ; 
 A quiet, not of earth, is on her face, 
 
 Pure as the snowy flowers upon her breast. 
 
 It is not she, but the fine counterpart 
 
 Of all that she but yesterday did seem ; 
 Fashioned and molded by divinest art; 
 
 Fair as a poet s dream ! 
 Sacred as love, though but the empty shrine 
 
 Whence life had fled to seek a higher goal, 
 Bearing the touch of messengers divine 
 
 That bore to fairer realms the fairest soul."* 
 
 V. 
 
 These are memorial images of my infancy: 
 I see my baby-brother lying like a plucked 
 flower, white and round, as are the wax- 
 berries growing beside our open door. It is 
 afternoon, and the scents and sounds of sum- 
 
 *Agnes Maule Machar.
 
 254 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 mer are floating in. There is nothing, outside 
 one shadowy room, that suggests death or 
 grief; but there my mother stands, and looks 
 and weeps. Or, on another day, I lift a cor 
 ner of the window blind, which has been 
 dropped by a timid girl to hide a funeral pro 
 cession that is passing. I know whose form 
 lies in the darked coffin, covered with its pall, 
 which is being borne upon the shoulders of 
 marching men, to that place of the leaning 
 mossy stone and the blossoming wild brier. It 
 is the woman of the fair face, and the flowing, 
 ringleted hair, who had borne me in her arms, 
 or carried me, as she has now to be carried, 
 upon the shoulder. It is my father s sister, 
 denied the fullness of her years, parted from 
 her husband and infant daughter. It is now 
 the twilight of an autumnal day, when I enter 
 the home where dwelt my grandparents, to 
 see an aged woman bowed before the kitchen 
 fire-place, her face hidden in her hands, her 
 body swaying in the tempest of her passion 
 ate grief. "O, Grammy !" I cry, "have you 
 burned yourself?" She gathers me to her 
 bosom, and weeps over me. Alas ! her own 
 brave boy is buried ! 
 
 "His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud 
 Drops in his vast and wandering grave."
 
 The Grace of Death. 255 
 
 VI. 
 
 "O, Addie! she kissed me! I stooped, just 
 now, and put my lips to hers, and she kissed 
 me!" This was the passionate averment of 
 poor Fred, an hour after his Mary closed her 
 eyes. Was this fantasy, or did her gentle 
 spirit hover upon those cold lips to give him 
 once more the accustomed greeting? Fred 
 and Mary ! so close together in life ; in death 
 they lie, by the breadth of a continent, apart. 
 She, beside her father, in the little dell of the 
 cemetery at St. Andrews, whose highest part 
 looks over Kettie s Cove. The whispering fir- 
 tree sentinels her grave. He, near the banks 
 of the Fraser, surrounded by the hills and 
 forests of British Columbia. We, who dwelt 
 with them, and knew and loved them, we 
 wander forward a little farther : 
 
 "We have far to go : 
 Bend to your paddles, comrades : see, the light 
 
 Ebbs off apace; we must not linger so. 
 Aye, thus it is ! Heaven gleams and then is gone : 
 Once, twice, it smiles, and still we wander on."* 
 
 *Archibald Lampman.
 
 256 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 VII. 
 
 We go sliddering along over the glary ice, 
 our sleigh sliding from side to side of the hill- 
 road, till, suddenly, we turn a corner of the 
 little hamlet, and come to the door of a fisher 
 man s cottage, in the neighborhood and pres 
 ence of the sea. There stands the hearse, and 
 there are clustered teams and people. The 
 small rooms of the little tenement are already 
 inconveniently full. The ceremonial of view 
 ing the remains is accomplished with difficulty. 
 I make my way in, as best I may, followed 
 by my companion, who is to join me in the 
 singing of funeral hymns, which should be 
 "sweet and low," tremulous and tender, softly 
 rendered. There is a hush, broken only by 
 sobs, as the burial service is read, and the 
 funeral hymns are chanted. Now, it is a song 
 of one who is 
 
 "Asleep in Jesus, blessed sleep 
 From which none ever wakes to weep." 
 
 Now, it is the strain of some bruised one, 
 kneeling at the threshold of the Eternal Mercy ; 
 and, again, it is a paean of joyous greeting in 
 that land where partings are not, and where
 
 The Grace of Death. 257 
 
 good-byes are never uttered. Then came the 
 leave-taking. It was a plain woman, past the 
 noon of life, whose face was disclosed; but a 
 woman beloved, for whom there were tears to 
 be shed. There is, among these fisher-folk of 
 simple feelings and habits, a primitive aban 
 don to their tides of feeling, and often in cases 
 like this, a pathetic freedom of utterance. A 
 granddaughter hovering over the quiet sleeper, 
 sobbed, and cried, "O, Grammy ! I shall 
 miss you so ! Not to see you in the house any 
 more, or to wave my hand to you as I go past !" 
 For this, living in a neighboring house, she 
 had been in the habit of doing. And the old 
 man, the husband of her who had departed, 
 bowed over the beloved, familiar face, and, 
 gazing long and fondly, sadly said : "Farewell, 
 my good companion for over fifty years. 
 You Ve left me at last, and I shall have to 
 miss you. But if you still live, and have need, 
 may there be a kind hand to shield you in that 
 home where, they say, there will be One to 
 take us in." For here, I listen to the sorrow 
 ful complaint of that soul to whom the assuring 
 promise of Him who said, "I am the resur 
 rection and the life," has but a doubtful note 
 of comfort. Jesus would have need of saying 
 17
 
 258 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 to him, as to Martha and Mary of Bethany, 
 "Believest thou this?" Then the procession 
 is formed, and we move to the grave, bough- 
 buried, green, like our yet unfading memory, or 
 the fantasies and attributes of our affection, 
 
 "With which, like flowers that mock the corse 
 
 beneath, 
 
 We still adorn and hide the darkening bulk of 
 death." * 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The dying of a poet should itself be a poem ! 
 It was such when Tennyson went. A lyric, 
 deep-hearted as his "Break, break, break," 
 or as sweetly solemn, at curfew-time, as his 
 "Crossing the Bar." Spenser s burial was a 
 poem. For a spray of laurel or yew, each poet 
 threw an elegy into the open grave. These 
 were not lost : think of the poesy inspired by 
 the "Faery Queen !" Chatterton and Poe 
 added to death the awful grace of tragedy. 
 
 Alas ! the gentler grace is lost in the mem 
 ory of "mighty poets in their misery dead," 
 as, on that morning, when his garret-chamber 
 was broken open, and there lay the inanimate 
 
 *Shelley, "Adonais."
 
 The Grace of Death. 259 
 
 form of "the marvelous boy, the sleepless soul 
 that perished in his pride," who had taken 
 arsenic mixed with water, two nights before. 
 Yes, there he lay, who had taken destiny into 
 his own hand> when 
 
 "Black despair, 
 
 The shadow of a starless night was thrown 
 Over the earth in which he moved alone, "* 
 
 surrounded by his torn manuscript poems. 
 They gathered up the bits of melancholy paper, 
 and went and buried him in the potter s field. 
 The possibility of a splendid career, in a mo 
 ment of suicidal madness, was ended! 
 
 "Cut was the branch that might have grown full 
 
 straight, 
 And burned was Apollo s laurel bough."f 
 
 Saith Sir Thomas Browne: "I have so ab 
 ject a conceit of this common way of existence, 
 this retaining to the sun and elements, I 
 can not think this to be a man, or to live 
 according to the dignity of humanity. In 
 expectation of a better, I can with patience 
 embrace this life, yet in my best meditations 
 do oft desire death. I honor any man that con- 
 
 *Shelley. f Marlowe s " Faustus."
 
 260 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 temns it, nor can I highly love any that is 
 afraid of it." Yet, as little to be honored, we 
 think, is the pride that is greater than faith 
 and fortitude, and that desperate rushing on 
 death of those who have not the courage to 
 live ; for the same writer observes : "It is a 
 brave act of valor to contemn death ; but where 
 life is more terrible than death, it is then the 
 truest valor to dare to live ; and herein religion 
 hath taught us a noble example. For all the 
 valiant acts of Curtius, Sczvola, or Codrus, 
 do not parallel or match that one of Job ; and 
 sure there is no torture to the rack of dis 
 ease, nor any poniards in death itself, like 
 those in the way of prologue to it. H mori 
 nolo, sed me esse mortumn nihil euro. I would 
 not die, but care not to be dead."* 
 
 Kings and queens, whose lives have been 
 like soilure to their robes, and like rust to 
 their crowns, have by their passing added to 
 the grace of death. Scarcely a Stuart (ill- 
 fated race!) who did not strike us with the 
 dread of life as if a serpent s beauty and 
 malignity were} hidden there; scarcely one 
 who did not charm us with the beauty or 
 heroism of death, from Mary, who fell at Foth- 
 
 " Religio Medici.
 
 The Grace of Death. 261 
 
 eringay, to James, who closed his eyes breath 
 ing faint thanks to his hospitable brother- 
 monarch at St. Germain. We all know how 
 the first Charles demeaned himself that cruel 
 day, when, in front of Whitehall, he met 
 the headsman; where Bishop Juxon minis 
 tered comfort, and the king, who had laid down 
 his pride, meekly received it, and said: "I 
 go from a corruptible to an incorruptible 
 crown, where no disturbance can be." No 
 Cromwell could have done more nobly; and 
 the lord protector was too lumberingly gloomy 
 for an equal grace. As for the second 
 Charles, no crown could be so corruptible 
 as his morals. One is not surprised when 
 heroes make death easy, as Montrose, or my 
 Lord Russell, with whom the bitterness of 
 death was past, so soon as he had taken leave 
 of that more than royal lady, his wife and 
 secretary. But who may not hope to "die 
 well," when even a single beam of gentle ra 
 diance fell upon the forlorn parting of that 
 poor butterfly, who once, while the Dutch fleet 
 crept up the Thames, chased his brother moth 
 through the parlors of my Lady Castlemaine ! 
 How pathetically polite, this Charles, with 
 his French education and wonderful manners!
 
 262 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 The Queen was too much agitated to come to 
 him. In her distress she asks the dying king, 
 by the lips of my Lord Halifax, to excuse and 
 pardon her. "Poor woman," he murmured, 
 "I ask hers with all my heart !" And perhaps 
 he had need to. Then, when the painful scene 
 was protracted, the king requested them to 
 draw the curtain and admit once more to his 
 fading sight the light of the sun, saying : "I 
 beg your pardon for giving you so much 
 trouble ; I am a very long time dying !" Alas ! 
 poor king ! why should not one wish to wear 
 the thorny jewels of his crown a little longer? 
 You, perhaps, not so much "to dumb forget- 
 fulness a prey," as others of your species, who 
 have resigned "this cheerful, anxious being," 
 can not be expected to go without reluctance, 
 seeing that your treasure is here, 
 
 "Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind." 
 
 Does love add to the grace of death ? Then 
 must it add to the awe and pain thereof. This 
 feeling comes over us as we learn of the grief 
 of William for his Queen Mary ; which is un- 
 equaled for pathos, unless that of Victoria for 
 Albert, her consort, can equal it. When 
 William was dead, there was found over his 
 heart, in a little silk bag, the wedding-ring
 
 The Grace of Death. 263 
 
 he had drawn from Mary s dying-hand, and 
 a lock of her precious hair. To kings, as well 
 as to peasants, "it is a fearful thing to love 
 what death may touch." * 
 
 The poets, for their songs, have borrowed 
 something of the grace of death ; from the lays 
 of him who sang the woes of Troy, to him 
 who made death beautiful in the eyes of Evan- 
 geline, while she lifted them up in tears, and 
 said, "Father, I thank thee !" What a radi 
 ance did Henry Vaughan behold amid the 
 glooms of death ! 
 
 "And yet as angels in some brighter dreams 
 
 Call to the soul when man doth sleep, 
 So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted 
 
 themes, 
 And into glory peep." 
 
 With what delicacy, with what more than 
 woman s tenderness, could Hood realize to us 
 the passing of a beautiful woman ! What need 
 to quote it, and yet what may be quoted more 
 fitly! 
 
 "We watched her breathing through the night, 
 
 Her breathing soft and low, 
 As in her breast the wave of life 
 Kept heaving to and fro. 
 
 Felicia Hemans.
 
 264 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 So silently we seemed to speak, 
 
 So slowly moved about, 
 As we had lent her half our powers 
 
 To eke her living out. 
 
 Our very hopes belied our fears, 
 Our fears our hopes belied 
 
 We thought her dying when she slept, 
 And sleeping when she died. 
 
 For when the morn came dim and sad, 
 And chill with early showers, 
 
 Her quiet eyelids closed she had 
 Another morn than ours." 
 
 When we read these verses, there comes 
 straightway to memory little Eva, Mrs. Stowe s 
 delightful child, and those subtly exquisite cre 
 ations, Nell and Paul Dombey. 
 
 The tender, brooding eyes of Charles Dick 
 ens have marked the grace of death, and his 
 pencil drew what aspects are most beautiful. 
 Israfil, through him, becomes the gentlest of 
 familiars, the most benevolent of the angel- 
 kind, who serve our race, whose hand and 
 foot, in our solemn chambers, become softer 
 than those of womankind. Suffer him, ye 
 ages, still to bespeak "the last of life for which 
 the first was made !" Sweet, pathetic, radi 
 ant Nell! When can we forget thee, or lose
 
 The Grace of Death. 265 
 
 the sense thou givest us, as we see thee, 
 lying there, where thy poet has placed thee, 
 the exquisite sense of how gainful, how beau 
 tiful a thing it may be to die ? And that 
 "eternal child" little Paul Dombey ! What 
 say the wild waves, sister, of that uncharted, 
 unsounded sea, toward which our little river 
 of Time is bearing us ? The light of the sink 
 ing sun, striking "through the rustling blinds," 
 still quivers "on the wall like golden water ;" 
 but he has seen a brighter, gladder vision on 
 that farther shore, has gone to meet her who 
 is that vision, and save for a sister s sob, there 
 is solitude and silence now about him: 
 
 "Mamma is like you, Floy. I know her by 
 the face! But tell them that the print upon 
 the stairs at school is not divine enough. The 
 light about the head is shining on me as I go ! 
 
 "The Grace of Death." 
 
 "The golden ripple on the wall came back 
 again, and nothing else stirred in the room. 
 The old, old fashion! The fashion that came 
 in with our first garments, and will last un 
 changed until our race has run its course, and 
 the wide firmament is rolled up as a scroll. 
 The old, old fashion Death!
 
 266 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 "O, thank God, all ye who see it, for that 
 older fashion yet, of immortality! And look 
 upon us, angels of young children, with re 
 gards not quite estranged, when the swift 
 river bears us to the ocean !" 
 
 IX. 
 
 Not only Hood, but the German poet, Uh- 
 land, has touched death with ineffable grace 
 and tenderness, and charmed its sadness and 
 silence with ethereal light and music. Some 
 maid or matron, some celestial child, goes out 
 with the tide divinely in three or four calm 
 and perfect stanzas. This is Uhland s little 
 jewel of celestial light, which sparkles in the 
 beam of a smile, though tears are there. Let 
 the voice of the reader be "low and sweet," 
 and, like these words, full of a supernal 
 wonder : 
 
 "What sounds so sweet awake me? 
 What fills me with delight? 
 
 mother, look ! who sings thus 
 So sweetly through the night? 
 
 1 hear not, child, I see not ; 
 
 O, sleep thou softly on ; 
 Comes now to serenade thee, 
 Thou poor, sick maiden, none !
 
 The Grace of Death. 267 
 
 It is not earthly music 
 
 That fills me with delight ; 
 I hear the angels call me : 
 
 O, mother, dear, good-night !" 
 
 X. 
 
 The grace of death ! It is seen on Zutphen s 
 field, where that mirror of Christian chivalry 
 passed on the cup of cold water, with the 
 immortal phrase of self-renunciation, "Thy 
 necessity is greater than mine." I marvel not 
 that Lord Brooke instructed that these words 
 should be put for his epitaph : "Here lies the 
 friend of Sir Philip Sidney." It is heard in 
 the "Ay, ay, sir!" of John Maynard, as he 
 stood at his post of duty as wheelsman, and 
 shriveled in the fire of the burning steamer. 
 It is seen in that upper chamber where the 
 Apostle of Methodism lifts up his hands in 
 benediction, as he gathers up his feet in death, 
 and exclaims to the generations following, 
 "The best of all is, God is with us !" The grace 
 of death ! See it in Tennyson s serene, pale 
 face, lying on its pillow in the moonlit room at 
 Aldworth, while his hand rests on the page of 
 that grand world-poet he courted till the last ! 
 Behold it in Elizabeth Browning s ecstatic de-
 
 268 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 parture from Casa Guida, and the arms of her 
 sorrowing poet the husband for whom years 
 before, she had, as her heart demanded, left all 
 others. Behold it in that chamber at Abbots- 
 ford, with the open window, and the sound 
 of the silver Tweed upon his pebbles ; when 
 the kneeling son of the great Magician closed 
 the eyes that had looked on the world in glad 
 ness and in sorrow, and had seen the marvels 
 of their time. These names are but chosen 
 from those of the great multitude who illus 
 trate the grace of death. 
 
 XL 
 
 That charming old English writer, Sir 
 Thomas Browne, whose moralizings on our 
 common morality, are among the most precious 
 of the relics of our English tongue, says of 
 sleep: "It is that death by which we may be 
 literally said to die daily ; a death which Adam 
 died before his mortality ; a death whereby 
 we live a middle and moderating point between 
 life and death ; in fine, so like death, I dare 
 not trust it without my prayers, and a half 
 adieu unto the world, and take my farewell in 
 a colloquy with God.
 
 The Grace of Death. 269 
 
 " Sleep is a death ; O make me try, 
 By sleeping what it is to die; 
 And as gently lay my head 
 On my grave, as now my bed. 
 Howe er I rest, great God, let me 
 Awake again at least with thee. 
 And thus assured, behold I lie, 
 Securely, or to wake or die. 
 These are my drowsy days ; in vain 
 I now do wake to sleep again : 
 O come that hour, when I shall never 
 Sleep again, but wake forever. 
 
 "This is the dormitive. I take to bedward : 
 I need no other laudanum than this to make 
 me sleep : after which I close mine eyes in 
 security, content to take my leave of the sun 
 and sleep unto the resurrection." * 
 
 But who lendeth death such a grace that all 
 the poets laud his reign with sweet, sad elegies ? 
 Was it not the lonely treader of the wine 
 press, who was dumb in the hands of the 
 slayer, but whose eloquent lips shattered the 
 bars of the sepulcher? Even that suffering 
 Child of Nazareth, concerning w r hom the 
 Frenchman exclaimed: "Socrates died like a 
 philosopher, but Jesus Christ like a God." He 
 lends death grace, and he follows death with 
 glory. 
 
 * Religio Medici
 
 270 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 XII. 
 
 To our eyes the land of the sun has grown 
 dimmer; the orange and myrtle have paled 
 into gloom. I can see no longer the almond 
 and olive; no more comes the spicy scent of 
 the eucalyptus; the laurel-tree and the grace 
 ful pepper charm us no more. There rises a 
 mist from the sea that has hidden the fir- 
 grove ; and evening comes fast upon me, laden 
 with tears. 
 
 Our sister is gone ! The child of the East 
 and the West* our singer has departed ; a soft 
 and gentle star has set in the Pacific wave. 
 The harp she hung in the twilight breeze is 
 silent forever; the light out of the friendly 
 window is taken away. No smiling face looks 
 forth at morning ; no salutation is waved from 
 the door. 
 
 We hear her music in the purl of woodland 
 brooks; in the wordless chime of sea wave, 
 and mountain torrent ; in the thrush s aerial 
 bell, tolled in the cedar-vale. We see her as 
 piring beauty in the star, and in the curve of 
 the rainbow; we see her tranquil and shining 
 spirit in the sheen of a sunset sea. 
 
 * Frances Laughton Mace, born at Orono, Maine, January 
 15, 1836, and died at Los Gatos, California, July 20, 1899.
 
 The Grace of Death. 271 
 
 Toll her a joyful knell, ye Bangor bells ! 
 Toll her a funeral glee, ye bells of Los An 
 geles ! Our sister is liberated. No longer 
 she looks to the mountains, whose gateways 
 open toward her loved Norombega; no more 
 her homesick heart shall pine; no longer she 
 sits in the invalid s chair. From the West to 
 the East nevermore a message, nor tender 
 thought from the East to the West again : only 
 from the common sky the dream of a white- 
 waved hand. 
 
 Yet the land of Orono can not forget her 
 singer, though the stately muse tread her 
 native fields no more. Thou, Piscataquis, 
 chattering over thy pebbles, and down thy 
 water-breaks, wilt not forget her; thou, Black 
 Cap, wilt rear thy maple beacons for her ! Cas- 
 tine, and ye Desert Isle, her name is written 
 upon you ! Penobscot breathes a sigh in his 
 reeds, from his sandy reaches, and from all 
 his steepy shores ! Katahdin utters a moan ; 
 Kineo lets fall a tear; while far in the South 
 the palm-tree murmurs, in echo, of the North 
 ern pine-tree s lamentation. 
 
 They of her own land are saying : "Where, 
 with Israfil, has gone our white-hearted? 
 Where is she who sang of Kinalo? Where 
 is our exile on the Western mountains?
 
 272 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Where is she who, the homesick, weari 
 some day, was only waiting for the glimmer 
 of the sunset ? She is gone ! Our singer of 
 the sweet voice sings to us no more; our 
 daughter of the beautiful word has departed !" 
 
 XIII. 
 
 "Rest thee, blest spirit ! 
 
 Still d on death s river the turbulent foam : 
 Thou hast arrived at thy permanent home ; 
 Thou dost inherit 
 
 The house whose foundation securely is laid ; 
 Thy scope 
 Is yon cope, 
 The azure, the infinite dome. 
 
 Rest thee, blest spirit ! 
 
 Thy brow hath the garland of merit ; 
 
 Thy song is the song of salvation ! 
 
 Thou seest thy Savior, thou markest the 
 
 wounds. 
 O his love and his passion, and, hark ! there 
 
 resounds, 
 Hosanna ! Hosanna ! 
 From tongues of a glorified nation ! 
 
 Rest thee, blest spirit ! 
 
 Sadness and sorrow can never invade 
 
 The heart s habitation; 
 
 No mornings that break 
 
 Shall have power to wake
 
 The Grace of Death. 273 
 
 The trance whose glad rapture hath blessed 
 
 thee; 
 
 The peace 
 Ne er shall cease 
 That thy heart doth pervade, 
 That with its soft hand hath caressed thee; 
 And thy heart hath forgotten to ache. 
 
 With the antheming throng 
 
 Thou takest thy place ; 
 
 With God s light on thy face, 
 
 Thou joinest the song, 
 
 And the garment of white doth invest thee. 
 
 Rest thee ! 
 
 Rest thee ! 
 
 Rest! 
 
 No tears, no woes, no night ! 
 
 Pure, beautiful soul, thou hast found thy 
 
 delight, 
 Enter thy rest !" 
 
 18
 
 i. 
 
 "Who hath desired the Sea the immense and con 
 temptuous surges ? 
 
 The shudder, the stumble, the swerve ere the star- 
 stabbing bowsprit emerges 
 The orderly clouds of the trade and the ridged 
 
 roaring sapphires thereunder 
 Unheralded cliff-lurking flaws and the headsails 
 
 low-volleying thunder? 
 
 His sea in no wonder the same his sea and the 
 same in each wonder. 
 
 His sea that his being fulfills? 
 
 Rudyard Kipling. 
 
 "O strange, sublime, illimitable Sea, 
 
 Thy thunders are Time s passing bell, and toll 
 The knell of all that has been, is, and is to be." 
 George Frederick Scott. 
 
 "This great and wide sea." 
 
 To PITCH your summer tent under the oaks 
 of Pemaquid, to face the shore and the sea 
 from their shelter when the sun is declin 
 ing, and to hear the waves soothing murmur, 
 274
 
 Wave-Songs. 275 
 
 with the no less somnolent rustle of the leaves 
 overhead, this is a vernal luxury, the per 
 fection of the vacationist s pleasure; the very 
 honey of the year, too seldom tasted. If a 
 little wind will blow, the plashing volumes of 
 green make a laughing mockery of the sea ; or 
 the "balsam pines, seolian," scattered here and 
 there throughout the grove, purr their soft 
 sigh of contentment. In the hot and quiet 
 afternoon they are censers, steaming with heal 
 ing odors. The sunset hues and splendors are 
 expunged from the white sea, to make way 
 for the stars; then an eye of flame opens and 
 shuts, flashes and fades, from the beacon tower 
 of Monhegan. 
 
 II 
 
 This evening is a pearl in the cup of our 
 enchantment, precious as that of Cleopatra. 
 The ruby is also dropped there, like blood of 
 the evening sky. The firmament and the mir 
 ror that holds it are like a benediction to jaded 
 nerves and hearts of care. We rejoice in a 
 sympathy so perfect, when the curling wave 
 lets run into soft reconciliation with the sands, 
 and the vapors fold all with one embrace as
 
 276 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 they move in their pomp of gold, in raiment 
 of crimson and purple. Fiery headlands catch 
 a deeper glow where the sun descends upon 
 them ; the sands of yonder bar, on which the 
 roller thrashes, have grown auriferous. So 
 has the splendor taken that sail slanting yon 
 der toward the horizon. There is a cheerful, 
 auspicious, welcoming smile along all the far 
 away islands, those dreamy shores where, 
 perhaps, the sea-maidens throw above the wave 
 their snowy necks, and leap and frolic till you 
 catch the twinkling of their feet beneath. The 
 surfy seas that run up on yonder near-hand 
 promontory, we fancy a succession of white- 
 maned horses swimming ashore. With a 
 merry-go-lucky twinkle, a circling cloud of 
 sand-pipers yonder are weaving their aerial 
 web of beauty. Who would ask for blither 
 sport than to watch them, with his gun for 
 gotten, and the joy of their innocent pleasure 
 in his heart? Here the crow and the gull 
 neighbor, the fisherman has built his cottage, 
 and earth and sea are mothers, who watch con 
 jointly over their own. A little bareheaded 
 girl, with shiny hair, runs yonder on the beach, 
 and gathers the homely shells, which only 
 children s and poets eyes can see to be beau-
 
 Wave-Songs. 277 
 
 tiful. How like childhood these bewitching 
 movements of the sea, with all its soft, reas 
 suring voices ! But there is a fascination in 
 the great creature, whether of horror or of 
 loveliness ! 
 
 III. 
 
 With the briny breathing of the "wrinkled 
 sea," that "crawls" beneath this cliff, with the 
 soft shadows and changing lights of evening, 
 come the poetic meanings and remembrances 
 of this mighty being spread "great and wide" 
 before me. I have exulted with its praisers. 
 The stormy shade of Byron has been here, 
 with his "I have loved thee, Ocean !" Ros- 
 setti, with his mystical refinement of sentiment, 
 has whispered in mind, with the low cadence 
 of the wave : 
 
 "Consider the sea s listless chime : 
 Time s self it is, made audible, 
 The murmur of the earth s own shell. 
 
 Secret continuance sublime 
 
 Is the sea s end. . . . 
 
 Listen alone beside the sea, 
 
 Listen alone among the woods; 
 Those voices of twin solitudes 
 
 Shall have one sound alike to thee."
 
 278 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 I think, too, of one most winsome child of 
 Apollo, whose eyes of wonder dwelt on nature, 
 as on a great silver fining-pot, till he saw 
 there dawning the clear face of Beauty ; who 
 painted pictures such as I can see while I lie 
 here, couched among laurel, fern, and juniper, 
 still gazing seaward : 
 
 "Old Ocean rolls a lengthened wave to shore, 
 Down whose green back the short-lived foam all 
 
 hoar 
 Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence." 
 
 And I have watched, in trance, with him, 
 and with that "lone splendor hung aloft the 
 night," 
 
 "The moving waters at their priestlike task 
 Of pure ablution round earth s human shores." 
 
 From the time when he sang whose soul 
 is deep and strong and resonant as Ocean, full 
 of its own melody "the Ionian father" of all 
 the poets this moving abode of things beauti 
 ful and terrible has been to them an unceasing 
 inspiration. But, as says William E. Henley: 
 "The ocean as confidant, a Laertes that can 
 neither avoid his Hamlets nor bid them hold 
 their peace, is a modern invention. [And shall
 
 Wave-Songs. 279 
 
 we believe him?] Byron and Shelley discov 
 ered it ; Heine took it into his confidence, and 
 told it the story of his loves ; Wordsworth made 
 it a moral influence ; Browning loved it in his 
 way, but his way was not often the poet s; 
 to Matthew Arnold it was the voice of destiny, 
 and its message was a message of despair; 
 Hugo conferred with it as with a humble 
 friend, and uttered such lofty things over it 
 as are rarely heard upon the lips of man. 
 . . . Lord Tennyson listens and looks 
 until it strikes him out an undying note of 
 passion, or yearning, or regret : 
 
 " Sunset and evening star, 
 And one clear call for me. 
 
 Mr. Swinburne maddens with the wind and 
 the sounds and the scent of it until there passes 
 into his verse a something of its vastness and 
 its vehemency, the rapture of its inspiration, 
 the palpitating, many-twinkling miracle of its 
 light; Mrs. William Morris has been taken 
 with the manner of its melancholy ; while to 
 Whitman it has been the great Camerado 
 indeed, for it gave him that song of the brown 
 bird bereft of its mate, in whose absence the 
 half of him had not been told to us. But to
 
 280 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Longfellow, alone, was it given to see that 
 stately galley which Count Arnoldos saw ; his 
 only to hear the steersman singing that wild 
 and wondrous song, which none that hears it 
 can resist, and none that has heard it may for 
 get. . . . To him the sea is a place of 
 mariners and ships. In his verse the rigging 
 creaks, the white sail fills and cackles, there 
 are blown smells of pine and hemp and tar; 
 you catch the home-wind on your cheeks ; and 
 old shipmen, their eyeballs white in their 
 bronzed faces, with silver rings and gaudy 
 handkerchiefs, come in and tell you moving 
 stories of the immemorial, incommunicable 
 deep. He abides in a port; he goes down to 
 the docks, and loiters among the galiots and 
 brigantines ; he hears the melancholy song 
 of the chanty-men ; he sees the chips flying 
 under the shipwright s adz, he smells the 
 pitch that smokes and bubbles in the caldron. 
 And straightway he falls to singing his varia 
 tions on the ballad of Count Arnoldos; and 
 the world listens, for its heart beats in his 
 song." 
 
 It was his passion, surely, who made us see, 
 as if of yesterday, the voyaging Ulysses ; who 
 caused our tears over the "repulsed," the
 
 Wave-Songs. 281 
 
 "sacred sire," whose woe was solaced, and 
 whose heart was quieted by the "much-sound 
 ing sea," and without thought of whom we 
 can not hear its audible chime." It was his 
 who lit to our fancy s eye the rippling pearl- 
 fires the "laughter of innumerable waves" 
 the "many-twinkling smile of ocean." He was 
 no alien from its waves, who heard that heav 
 ing bell, 
 
 "Over some wide-watered shore 
 Swinging slow with sullen roar;" 
 
 and who scented the perfumed forests of 
 Araby, that salute the voyager "beyond the 
 cape" with their spicy odors, while 
 
 "Well pleased they slack their course, and many a 
 
 lea.gue 
 Cheer d with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles." 
 
 Even with the gusto of earlier bards will 
 Browning sing, 
 
 "Over the seas our galleys went;" 
 
 and Tennyson, in the very spirit of the ancient 
 Greek, puts forth his prow of song : 
 
 "There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail; 
 There gloom the dark, broad seas. . . . 
 The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks ;
 
 282 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 The long day wanes ; the slow moon climbs ; the 
 
 deep 
 
 Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 
 T is not too late to seek a newer world. 
 Push off, and sitting well in order smite 
 The sounding furrows ; for the purpose holds 
 To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths 
 Of all the western stars, until I die." 
 
 IV. 
 
 Winter darkens and makes dread the sea; 
 the pallor of her snows makes fearful con 
 trast with its sable waters. The icy ledges, 
 licked by the spume of Kraken waves, and 
 leaped upon by the pale horses of death and 
 shipwreck, are terrific to the heart of the mari 
 ner. In the confusion of winds and waves 
 the mightiest ships go down. But the earliest 
 poets have rejoiced when the beautiful feet 
 of the virgin spring come treading upon the 
 shore. The Latin lyrist, looking out from 
 Baiae or Sorrento, may rejoice: "Now the 
 bitter reign of winter is over ; spring returns ; 
 softly upon us blows the Favonian wind. Now 
 gleeful mariners draw down their dry keels 
 to the sea ; in the fields the lowing herds make
 
 Wave-Songs. 283 
 
 known their joy." The same delight breaks 
 from the lips of the Greeks in the old Anthol 
 ogy ; and, uttered with exquisite grace and 
 feeling by bards so long vanished from the 
 earth, we know the thrill that shook their 
 hearts with the coming of the swallow, or the 
 opening song, in some Attic vale of the newly- 
 arrived nightingale. "Now, at her fruitful 
 birth-tide, the fair, green field flowers out in 
 blowing roses ; now on the boughs of the col 
 onnaded cypresses the cicala, mad with music, 
 lulls the binder of sheaves ; and the careful 
 mother-swallow, having finished houses under 
 the eaves, gives harborage to her brood in the 
 mud-plastered cells ; and the sea slumbers, with 
 zephyr-wooing calm spread clear over the 
 broad ship-tracks, not breaking in squalls on 
 the stern-posts, not vomiting foam upon the 
 beaches. O, sailor, burn by the altars the glit 
 tering round of a mullet, or a cuttle-fish, or a 
 vocal scarus, to Priapus, ruler of ocean and 
 giver of anchorage ; and so go fearlessly on 
 thy seafaring to the bounds of the Ionian Sea." 
 Will it be with any rites like the ones the poet 
 recommends our fishermen at morning, sailing 
 out of Long Cove to cast their lines for cod?
 
 284 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 I trow not ; we are otherwise religious, or su 
 perstitious, but the charms of sea and shore, 
 and of returning spring, are the same to us. 
 So we sing the song was sung of old : "Me, 
 Pan, the fisherman, placed upon this holy cliff, 
 Pan of the seashore, the watcher here over 
 the fair anchorages of the harbor; and I take 
 care now of the baskets and of the trawlers 
 off this shore. But sail, thou, by, O, stranger, 
 and in requital of this good service of theirs, I 
 will send behind thee a gentle south wind." 
 
 V. 
 
 "I was a lonely youth on desert shores. 
 My sports were lonely." Keats. 
 
 I, too, love the sight, the sound, of the 
 "green-girdled mother," and, coming near her 
 from my inland home, like the ancients on their 
 approach, I also feel my heart leaping up 
 within me, and am fain to cry : "Thalassa ! 
 Thalassa ! All hail to thee, thou eternal ! all 
 hail to thee ! A thousand times from my jubi 
 lant heart I greet thee!" For, though I was 
 not born upon her bosom, I have been with 
 the mighty mother from my childhood.
 
 Wave-Songs. 285 
 
 "All my boyhood, from far vernal 
 Bournes of being, came to me 
 Dreamlike, plangent, and eternal 
 Memories of the plunging sea." 
 
 And so, with Carman, I can say: 
 
 "All my heart is in its verges, 
 And the sea-wind is my home." 
 
 I am a sailor s son, and am brother of one 
 who met a sailor s common fate. I have 
 dreamed and brooded over sea s charms and 
 mysteries so long it has become like an old, 
 old story to hear the murmur of its waves. 
 Now it has attracted, and now revolted, me. 
 I have exulted again and again, in the very 
 spirit of Byron s apostrophe, and in the pas 
 sion of the young Renfrew bard ;* for my love 
 has been like theirs, and though my home has 
 been upon the shore, and among the hills, 
 where I have been too long confined, yet has 
 my fancy gone abroad over the waves, and 
 my ear was early attuned to their musical 
 speech. "Like the language of home, their 
 accents whisper to me. Like the dreams of 
 my childhood, I see the sun s glimmer over 
 the billowy realm of waves, and they repeat 
 to me anew olden memories. "f 
 
 * Robert Pollok. t Heine.
 
 286 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The deep-souled man, to whom the sea is a 
 familiar, looks for it, longs for it, loves it. He 
 delights to watch and note 
 
 "Crisp foam-flakes scud along the level sand, 
 Torn from the fringe of spray." 
 
 Delightful to his ear, amid "continuous roars," 
 the 
 
 "Sea-mew s plaintive cry 
 Plaining discrepant between sea and sky." 
 
 The civilized man, knowing, sentient, high- 
 keyed, desires the ocean breaking at his feet; 
 but to the savage, estranged, barbaric, it may 
 be an object of terror. 
 
 How the Greeks, in the army of that "Ten 
 Thousand" Xenophon tells us about exulted 
 when, to their eyes, "the many-twinkling smile 
 of ocean/ that had cheered their childhood, 
 was restored ! Yet imagine the dismay a dis 
 may as genuine and natural as this delight 
 with which the barbaric mind must survey so 
 majestic an object, never seen before. 
 
 Out from the deep on deep of an African 
 forest came the dark-faced men, who bore the
 
 Wave-Songs. 287 
 
 half-unconscious Livingstone, and gazed with 
 mingled awe and terror on that unknown to 
 them, we call the sea. They knelt or fell pros 
 trate in their alarm before their master, and, 
 looking toward what must have seemed a 
 dreadful deity, exclaimed : "The world says, 
 I am finished; there is no more of me! 
 
 VII. 
 
 "The mountains look on Marathon 
 And Marathon looks on the sea." 
 
 But did ever mountains look on men more 
 worthy of them ? And did ever the sea wel 
 come to her bosom the sons of a nobler race 
 than they who, "on that morn to distant glory 
 dear," devoted themselves to death for the sake 
 of freedom, and for the deliverance of that 
 dear land they loved, and which was worthy 
 of their love ? The scene is imperishable from 
 history and song. Still we behold 
 
 "The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow ; 
 The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear; 
 Mountains above, Earth s, Ocean s plain below ; 
 Death in the front, Destruction in the rear."
 
 288 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 The elements themselves shall bear witness 
 to noble men. We call a few by name Mil- 
 tiades Leonidas and that majestic poet, who 
 "fought at Marathon,"* but the universe is 
 conscious of them all. The pines and the 
 winds of the mountains that saw them shall 
 proudly whisper their names and their lineage ; 
 and the sea that waited as their faithful ally, 
 shall lift up its voice to proclaim that they 
 were heroes. 
 
 "We crave not a memorial stone 
 For those who fell at Marathon. 
 Their fame with every breeze is blent; 
 The mountains are their monument, 
 And the low plaining of the sea 
 Their everlasting threnody." 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Come downward to the shore, and yet thou 
 shalt travel in the train of Sorrow ; she em 
 barks, and takes her way seaward, and Grief 
 walks upon the swelling waves, as did he who 
 is her Consoler. The waves and the winds 
 unite in lamentation, and the concord of break 
 ing billows around the prow at night brings 
 
 *.<32schylus.
 
 Wave-Songs. 289 
 
 the communion of sadness to many a waking 
 soul. A tempest joins in the lonely proces 
 sion even its diapason is in fitting unison ; 
 clouds and storms, more than tranquil, and 
 sunny skies, may befit funeral seasons, and 
 April snows may be the hopeful covering of a 
 grave. 
 
 IX. 
 
 They sat upon the deck, looking behind 
 them, or forward, with wistful eyes, while the 
 ship steamed outward from the harbor, past 
 bell-buoy, lighthouse, and the last dark island, 
 into the open sea. Brothers, companions, en 
 voys to the frontier of the land whence no 
 traveler returns, ministrants at the altar of 
 filial duty and affection, in the last sorrowful 
 rite and office. They set themselves to breast 
 a great and sharp wind blowing from a sea 
 they had yet to cross. In the hold beneath 
 them rested a sacred ark, containing relics 
 precious as those that, with lamentation, Joseph 
 bore out of Egypt, a casket upon which was 
 written the hallowed name of Mother. Folded 
 forever were the hands that had caressed, 
 the arms that had enfolded them ; closed for- 
 19
 
 290 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 ever the eyes that had looked upon them with 
 a kindness that is not of earth ; cold and silent 
 the lips that had spoken to them in the lan 
 guage of solicitude and tenderness. To her 
 last resting-place they bore all that now re 
 mained of her they loved and revered. In life 
 or in death "a mother is a mother still," the 
 holiest gift that a generous God bestows save 
 that one "unspeakable Gift," for which we 
 should all adore him. 
 
 Silent they sat, and watched the evening s 
 dying splendor. As often before, they 
 
 "Saw the sun retire 
 And burn the threshold of the night." 
 
 The city they had left had melted into a golden 
 mist ; night came down gradually with her 
 dusky embraces, and the sea rose up to receive 
 them. They were traveling on into the midst 
 of the giant storm, that had hung its gonfalons 
 of peril over them before the "ocean lane of 
 fire" had faded from the deep ; and from mid 
 night until morning their ship plunged on, 
 sounding a knell and blindly feeling a "dim 
 and perilous way." Then they wondered if the 
 narrow cell in which they vainly sought to 
 sleep, wet with spray and dripping rain, was
 
 Wave-Songs. 291 
 
 destined to become their tomb; and whether 
 the sweet manes, they would have left beside 
 that other hallowed dust on the hillside, should 
 be reft from its last cradle by ocean monsters, 
 and 
 
 "Toss with tangle and with shells." 
 
 But, no ! there came the dawning, and there 
 loomed the hither shore, bleak with the sudden 
 snows of a returning winter. Never more 
 filled with gloom seemed sky and wave ; never 
 more forbidding and inhospitable seemed that 
 dear Acadian shore. But grateful had they 
 felt had the coast been like Greenland or Un- 
 alaska : after all it was the margin of their own 
 land ; before them was the iron road into that 
 country soon to be filled again with the scent 
 of apple-blossoms ; the dear mother s dust 
 should repose safely in the destined place, and 
 they, delivered from the perils of the deep, 
 might drop a filial tear at the reading of the 
 burial service. 
 
 . . . Farewell, thou good mother! who 
 didst dwell among thy children, with such late 
 joy of life, amid all thy sorrows ; with the reed 
 of thy life broken before it was bruised in all 
 its parts. We remember thy frame unbent, thy
 
 292 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 mind undimmed, thy heart un jaded. Thou 
 leavest the spell of gentleness and bravery be 
 hind thee. Thy tomb, as thy home was long 
 since, be fragrant of love. Thou art season 
 ably ushered to thy peaceful chamber in that 
 abode of rest. We did not watch thy mourn 
 ful decaying an ill that never came to thee. 
 We rejoice that from this region of plaints and 
 agonies greatly as we miss thee thou art so 
 quietly and sweetly withdrawn. 
 
 "Thou, as a gallant bark from Albion s coast 
 (The storms all weather d and the ocean cross d) 
 Shoots into port at some well-haven d isle, 
 Where spices breathe, and brighter seasons smile, 
 There sits quiescent on the floods, that show 
 Her beauteous form reflected clear below, 
 While airs impregnated with incense play 
 Around her, fanning light her streamers gay, 
 So thou, with sails how swift ! hast reach d the 
 
 shore, 
 
 Where tempests never beat nor billows roar; 
 And thy loved consort on the dangerous tide 
 Of life long since has anchor d by thy side. 
 But me, scarce hoping to attain that rest, 
 Always from port withheld, always distress d, 
 Me howling blasts drive devious, tempest-toss d, 
 Sails ripp d, seams opening wide, and compass lost, 
 And day by day some current s thwarting force 
 Sends me more distant from a prosperous course. 
 But, O, the thought that thou art safe, and he! 
 That thought is joy, arrive what may to me."
 
 Wave-Songs. 293 
 
 X. 
 
 "The sea ! the sea ! the open sea !" 
 
 There is indeed a wideness like the love of 
 the Infinite! But there is not room on my 
 scant page for a record of all its memories. 
 Over its surf and curling waves, along the edge 
 of his isle Ariel glides; and there Prospero is 
 magician, seer, and lord. There ^Eneas goes 
 adventuring, as well as the restless Ulysses; 
 there go the Argonauts, and there Arion 
 fortunate musician ! sits on the back of his 
 dolphin. There into the blackness of midnight 
 waters falls Cowper s poor "Castaway," from 
 Anson s flying ship; and there 
 
 "At the dead of night, by Lonna s steep 
 The seaman s cry was heard along the deep;" 
 
 while the Palemons and Alberts of such ship 
 wrecks as that of Falconer will haunt the surfy 
 rocks on alien coasts forever. There the Bruce 
 goes sailing about Staffa and the margins of 
 Lorn ; and there Enoch Arden sits lonely as 
 Selkirk, on his South Pacific isle, and hears 
 
 "The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean fowl, 
 The league-long roller thundering on the reef."
 
 294 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 XI. 
 
 "In a season of calm weather, 
 Though inland far we be, 
 Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
 Which brought us hither; 
 Can in a moment travel thither, 
 And see the children sport upon the shore, 
 And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore." 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 Religious, holy sea." 
 
 Pollok. 
 
 O them great and wide sea ! Mine eye is 
 never sated with gazing upon thee ; mine ear 
 is never wearied with thy music. Thou purg- 
 est my thought, and Greatest my dreams anew : 
 thou dost exalt my spirit to the Infinite and 
 Invisible, whose creature thou art ! Bid the 
 babbling world to go far from me, and bring 
 around me the Ancients of Days ; tell me of 
 the greatness of Being! Sing thy song of 
 Eternity ! Smite thy cymbal waves afar ; shout 
 thy raptures, and chant thy dirges ! Inter 
 preter of our hearts ; murmurer of love and of 
 sorrow ; winding-sheet of our dead ; beautiful 
 reflector of the heavens ; speak to us still in 
 the deepest language of our souls ! Our eyes 
 shall grow dim, and our ears dull ; the mortal 
 senses thou canst charm shall be obliterated ;
 
 Wave-Songs. 295 
 
 but the world shall feel the washing of thy 
 waves, shall "hear thy mighty waters rolling 
 evermore!" Evermore? Evermore! 
 
 ". . . Until shall ring 
 That Voice above thy vast abyss." 
 
 For thou, majestic and mysterious thing! art 
 transient, too ; and at the bidding of Him 
 who casteth out over thee the measuring-rod 
 of his own eternity and discovereth thine end, 
 who did summon out of the past thy flowing 
 tides, thou shalt retire and uncover thy gulfs 
 and abysses ; dissolved into vapor by the fierce 
 breath of universal fire, "there shall be no more 
 sea !" 
 
 XII. 
 
 ALONG SHORE. 
 
 (AN EPISTLE. )* 
 
 Once more, in amicable shade reposed, 
 
 I greet you, brothers, from this realm of song; 
 
 Content that Labor s clangorous gate has closed, 
 And ope d the port of Rest, delay d so long. 
 
 Here (where that mighty songsmith, the hoar Sea, 
 Beats on his sounding anvil by the shore, 
 
 1 To Charles H. Collins and Henry W. Hope, Paint, Ohio.
 
 296 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 And wind and wave, in sweet fraternity, 
 
 Make the same music that I heard of yore), 
 I dream again of your far inland vale, 
 
 With all its waters shining cliff-inbound ; 
 I set your viney rocks, the heavens they scale, 
 
 While to your pipes clear note their caves resound. 
 There you, to whom the frequent thought will fly, 
 
 Make in such pleasaunce your accustom d cheer : 
 For you boon Nature, and the open sky 
 
 Ancient companions, that await me here. 
 
 ii. 
 
 This oak-crown d hill o erlooks the sheeny brine, 
 
 The site of summer homes, whence I behold 
 Below, in thund rous throes of life divine, 
 
 That restless, glorious creature, never old ! 
 A little nest within the hill there is 
 
 Circled with piney groves, whence voices ring 
 Of children, sporting in Arcadian bliss, 
 
 Where tense lutes tremble and glad maidens sing. 
 Below, a furzy path skirts the grim walls 
 
 Swept by the shrewd salt gale : there craggy knees 
 Whiten, where oft the foamy billow falls 
 
 With rhythmic roll and thunder of the seas. 
 There lies outstretch d the monstrous fire-fused stone 
 
 O er which the spray is flung, the green wave 
 
 roll d ; 
 Like pediment and plinth and column prone, 
 
 Mold ring upon the waste of Tadmor old. 
 Beyond, the scatter d isles, the coast-lights, stand ; 
 
 The tide-heaved bell, that tolls to make aware 
 Of threat ning reefs and breakers near the land, 
 
 By night the hapless mariner s despair.
 
 Wave-Songs. 297 
 
 ni. 
 
 Old Ocean! Nay; tis ocean, ever young! 
 
 Horror and beauty written in his face ! 
 Ha ! now I watch yon "snaky wave upflung" 
 
 To clasp me in its treacherous embrace ! 
 Gorgon ! with head uplift and "hissing tongue," 
 And foamy fire upon thy awful mane ! 
 Of mine of mine, how many hast thou slain? 
 
 Thou hast the tender maiden, and the brave 
 Adventurous boy, from gentle bosom sprung; 
 
 And thou hast lost them in thy "wandering grave." 
 Careless art thou of woman s peerless bloom, 
 
 Or the high hope of manhood, fall n so low: 
 Yet, Earth knows Death, and yields th untimely 
 tomb : 
 
 We can not blame thee, Sea, that thou doest so ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 The fern, the laurel, and sweet-scented bay 
 
 Neighbor the rugged rock and sounding surge; 
 The spreading juniper, with green o erlay, 
 
 Hangs its pale berries on the granite verge. 
 Beneath, the weed, whose tangled fibers tell 
 
 Of some inviolate deep-sea shrine, I see ; 
 There lies the faultless, "secret chamber d shell," 
 
 Whose sound is ocean s vast epitome ; 
 The utterance of that voice still moveth so 
 
 The soul of him who listens ; the unspent 
 Majestic movement, grand, and strong, and slow; 
 
 Infinity, with passion eloquent !
 
 298 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 By day the sun, by night the moon, doth shine, 
 
 And lay their beams auriferous from this shore 
 Across "great twinkling wastes." O er gem-lit brine 
 
 Fly the white gulls, that "wheel, and swerve," and 
 
 soar, 
 Moving "in unanimity divine," 
 
 With necks down-droop d and bent upon the deep. 
 I watch their undulations serpentine, 
 
 Like dreaming creatures flying in their sleep. 
 Now, with their "wondrous consentaneous curve," 
 
 They flash afar, in "sudden silver sheen ;" 
 Beyond the isles and headlands now they swerve 
 
 A beauteous vision, seen, and now unseen. 
 
 VI. 
 
 O sacred shore ! Retirement s favorite haunt, 
 
 When the hot city sends its votary forth, 
 To lie where peace and dream have use and wont ; 
 
 Where of heart s ease we learn once more the 
 
 worth. 
 The rustle of soft leaves ; the gentle sigh 
 
 Of spirits lodged in turrets of the firs; 
 Blackbird and crow, in harsh garrulity, 
 
 W r ith sweeter airs of piney choristers. 
 To lie in "world-forgotten coves," how sweet ! 
 
 "Lapt in the magic of some old sea-dream," 
 While rock and breaker with dull thunder meet, 
 
 And up the white-ridged sand the blue waves 
 cream :
 
 Wave-Songs. 299 
 
 To clasp the "great, sweet mother," and drink deep 
 
 The salt airs shivering off the milk-white foam ; 
 Up rocky stairways of the cliff to creep, 
 
 And gaze out o er wild Fancy s boundless home ; 
 Down sunless clefts toward caverns dim to peep, 
 
 Where the wave sucks and gurgles, where repose 
 The slimy weeds, and where the limpets sleep, 
 
 And winds are shrill and damp, when bleak the 
 tempest blows. 
 
 VII. 
 
 To muse o er sunken chambers of the deep, 
 
 Paven with sand and shell and gleaming gold : 
 Those hush d "recesses of primeval sleep" 
 
 Some "immemorial spell" doth tranced hold : 
 To watch yon "granite fangs eternally 
 Rending the blanch d lips of the wrathful sea ;"- 
 The high, courageous wave, still backward roll d ; 
 
 "The breaker, clutching land," then outward 
 
 hurl d 
 Like ruin d angels, sky-attempting, still 
 
 "Back on its own tempest-tormented world." 
 O deep delight ! the fresh ning wave to share ! 
 
 "The surges mountainous upthunderings !" 
 Of Nature s cleansing-house the sweetness rare 
 Is mine ; "the lovely, blithe, swift, debonair ; 
 
 The joy, the glorious energy, of things !" 
 This is "Earth s ecstasy made visible!" 
 
 This is the passion that the Greek bards knew ! 
 The universal pulse, the cosmic thrill, 
 
 The world-old rapture, ever fresh and new !
 
 300 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 So, friends of mine, versed in such lovely lore; 
 
 Seeing, as if with your illumined eyes, 
 Hearing for you the tumbling breaker s roar, 
 
 Where screaming gulls in snowy clouds arise ; 
 I send you salutation evermore ! 
 
 I watching the sun-litten, slanted sail, 
 And the long billow curving to the shore, 
 
 Greet you, reposing in your haunted vale. 
 Nature and human hearts are one, though far 
 
 The scenes be sunder d where her votaries lie ; 
 Softly on each alike look sun and star, 
 
 For o er us broods the same all-fostering sky. 
 Arthur J. Loc^hart ("Pastor Felix").
 
 Autumnal J$ote& 
 
 i. 
 
 The day becomes more solemn and serene 
 When noon is past; there is a harmony 
 In autumn, and a luster in its sky, 
 Which through the summer is not heard or seen, 
 As if it could not be, as if it had not been." 
 
 Shelley. 
 
 "Leaf by golden leaf 
 Crumbles the gorgeous year." 
 
 William Watson. 
 
 I AWOKE this morning, and autumn s most 
 delicate wraith was already abroad. She is 
 revealing herself by momentary, uncertain 
 glimpses, and, here and there, she is beginning 
 to lay 
 
 "A fiery finger on the leaves." 
 
 I think how soon she will be apparent in all 
 her dominion of splendor. In these woods of 
 Maine the silver birch will soon be shaking 
 out all her light golden tresses, and the blush- 
 301
 
 3O2 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 ful gleam of the blood-red maple will be seen 
 from the midst of her piney compeers. Every 
 where in this northern hemisphere nature will 
 soon show her autumnal suit ; Katahdin will 
 stand in his September glory, with all the arms 
 of the Penobscot \vound around him, and all the 
 sheeny lakes and the abounding forests known 
 to the camper and sportsman. Over Wini- 
 pisiogee and St. George, and on the margin 
 of Champlain, it will be autumn ; and about 
 Sunnyside and Mount Vernon. Over that 
 great blue expanse, 
 
 "Mother and lover of men, the sea, " 
 
 the autumnal sprite will be felt and visible. 
 Yes, and far beyond ! That land from which 
 our fathers came will soon share the lustrous 
 jewel of ripeness with us. Soon by Rydal 
 Mount, where Wordsworth walked, muttering 
 eternal verse, the yellow leaves will be fall 
 ing, golden patines from his favorite groves. 
 The ghost of Scott may see them, what time 
 the sun 
 
 "Flames o er the hill from Ettrick shore," 
 
 when it wanders through Dryburgh, where he 
 lies entombed. They will quiver in the morn 
 ing light, all dewy, about the homes and
 
 Autumnal Notes. 303 
 
 haunts of Burns, and all along the "banks and 
 braes of Bonnie Boon." But England, with 
 all her wealth of form and color, and with all 
 her classic memories, will not show, though 
 you travel from Hawthornden to Westminster, 
 anything like the varied beauties of our declin 
 ing year. The season has a ripe, subdued, and 
 mellow close, but not a majestic brilliancy, as 
 on these shores. See ! I will paint you a pic 
 ture, a fertile Midland scene, like those 
 George Eliot delighted in, and drew so finely. 
 Color it shall not lack, but the deeper tints are 
 mostly brown and russet. Yet the scene is 
 homelike and dear, and, through the eyes that 
 saw and the hand that drew "Middlemarch," 
 you seem to have lived there. Look at the 
 fields, with their golden spikes of stubble ! 
 There run the somber-hued hedges in line be 
 tween these sunny squares. Survey the fat 
 fields, the upturned umber earth, rich with cen 
 turies of dressing, where late the plow has 
 been run ; how they differ from our New 
 England fields and the prairies of the West! 
 And the meadows that stretch away, fading to 
 an olive-green, look at them ! There rise the 
 red-tiled roofs of cottages, with their white 
 walls, and the bluish smoke, that so please the
 
 304 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 eye, rising amid the trees. Now the oaks are 
 changing; the beeches and poplars are smitten 
 with gold, but a gold tawnier than ours. This 
 is England reserved, subdued, substantial ; 
 this is the rural splendor Thomson painted : 
 
 "The fading many-colored woods, 
 Shade deepening over shade, the country round, 
 Imbrown ; a crowded umbrage dark and dun, 
 Of every hue from wan declining green 
 To sooty dark." 
 
 This certainly is no proper description of an 
 autumnal forest in America, where over every 
 hill and vale the tints glow like sunset clouds. 
 Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, and their kin, 
 can show us in words this "livery of the sky." 
 Burns gives us the lighter tints on Scottish 
 hills of autumnal foliage, in some of his inci 
 dental passages. Often, with enchanted vision, 
 would he mark "the sun s departing beam look 
 on the fading yellow woods." 
 
 II. 
 
 There is pure pleasure for him who will now 
 walk in the woods when this hectic flush is on 
 the cheek of nature. Nay, I almost repudiate 
 that epithet ! In a certain sense it may be used
 
 Autumnal Notes. 305 
 
 poetically, but it is not strictly true. The ripen 
 ing of the pear and peach is hardly hectic, nor 
 is that of the leaf, even in appearance, till the 
 frost has taken it. But we will allow that fig 
 ment of description, if you choose, to the leaf 
 of the maple. This is the time for picnics in 
 the grove, and this is the season for sunny 
 strolls in mid- September. It is good to go 
 alone; it is sometimes good to have a com 
 panion; we often find it comfortable to have 
 a pocket volume, the right one. 
 
 But carry no gun with you, and be chary 
 of hook and rod. Shame on him whose only 
 familiarity with the wild creatures of the 
 forest is when he pursues and slays them. We 
 do not object to the hunt in poetry and ro 
 mance, when Scott or Cooper will consent to 
 sound the horn ; but otherwise we have no 
 heart to follow it. The light liver of Felix 
 knows little about the matter, in fact. He 
 never met the eyes of a doe, brim full of ap 
 pealing innocence, with the tube of malicious 
 ness pointed from his shoulder. Would he 
 might take aim, instead of another; the crea 
 ture must infallibly escape. He would not 
 even go fishing to-day when invited; not but 
 he would be willing to share his neighbor s
 
 306 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 pottage. In winter he has seated himself by 
 the lake-side, watching where lines were set 
 in vaults for finny meddlers, till the little flag 
 w r ent up bespeaking a captive ready to surren 
 der. He also remembers, without poignancy 
 of regret, how once he harried the eels in 
 Whiting River. But in later days, so far as he 
 is concerned, perch and pickerel may swim 
 unconscious of their safety. He was never a 
 skillful or executive fisher, deficient of art and 
 energy among masters of the angle, void of 
 allurement to catchers-on of any sort, not hav 
 ing the business in him. Not the less is he 
 interested in all gentle fishers, from Wynken 
 de Worde s fair nun, and the quaint Izaak, to 
 the author of "Little Rivers;" "The Compleat 
 Angler" being with him, as it has been with 
 many another respectable non-angler, a vade 
 me cum. There is a perfect understanding be 
 tween himself and all animated nature that the 
 individual members thereof are to take no 
 alarm. The young pouters will even come 
 and look curiously upon him, as if to say, 
 "Why are you not inclined to catch me ?" His 
 philosophy is quite in harmony with his con 
 stitution ; it is doubtless his defect that the 
 hunters and fishers go without him, and have
 
 Autumnal Notes. 307 
 
 this blast sent after them : "To hunt and to 
 catch fish is barbarous ; our race will yet look 
 with abhorrence upon such diversions, as now 
 we do upon the scalping of a maiden or the 
 braining of an infant." 
 
 III. 
 
 A single pine-tree, standing on a hill be 
 tween the villages of Corinth and East Corinth, 
 Maine, and near the road along which I was 
 accustomed to pass, became to me a point of 
 attraction, and a center of musing during the 
 years spent in that town, and especially at 
 the autumnal season. After my removal, as 
 memory would go back to my old sylvan com 
 panion, endeared by long association and con 
 genial thought, the lines here introduced 
 were written : 
 
 THE LONELY PINE. 
 
 Remote, upon the sunset shrine 
 Of a green hill, a lonely pine 
 Beckons this hungry heart of mine. 
 
 "Draw near," it always seems to say, 
 Look thither whensoe er I may 
 From the dull routine of my way.
 
 308 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 "I hold for thee the heavens in trust ; 
 My priestly branches toward thee thrust, 
 Absolve thy fret, assoil thy dust." 
 
 Yet when I come, it heeds not me ; 
 The stars amid the branches see 
 But lonely man and lonely tree, 
 
 And lonely earth, that holds in thrall 
 Her creatures ; while eve gathers all 
 To fold within her shadowy wall. 
 
 In starry senate doth arise 
 
 The lumined spirit of the skies, 
 
 Walking with radiant ministries. 
 
 But, sighing from its kindred wood 
 Afar its green-robed brotherhood 
 The pine-tree feeds my wonted mood. 
 
 For, with its spell around me thrown, 
 Dreaming of social pleasures flown, 
 I grieve, yet joy, to be alone. 
 
 Ye* in my lonely pine-tree dwells, 
 When mid its breast the soft wind swells, 
 A prophet of sweet oracles. 
 
 Like a faint sea on far-off shore, 
 With its low, muffled, elfin roar, 
 It speaks one language evermore;
 
 Autumnal Notes. 309 
 
 One language, unconstrain d and free, 
 The converse of the answering sea, 
 The old rune of eternity. 
 
 Its fresh ning music breatheth sooth 
 The uncorrupted dream of youth, 
 Restoreth Love, unveileth Truth. 
 
 It speaketh that felicity 
 
 Which, being not, we deem may be ; 
 
 It centers hope in certainty. 
 
 So, stronger from this green hill shrine 
 I pass to cares and tasks of mine, 
 And, grateful, bless my healing pine. 
 
 IV. 
 
 And tell me, is there not a grandeur in the 
 year s decay ; is there not, indeed, splendor 
 enough in its dying, after all this beauty of 
 ripeness ? Come ! let us go, for autumn issues 
 her own invitations, prized as the cards with 
 which we enter our drawing-rooms. They are 
 got out in colored lithographs. The spring- 
 struck rhymer may always wish to see green 
 leaves ; but the lover of variety will still follow 
 "autumn in her weeds of yellow and crimson." 
 Summer fills the soul with languor, and shuts
 
 3io Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 up the fountains of feeling; but the first frost 
 tightens and tingles every nerve, and awakens 
 all the spirit of song. Come ! let us away to 
 the transfigured woods ! See, where the forest 
 lies flanked by wide, green fields, through 
 which the limpid river goes roundingly, to 
 catch its glories in reflection. Enter this pri 
 meval cathedral, and stand amid its golden 
 lights. How its sky windows hang emblaz 
 oned! Farther on in the wood there is an 
 open space, and a little lake lies to mirror all 
 this enchantment in its bosom. It is a spot 
 where sylvan beauty might stand to dress her 
 locks. The worlds of dream, the fairy-lands 
 of childhood, the Arabian palaces, grow tame 
 and pale before this wild domain this flush 
 of fairness. We say aloud, 
 
 "O what a glory doth the year put on !" 
 
 Sit down on the mottled base of this noble 
 beech, and open your Bryant : 
 
 "The mountains that infold 
 
 In their \vide sweep the colored landscape round 
 Seem groups of giant kings, in purple and 
 
 gold, 
 That guard th enchanted ground.
 
 Autumnal Notes. 311 
 
 I roam the woods that crown 
 The upland where the mingled splendors glow, 
 
 Where the gay company of trees look down 
 On the green fields below." 
 
 Turn the leaves over, and, while the smoky rill 
 glimmers, and the chestnut patters down, and 
 the leaves "fall like flakes of light to the 
 ground," while "the maples redden in the sun," 
 and 
 
 "Upon the grassy mold 
 The purple oak-leaf falls ; the birchen bough 
 Drops its bright spoil like arrow-heads of gold," 
 
 let us find a worthy accompaniment to the 
 great anthem of the year in our good descrip 
 tive poet. Or, if you will listen to something 
 humbler, here is a plaintive autumnal song 
 from the Acadian minstrel, John McPherson: 
 
 At morn the dew-drench d gossamers 
 
 Hang sparkling everywhere, 
 And richer robes the dusky firs 
 
 And royal maples wear ; 
 O er all the woods a rainbow sheen, 
 
 Enchanting to the eye, 
 Matches the rich relieving green 
 
 That vale and plain supply : 
 But these are withering, day by day, 
 
 Before the north wind s breath : 
 So this world s glory fades away, 
 
 So bright things bow to death.
 
 312 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 A fitful sound of spectral wings 
 
 Is heard in all our bowers, 
 It is the dirge the wild wind sings 
 
 Above the faded flowers ; 
 As oft in gloom, mid beauty fled 
 
 And glory gone, it grieves, 
 Like Love beside the early dead, 
 
 Among the falling leaves. 
 
 Sweet now to wander by the lake, 
 
 Amid the forest hoar, 
 Whose silvery joyous waters make 
 
 Soft music on the shore ; 
 To mark, beneath the tranquil light, 
 
 The tall trees drooping low, 
 And pining o er their mirror d blight, 
 
 Like Beauty in her woe : 
 Sweet now to rove, with minstrel thought, 
 
 Amid the fair decay, 
 And mark the wondrous changes wrought 
 
 Around our pilgrim way ; 
 And sweet, at holy hush of day, 
 
 To walk by murmuring rill, 
 And think of loved ones, far away, 
 
 The heart remembers still ; 
 For soothing to the soul the tear 
 
 Wherewith affection grieves, 
 O er feeling s beautiful past year, 
 
 Among her falling leaves. 
 
 And sweet, laborious summer past, 
 
 To take the earned repose 
 That toiling man enjoys at last 
 
 When autumn evenings close;
 
 Autumnal Notes. 313 
 
 The cheery hearth-fire, sparkling clear, 
 
 The kettle s simmering song, 
 The lov d home faces clust ring near, 
 
 When evening hours are long : 
 Sweet, after all our moil and care, 
 
 To hoard our little store, 
 And warmly breathe the grateful prayer 
 
 That Heaven rewards with more : 
 When round the harvest-board we share 
 
 The boon of temperate joy, 
 May we not smile at all the care, 
 
 The trouble and annoy? 
 Yes, soft the pillow that we press, 
 
 When, mid our garnered sheaves, 
 We sink to sleep, and, dreaming, bless 
 
 The time of falling leaves. 
 
 V. 
 
 "The Queen Moon is on her throne, 
 Cluster d round by all her starry fays." 
 
 Keats. 
 
 The moon seems this evening to have bor 
 rowed half the glory and fervor of the sun, as 
 we see her shining at the full between the arch 
 ing elms of our street. The mass of leaves, 
 here and there slightly colored, make a luxuri 
 ous foil for her magnificence, where she sits 
 in sultry state in the eastern dome of the firma 
 ment ; while, in the opposite, play the hot and
 
 314 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 restless flashes of some distant cloud. Sum 
 mer, that lingered apart from us throughout 
 its proper cycle of July and August, sits with 
 hazy garment widely spread. So stifling an 
 atmosphere as that of parlor or study sends 
 us outside, where we may draw a cool and 
 easy breath with something of satisfaction ; 
 and at eight o clock we sit about the door, 
 still gasping at the very memory of the day, 
 while the children gambol on the bit of lawn 
 we have bordered with sun-burned asters. It 
 is good on this quiet air to hear their cheer 
 ful voices ! 
 
 What a noble scheme seems this in the midst 
 of which we sit ! The whole creation seems 
 to have taken on an extra burnish. 
 
 "Mamma, who makes it light, and who 
 makes it dark ?" This is the question of young 
 Harold, who now plucks his mother s gown, 
 lifting his eyes to hers. 
 
 "Why, it is God," she asseverates, with sol 
 emn assurance. 
 
 "Yes, I know it," he responds brightly, as 
 pleased to be able to concur with her on so 
 grave and grand a subject, " cause he has 
 the sheenery to do it with." 
 
 "Look yonder to the horizon, and see that
 
 Autumnal Notes. 315 
 
 Gorgon in the northwest wink his eye, but 
 be thankful he is not at hand to gaze at you." 
 It is the family poet who volunteers so classic 
 an allusion to the distant cloud, more somnific 
 and ashen in its glum habitude than the fel 
 low who frowned and blazed over us yester 
 day at sunset, while the grass grew greener, 
 and glistened with a strange, magnetic luster. 
 
 "See ! the Gorgon-cloud is winking again !" 
 exclaims Grace, as the huge, gray creature 
 grows luminous once more, its sullen bosom 
 pulsating with lambent fire, while an angry fist 
 seems lifted out of it, clutching bright arrows. 
 
 "Would that yonder cloud might drift round 
 to us !" sighs pater- familias, drawing a deeper 
 breath. "It is welcome to arrive before mid 
 night. I think we may take the risk of any 
 stray bolts for the sake of what our good 
 sister P terms mercy-drops from mercy- 
 clouds/ while you, good wife, would sleep all 
 the sounder for the thunder." 
 
 We have seen enough of heat and dust to 
 day. It searched us, it clave unto us. Even 
 dust, however, may become a beautiful thing 
 when the sunset chooses it for a medium, as 
 I saw it yesterday, while coming up street, 
 the Joy-giver sending me his parting blink
 
 316 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 through the sylvan vista. Then the cloud was 
 one of glory, and I was not involved therein, 
 which makes all the difference : 
 
 Dear native town whose choking elms each year 
 With eddying dust before their time turn gray, 
 Pining for rain, to me thy dust is dear; 
 
 It glorifies the eve of summer day, 
 And when the westering sun half sunken burns, 
 The mote-thick air to deepest orange turns, 
 
 The westward horseman rides through clouds of 
 gold away." * 
 
 And these last are autumnal notes, for all 
 their semblance of summer. 
 
 VI. 
 
 In August the camper is abroad, and many 
 a white tent is spread by lake-shores in the 
 Canadian wildernesses, and the wilds of Maine, 
 about Moosehead and Katahdin. Some of my 
 brethren are there, and I send after them the 
 felicitation of song. But amid the heats of 
 summer my heart obeys another summons : I 
 accept the invitation of the sea, the sound 
 of whose waves is sweeter in my ears than the 
 music of the mountain or the forest. But with 
 the advent of glorious September ; or, better 
 
 * Lowell, "An Indian Summer Reverie."
 
 Autumnal Notes. 317 
 
 still, under the hunter s moon, when, with his 
 rifle and his Indian guide, he plunges into 
 delightful freedom, then, ho ! for the woods ! 
 
 HUNTER S SONG. 
 
 Ho ! for the woods ! Ho ! for the woodmen s 
 
 cheer ! 
 
 The rod, the rifle, and the light canoe; 
 The swift pursuit of caribou and deer ; 
 The flash of salmon from the liquid blue ! 
 Welcome to our retreat, ye jovial few, 
 In this the merriest hey-day of the year ! 
 Ho ! for the rush of the descending stream, 
 Bright in the morning beam! 
 
 Ho ! for the shouting crew, the echoing shore ! 
 
 The rifle s crack amid the vocal glades ; 
 The torrent s long reverberating roar; 
 
 The flash of flying gems from paddle blades ; 
 The twilight hush falling on lengthening 
 
 shades ! 
 
 Welcome the song, the chorus, the encore, 
 The tale of awe, the joke, the repartee, 
 The evening jollity ! 
 
 Ho ! for the camp ! Ho ! for the boughy bed ! 
 The welcoming firelight s gleam, reflected far, 
 
 On glassy lake, and leafy boughs o erhead ! 
 Ho ! for companionship of moon and star, 
 Where sandy coves and spreading branches 
 are !
 
 318 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Welcome ! the sylvan board at evening spread, 
 When merry hunters from their sport return 
 To bid the camp-fire burn ! 
 
 Ho ! for the promised season of delight ! 
 
 Leave we our plodding, cast our care behind : 
 
 To the wide woods we 11 take our annual flight,- 
 The body brace, invigorate the mind : 
 Come ! ye to nature genially inclined, 
 
 To the free life, the sylvan sound and sight 
 
 The forest s fortune and the lake s career, 
 The charm of all the year ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 The death of Schiller, we are told, was 
 preceded by a desire, almost overmastering, 
 
 "To wander forth wherever lie 
 The homes and haunts of human kind." 
 
 Something of this feeling possesses me with 
 the coming in of autumn. Amid blistering 
 heats I can tamely submit to the yoke and the 
 treadmill; but by the first sparkle of October 
 frost, and the first tinge of maple leaves, I am 
 stung with a gypsy-virus, and straightway 
 assert my liberty. Then I protest against all 
 home-keeping, and affect the pilgrim s wal-
 
 Autumnal Notes. 319 
 
 let, deeming, with that true lover of autum 
 nal roving, Bliss Carman, that 
 
 "The joys of the road are chiefly these: 
 A crimson touch on the hard-wood trees; 
 
 A vagrant morning wide and blue, 
 
 In early fall, when the wind walks, too ; 
 
 A shadowy highway cool and brown, 
 Alluring up and enticing down 
 
 From rippled water to dappled swamp, 
 From purple glory to scarlet pomp ; 
 
 The outward eye, the quiet will, 
 The striding heart from hill to hill ; 
 
 The tempter apple over the fence; 
 
 The cobweb bloom on the yellow quince ; 
 
 The palish asters along the wood, 
 A lyric touch of the solitude; 
 
 An open hand, an easy shoe, 
 
 And a hope to make the day go through, 
 
 Another to sleep with, and a third 
 To wake me up at the voice of a bird ; 
 
 The resonant far-listening morn, 
 And the hoarse whisper of the corn ;
 
 320 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 The crickets mourning their comrades lost, 
 In the night s retreat from the gathering frost; 
 
 Or is it their slogan, plaintive and shrill, 
 As they beat on their corslets valiant still ? 
 
 A hunger fit for the kings of the sea, 
 And a loaf of bread for Dickon and me; 
 
 An idle noon, a bubbling spring, 
 The sea in the pine-tops murmuring." 
 
 Wordsworth, we remember, coveted a fig 
 ment of Mrs. Barbauld s muse, and certainly 
 her 
 
 "Life, we have been long together," 
 
 is so like some of his own literary children 
 that we do not wonder if he felt like adopting 
 it and bringing it home. For an unlike rea 
 son we have cast wandering, wistful eyes on 
 another waif of Carman, adrift in newspaper- 
 dom, because the spirit of it is so like what 
 we feel, while the expression is so different 
 from anything attributable to us. Neverthe 
 less, we are tempted to adopt it, though, un-
 
 Autumnal Notes. 321 
 
 equal in degree, it should show itself a prince 
 among peasants, in very scorn of our unkempt 
 group. It is a song, indeed, so quickening 
 to the blood, so consonant with our emotion 
 so soon as the nomad season commences, that 
 should a procession of the elves go up to the 
 maple-hills with a band of music, their "skreel- 
 ing" at their pipes and the "pan-pan-rataplan" 
 of their drum might fit the rattling, rollicking 
 words of our poet : 
 
 OCTOBER. 
 
 There is something in the autumn that is native to 
 
 my blood 
 
 Touch of manner, hint of mood; 
 And my heart is like a rhyme, 
 With the yellow and the purple and the crimson 
 
 keeping time. 
 
 The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry 
 
 Of bugles going by, 
 
 And my lonely spirit thrills 
 
 To see the frosty asters like smoke upon the hills. 
 
 There is something in October sets the gypsy blood 
 
 astir; 
 
 We must rise and follow her, 
 When from every hill of flame 
 She calls, and calls each vagabond by name. 
 
 21
 
 322 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The carnival of color is now at its height, 
 despite the occasional drenchiness of autumnal 
 leaves ; the spectacular play of the season is 
 in its third and most interesting act. You 
 need not go far to find the "bush on fire with 
 God." All our street is a tent of gold, draped 
 with hangings, as torn from a myriad of rain 
 bows, and a tent it is, fit for the conference 
 of kings. The other day I stood upon a hill 
 top and looked over a wide circuit of forest 
 country. Tree and bush were everywhere 
 aflame with color. In truth, it was a glorious 
 prospect ! 
 
 "Circling forests, by ethereal touch 
 Enchanted, wear the livery of the sky, 
 As if about to melt in golden light, 
 Shapes of one heavenly vision."* 
 
 So, I thought, can a God paint, with frost for 
 pigment, and sunbeam for pencil. That pano 
 rama of delight I shall not soon forget. 
 
 Notice everywhere the deepening hues 
 how profuse, how various ! See these mosses, 
 these lichens, and creepers, how wondrously 
 
 * " Ion : A Tragedy," by Thomas Noon Talfourd.
 
 Autumnal Notes. 323 
 
 they are dyed ! Look at these shrubs of many 
 kinds, these are the undergarments of the 
 forest, which, with the little, late flowers, form 
 the frills and little ruffs and spangles with 
 which our sylvan beauty loves to adorn her 
 self. They all help to swell the volume of 
 gorgeousness, and to make of the woods a 
 dream of fairyland. See where the maple 
 that pride of leafy things ! merges into rich 
 ness, breaks into change of hue ! What won 
 ders have been in a single night accomplished ! 
 A limb of this tree here and there stipples and 
 dashes the darker green, and the still duskier 
 furze. Afar off the maple s royalty arrests 
 you. This is indeed the bush on fire, with that 
 beech behind it to give golden point to the 
 flame. See where it has begun to purple, with 
 gilded streaks cutting through its kingliness 
 of hue. Here a tint softens, and there it grows 
 in brilliancy. It is an anthem of color, run 
 ning through the entire scale. The duller 
 shade of the ash is the more noticeable, being 
 so seldom seen. 
 
 The maple is in its investiture, the prime 
 of trees. It is, according to one of our poets, 
 "the maple of sunny branches."* And an- 
 
 * Charles G. D. Roberts.
 
 324 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 other, who had a keen eye for color, paints 
 our tree of the most finely-pictured leaves: 
 
 "The maple swamps glow like a sunset sea, 
 
 Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush ; 
 All round the wood s edge creeps the skirting 
 
 blaze 
 Of bush as low as when, on cloudy days, 
 
 Ere the rain falls the farmer burns his brush."* 
 
 It has a peculiar loveliness in its vernal season, 
 but just now we dote on it. It is a fountain 
 of sweetness before March comes in, and its 
 first buddings gladden us; the richness of its 
 clustering shade makes cool and dreamy the 
 summer; but now it is incomparable a crown 
 of glory ! Give me plenty of firs, a background 
 of whispering pines, some spiny spruces, a 
 hemlock or two, nor will I ignore the oak, 
 looking 
 
 "A sachem, in red blanket wrapt." 
 
 Some lady-birches should scatter here and 
 there immaculate graces in the fore, or we 
 can not be quite content. 
 
 "I only know there never 
 
 Seem darker stains on me 
 Than when I come and look on them, 
 And all their whiteness see."f 
 
 * James Rustell Lowell. fRalph H. Shaw.
 
 Autumnal Notes. 325 
 
 But standing well out before them all, should 
 be the maple "queen of the forest!" with 
 her crown of rubies on. Seeing this, I will 
 take off my shoes I will uncover my head. 
 I will not ask for the Voice in Horeb, and the 
 bush unconsumed in fire ! 
 
 Notice the maple out on yonder hill, with 
 its foliage against the sky. It shows upon 
 the blue like a blood-red flag waved from a 
 fortress. It challenges your pride and admi 
 ration. It summons your fancy to render 
 tribute. If you have any finer feeling, any 
 of the poetic ore in your treasury, you may sur 
 render it at discretion. See ! how all along 
 the swampy margins, beyond the dwarfed skel 
 etons of trees, grayly bemossed, the low shrub- 
 maples have first begun to change. Surely the 
 woods have begun their autumnal gayety by 
 putting on a splendid hem ! How royal those 
 crimsons and purples are! Wine-dark depths 
 of shade ! Artist ! you can not approach this 
 magnificence ! Come to the woods, not so 
 much to copy as to admire to worship. 
 
 Now is the season for walking where 
 
 "October woods with light are all aglow ; 
 
 Their summer paths, dim as monastic aisles, 
 Are lighted now from golden leaves below, 
 
 Through golden leaves above the sunshine smiles."
 
 326 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 A carpet, brilliant as the canopy overhead, 
 lies under your feet. A golden fringe lines 
 the way; it is the autumn flower the poets 
 most have sung. There is also the blossom 
 that seems a cerulean bit dropped down. The 
 maple s form gains splendor by reflection in 
 the waters of the wayside pool. But, when 
 the silent lake mirrors the clear concavity of 
 the sky, and around it the trees in all their 
 holiday dresses look down, ah! is it not de 
 licious? Reflection makes so much of this 
 world s beauty! 
 
 "The swan upon St. Mary s lake 
 Floats double, swan and shadow ;" 
 
 and so gives us a double joy. Yes, these 
 late hours of golden September yield us ex 
 quisite enjoyment, whenever we can give an 
 afternoon to the woods. A refreshment to 
 the eye is the grassy slope itself, over which 
 we go to reach the nearest grove. "The green 
 herb," declares Ruskin, "is, of all nature, that 
 which is most essential to the healthy spir 
 itual life of man. Most of us do not need 
 fine scenery; the precipice and the mountain- 
 peak are not intended to be seen by all men, 
 perhaps their power is greatest over those
 
 Autumnal Notes. 327 
 
 who are unaccustomed to them. But trees, 
 and fields, and flowers were made for all, and 
 are necessary for all." The grassy field, or 
 the lane, is, therefore, to us the prelude of the 
 forest. A sense of strength and majesty enters 
 through the eye from the stone-colored bole 
 of this smooth beech, and informs the spirit. 
 It consumes our care to see the maple burn. 
 It is good to scatter our petty fears by taking 
 to ourself the terrors of the grim and dusky 
 hemlocks. We are graced with a new cour 
 tesy by taking off our hat before the lissome 
 birch, in her satin vest ; she is 
 
 "So purely beautiful 
 A lady wholly one !" 
 
 Stop and notice where "bright the sumach 
 burns," familiar and dear from our childhood. 
 Stoop and see where the ferns are turning 
 brown fading gracefully. No growing thing 
 is more congenial to me than the fern my 
 daughter brought from the woods, and set in 
 my window. We love ferns, though here so 
 numerous they are crushed where we tread. 
 The wind can break them the wind that 
 plucks the leaf to cast it in the rivulet. Take 
 an hour, as often as you can, to make your
 
 328 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 truce with care. When you go homeward, 
 the same enchantment is yours that attended 
 your coming. 
 
 There come in mind the closing stanzas of 
 Whittier s "Chapel of the Hermits :" 
 
 "We rose and slowly homeward turned. 
 While down the west the sunset burned ; 
 And in its light, hill, wood, and tide, 
 And human forms, seemed glorified. 
 
 The village homes transfigured stood, 
 And purple bluffs, whose belting wood 
 Across the waters leaned to hold 
 The yellow leaves, like lamps of gold." 
 
 IX. 
 
 " T is in the unseen clime that soft and fair 
 
 Nor blight nor wither ; here the tenderest flower 
 Must soonest fade." 
 
 There are certain blossoms that glow toward 
 me from the garden, and that brighten the 
 view from the window-seat. After the eva 
 nescence of violet and rose, they are called 
 everlasting. The distance gives them a cer 
 tain factitious luster, so that they look as 
 freshly-bright as any of their fair companions. 
 The dew falls on them, as upon other, softer,
 
 Autumnal Notes. 329 
 
 tenderer flowers ; but they can also endure the 
 frost. They keep company with the velvet 
 pansy, they neighbor with the silken rose, and 
 hobnob with the lush splendors of dahlia and 
 peony; but, if you approach and touch them, 
 they are, to the seeming, harsh and hard ; they 
 bloom, yet rustle dry. In my present mood, 
 I find here some resemblance to my own na 
 ture. I fear me, I am doomed to disappoint 
 some who, seeing me from a distance, draw 
 nearer to touch. Not that I have ever been, 
 or wish ever to be, a subject of idolatry; yet 
 they who too much handle their idols have 
 ever had most occasion to recoil from asperity. 
 Yet there is this virtue about the "everlasting" 
 flower it will endure. When snow lies over 
 the matted leaves where the warm, moist, lus 
 trous children of the garden dwelt, and the 
 dry stalks that once bore rich, commanding 
 blooms, rustle in the wind, the wreaths of 
 "everlasting" blossoms look still smiling from 
 the fire-lit walls of your cosy room, making 
 late cheer, and giving you a winter-welcome. 
 We love and quote Wordsworth : 
 
 "O sir, the good die first, 
 
 And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust 
 Burn to the socket;"
 
 33 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 which seems to me a scanty courtesy to the 
 "hard," it may be, but yet, "good gray heads" 
 that grow old among us, of whom his own 
 was the most eminent and venerable. Thank 
 God for the human flowers, that may some 
 times seem a trifle husky, but are loth to fade ! 
 I love to remember a brief poem by Robert 
 Southey, about "The Holly Tree," one of 
 the most genuine this somewhat discredited 
 muse has afforded us, the following lines in 
 particular : 
 
 "And though abroad perchance I might appear 
 
 Harsh and austere, 
 To those who on my leisure would intrude, 
 
 Reserved and rude; 
 
 Gentle at home among my friends I d be, 
 Like the high leaves upon the holly-tree. 
 
 And should my youth, as youth is apt, I know, 
 
 Some harshness show, 
 All vain asperities, I day by day 
 
 Would wear away. 
 
 Till the smooth temper of my age should be 
 Like the high leaves upon the holly-tree. 
 
 And as when all the summer trees are seen 
 
 So bright and green, 
 The holly leaves their fadeless hues display 
 
 Less bright than they, 
 
 Yet when the bare and wintry woods we see, 
 What then so cheerful as the holly-tree?
 
 Autumnal Notes. 331 
 
 So serious should my youth appear among 
 
 The thoughtless throng, 
 So would I seem amid the young and gay 
 
 More grave than they, 
 That in my age so cheerful I might be 
 As the green winter of the holly-tree." 
 
 X. 
 
 As autumn makes her full-dress entree to 
 the Dominion, she has abundant recognition 
 by Canadian poets, whose pages are rich with 
 her color. Thus, Isabella Valancey Crawford : 
 
 "The land had put his ruddy gauntlet on, 
 Of harvest gold, to dash in Famine s face. 
 And like a vintage wain, deep dy d with juice, 
 The great moon falter d up the ripe, blue sky 
 Drawn by silver stars. . . ." 
 
 Roberts, painter of the Tantramar, and poet 
 of "the long dikes of Westmoreland," shows 
 us how the autumnal woods look, 
 
 "When the gray lake-water rushes 
 Past the dripping alder bushes, 
 
 And the bodeful autumn wind 
 In the fir-tree weeps and hushes, 
 
 When the air is sharply damp 
 Round the solitary camp, 
 
 And the moose-bush in the thicket 
 Glimmers like a scarlet lamp,
 
 332 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 When the birches twinkle yellow, 
 And the cornel bunches mellow, 
 
 And the owl across the twilight 
 Trumpets to his downy fellow, 
 
 When the nut-fed chipmunks romp 
 Through the maples crimson pomp, 
 
 And the slim viburnum flushes 
 In the darkness of the swamp." 
 
 Lampman paints "An Octobery Sunset," and 
 shows us the season when 
 
 "The cornfields all are brown, and brown the 
 
 meadows 
 
 With the blown leaves wind-heaped traceries 
 And the brown thistle stems that cast no shadows, 
 And bear no bloom for bees." 
 
 Ethelwyn Wetherald, Duncan C. Scott, and 
 others we might name, give autumnal pictures 
 well worthy our citation ; and Carman, who 
 has caught the luxury of October coloring, 
 shows how still are the autumn noons, tinged 
 by 
 
 "The soft purple haze 
 Of smoldering camp-fires ;" 
 
 shows us "the tatters of pale aster blue, de 
 scried by the roadside," and 
 
 "The swamp maples, here and there a shred 
 Of Indian red."
 
 Autumnal Notes. 333 
 
 And fit for this season of dream and ro 
 mance is this delightful lyric of his : 
 
 GOLDEN ROWAN. 
 
 She lived where the mountains go down 
 to the sea, 
 
 And river and tide confer. 
 Golden rowan, in Menalowan, 
 
 Was the name they gave to her. 
 
 She had the soul no circumstance 
 
 Can hurry or deter. 
 Golden rowan, of Menalowan, 
 
 How time stood still for her ! 
 
 Her playmates for their lovers grew, 
 
 But that shy wanderer, 
 Golden rowan, of Menalowan, 
 
 Knew love was not for her. 
 
 Hers was the love of wilding things ; 
 
 To hear a squirrel chirr 
 In the golden rowan of Menalowan 
 
 Was joy enough for her. 
 
 She sleeps on the hill with the lonely sun, 
 Where in the days that were, 
 
 The golden rowan of Menalowan 
 So often shadowed her. 
 
 The scarlet fruit will come to fill, 
 
 The scarlet spring to stir 
 The golden rowan of Menalowan, 
 
 And wake no dream for her.
 
 334 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Only the wind is over her grave, 
 For mourner and comforter ; 
 
 And "golden rowan, of Menalowan, 
 Is all we know of her. 
 
 XL 
 
 I went, with Grace and Harold, to gather 
 acorns ; which, in this year of scant crops, 
 are found here in abundance. The oaks grow 
 with other deciduous trees, and a few pines, 
 along the bank of the Penobscot ; and the well- 
 worn path skirting the edge of the bluff is an 
 ideal one for strolling in these perfect after 
 noons. When Grace had filled her basket, and 
 Harold his grape-box, we sat for a while under 
 a leaning pine, a headland sentinel where the 
 bluff juts out to the stream, and where we 
 could look for a considerable distance down 
 its calm and sunny waters. We watched the 
 vessels, and the crossing ferry-boat, for a while 
 in silence, when Harold bethought him of a 
 story I had commenced to tell him on an even 
 ing, and which was cut short by interruption. 
 
 "It was a story," I said, "concerning the 
 little daughter of an English officer stationed 
 in South Africa. This blue-eyed little girl 
 had many soldiers to love her, for there were
 
 Autumnal Notes. 335 
 
 no others so fair as she in that land ; and many 
 a kind hand was laid on her little curly head ; 
 in fact, the beautiful Lottie became the dar 
 ling of the regiment; while she did not spoil 
 because they petted her, for her heart was 
 golden, like her head. She had a child s love 
 for flowers; and many and beautiful are the 
 posies growing in that far-away land. So 
 this little image of her mother/ as they called 
 her, went away into a meadow to gather blos 
 soms. Can you not see her sunny face in that 
 fair meadow, with her hair floating free? It 
 seemed a delightful place to her. The sod 
 was rich, the grass was thick and green, and 
 often in her glee she stooped to pluck the 
 blossoms that glowed around her, 
 
 " Carnation, purple, azure, or gay speck d with gold. 
 
 "It was good to have so much freedom, she 
 thought; so, soon she strayed beyond the 
 meadow into an old forest, grand and cool, 
 whose shade seemed to invite her to enter. 
 While the day lasted, she wandered fearlessly 
 on. There were spaces and avenues in the 
 wood, through which she went, that seemed 
 just as pleasant to her as the meadow; for 
 here she could sit down on mossy banks and
 
 336 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 tufts of grass, and gather many beautiful blos 
 soms. Poor, dear little soul! when the dusk 
 fell, and she tried to find her way back over 
 the paths by which she had come, she became 
 lost and bewildered, and only went farther and 
 farther out of her way. Her heart beat very 
 wildly, and her tears were many, as she hastened 
 on, but she did not cry aloud. By and by she 
 came to a brook, which she partly crossed on 
 the stones ; then, as she did not know what to 
 do, she staid there, standing on a flat rock, 
 with her back against a very large one. Per 
 haps there was One who made it to her as 
 the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. 
 When night came on, and it was her bedtime, 
 she said her evening prayer, just as she always 
 did, and thought she would wait there till her 
 papa came for her. ... In the morning 
 he found her standing there, the sun shining 
 on her little tear-stained face : she was sure 
 he would come." 
 
 "What did her papa say to her?" said 
 Grace. 
 
 "Nothing, at first ; he just took her up in his 
 arms, hugged her to him, and carried her away 
 homeward. But, afterwards, when he asked 
 her what she saw there in the night, she told
 
 Autumnal Notes. 337 
 
 him what made him tremble. She said she 
 saw the moon come up above the trees ; and 
 then three or four great dogs came down to 
 the water to drink." 
 
 "Lions ! Was n t they lions, papa ?" broke 
 in Harold, eagerly. 
 
 "Yes, they were lions. She said they came 
 up to her, snuffed at her ; then they licked her 
 hands and cheek. They looked at her a while, 
 then shook their shaggy manes, turned, and 
 went away." 
 
 "O !" exclaimed Grace, "I should have been 
 so frightened ! Were their tongues soft, or 
 rough, like the cat s, when they lapped her? 
 Well, I am so glad they did n t eat her, why 
 did n t they eat her, papa ?" 
 
 "Perhaps they was n t hungry," said Harold. 
 
 "More likely they pitied the poor girl," Grace 
 rejoined. 
 
 "Probably they pitied the tot; she was so 
 little and so sweet, and so strange a being to 
 find in that lonely place. But can you think 
 of no other reason, my dear ones, why the 
 lions did not hurt her ?" 
 
 "The lions did n t hurt Daniel, cause God 
 would n t let em," said Grace. 
 
 "Right, my child. And are not these the 
 
 22
 
 338 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 best helps to safety God, and a pure heart? 
 What was it Daniel said to the king, who 
 wondered to find him alive that morning? 
 My God hath sent his angel, and has shut 
 the lions mouths, that they have not hurt me : 
 forasmuch as before him innocency was found 
 in me. So might the little girl have said, if she 
 had thought of it. Heaven grant that, in the 
 hour of their peril, my darlings may be found 
 as trustful and as innocent. A pure heart is 
 our best talisman." 
 
 XII. 
 
 Autumn is the season of star-songs, and of 
 astral fancies. Then, when the golden-rod 
 is losing its bloom, and the ripened fruit is 
 falling, and the leaves are swept away in splen 
 dor, clusters of fire are hung in every dark 
 tree, the "young-eyed cherubim" begin to choir, 
 and the poet s heart to burn. Then it is he 
 turns his eyes upon the heavens, to behold 
 
 "The sun, 
 
 And the most patient brilliance of the moon, 
 And stars by thousands." 
 
 Then it is, if ever, he wishes 
 
 "For wings to soar away 
 And mix with their eternal ray ;"
 
 Autumnal Notes. 339 
 
 or wishes, if he may not be raised to such a 
 godlike estate, that he at the least might be 
 able to draw "an angel down." 
 
 It was when the stars had begun to shine 
 with their autumnal luster that I had an astro 
 nomical dream or an astrological one, if there 
 be any preference in designation. The heav 
 ens were inscribed with fiery diagrams, the 
 Second Advent chart entire, with the planis- 
 pheric wonders of the Apocalypse and the 
 mysteries of the Hebrew seer turned loose, 
 together with all the comets that have ever 
 appeared in our system since the memory of 
 man. Like wild colts in a pasture, these celes 
 tial coursers ran visibly about the sky. Now, 
 do not attribute this riotous display to a diet 
 of mince-pie or cucumbers, nor dub mine "a 
 dyspeptic s dream ;" for in the hours precedent 
 to that sedative, the pillow, an abstinent man 
 am I. Whether the vision holds within it any 
 significance, even were a Joseph or a Daniel 
 here to interpret it, I can not say; only this, 
 that the impression was flamboyantly vivid. 
 
 Our calmer minds and colder eyes have 
 been accustomed to look toward the heavenly 
 bodies as to the types of steadfast being and 
 unfailing regularity.
 
 34 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 "The silent heavens have goings on, 
 The stars have tasks." 
 
 Ages of time are required for the slightest 
 variations of these distant orbs. We look, 
 and Sirius is there. Who expects Ursa Major 
 to shift his place? What seems to us at once 
 more majestic and more secure than these 
 golden milestones of infinite space ! Hamurabi, 
 Homer, Job looked on the same familiar clus 
 ters that greet our eyes, and named them, even 
 as we name them, Arcturus Pleiades 
 Orion : 
 
 "He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength, . . . 
 Which commandeth the sun, 
 And it ariseth not, 
 
 And which sealeth up the stars. . . . 
 Which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, 
 And the chambers of the south.* 
 
 Thus monstrous forms o er heaven s nocturnal 
 
 arch, 
 
 Seen by the sage in pomp celestial march ; 
 See Aries there his glittering brow unfold, 
 And raging Taurus toss his horns of gold ; 
 With bended bow the sullen Archer lowers, 
 And there Aquarius comes with all his showers ; 
 Lions and centaurs, gorgons, hydras rise, 
 And gods and heroes blaze along the skies."f 
 
 *Job. tHomer.
 
 Autumnal Notes. 341 
 
 And yet, musing on the time when the heav 
 ens shall be no more, and the elements shall 
 melt with fervent heat, 
 
 "When fire 
 Shall to the battlements of heaven aspire," 
 
 a half-insane and wizard fancy looks up, and 
 expects to see the shining universe suddenly 
 disbanded and dissolved; as if God did not 
 work through infinite aeons to the accomplish 
 ment of his decrees, before to use the majestic 
 terms of the Hebrew Scriptures "the heavens 
 are rolled up as a scroll." And if a comet 
 should appear, what superstitious woes and ter 
 rors will it not carry in its train ! What rueful, 
 royal significance of fate, those shadowy, su 
 pernumeraries of the sky once possessed! 
 
 "The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of 
 princes." 
 
 The old Roman Augurs saw in the comet 
 which appeared at the time when Julius Csesar 
 died, a glorious chariot sent to carry his daunt 
 less spirit to the gods. Such an appearance 
 was dreaded as 
 
 "Threatening the world with famine, plague, and 
 
 war; 
 To princes, death ; to kingdoms, many curses ;
 
 34 2 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 To all estates, inevitable losses ; 
 
 To herdsmen, rot ; to plowmen, hapless seasons ; 
 
 To seasons, storms; to cities, civil treasons." 
 
 How antiquated to the devotee of modern 
 literature, or to the student of recent astron 
 omy, will seem this bit of early English : 
 "Cometes signifie corruptions of the ayre. 
 They are signs of the warres, of changing 
 kyngedomes, great dearthe of corn, yea, a com 
 mon deathe of man and beast." And what 
 romancer in the field of astronomy to-day will 
 gravely set down a statement like the follow 
 ing? "Experience is an eminent evidence that 
 a comet like a sword portendeth war; and a 
 hairy comet with a beard denoteth the death 
 of kings, as if God and Nature intended by 
 comets to ring the knells of princes, esteem 
 ing bells in churches upon earth not sacred 
 enough for such illustrious eminent perform 
 ances" The writer evidently believed that 
 "divinity doth hedge a king," and thought that 
 royal people, like angels, are of a distinct and 
 superior species. 
 
 The wild-fire astronomers are not yet ex 
 tinct ; but they trim their sails to move on 
 another tack than that of the old-time super 
 stition. Comets are still of curious interest;
 
 Autumnal Notes. 343 
 
 but no longer, unless to some exceptionally 
 benighted vision, portentous. In the year 1812 
 a comet appeared in our northern sky, which 
 became an object of awe and apprehension 
 to many midnight gazers, as it was believed 
 by some to be the identical star that heralded 
 the birth of our Savior, and now appearing 
 the second time, as the forerunner of his final 
 coming to judgment, and the destruction of 
 the world. But there was one, at least, who 
 looked upon it without fear, though with de 
 light ; and, as he was a poet,* he has left us a 
 record of the impression it made upon him. I, 
 too, remember having, while yet a child, crept 
 from my bed to gaze again with awe and won 
 der, not unmingled with delight, upon a later 
 silvery, shadowy thing, seen through my cham 
 ber window : 
 
 How lovely is this wildered scene, 
 As twilight from her vaults so blue 
 
 Steals soft o er Yarrow s mountains green, 
 To sleep embalmed in midnight dew. 
 
 All hail, ye hills, whose towering height, 
 Like shadows, scoops the yielding sky ! 
 
 And thou, mysterious guest of night, 
 Dread traveler of immensity. 
 
 *The Ettrick Shepherd.
 
 344 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Stranger of heaven, I bid thee hail ! 
 
 Shred from the pall of glory riven, 
 That flashest in celestial gale, 
 
 Broad pennon of the King of heaven ! 
 
 Art thou the flag of woe and death, 
 From angel s ensign staff unfurled? 
 
 Art thou the standard of His wrath, 
 Waved o er a sordid sinful world ? 
 
 No, from that pure pellucid beam, 
 
 That erst o er plains of Bethlehem shone, 
 
 No latent evil we can deem, 
 
 Bright herald of the eternal throne ! 
 
 Whate er portends thy front of fire, 
 Thy streaming locks so lovely pale ; 
 
 Or peace to man, or judgments dire, 
 Stranger of heaven, I bid thee hail ! 
 
 Where hast thou roamed these thousand years ? 
 
 Why sought these polar paths again, 
 From wilderness of glowing spheres 
 
 To fling thy vesture o er the wain? 
 
 And when thou scal st the milky way, 
 And vanishest from human view, 
 
 A thousand worlds shall hail thy ray 
 Through wilds of yon empyreal blue. 
 
 O on thy rapid prow to glide ! 
 
 To sail the boundless skies with thee, 
 And plow the twinkling stars aside, 
 
 Light the gray portals of the morn.
 
 Autumnal Notes. 345 
 
 To brush the embers from the sun, 
 
 The icicles from off the pole, 
 Then far to other systems run, 
 
 Where other moons and planets roll! 
 
 Stranger of heaven ! O let thine eye 
 Smile on a rapt enthusiast s dream; 
 
 Eccentric as thy course on high 
 And airy as thine ambient beam. 
 
 And long, long may thy silver ray 
 Our northern arch at eve adorn ; 
 
 Then, wheeling to the east away, 
 
 Light the gray portals of the morn. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 What celestial virtue is in yonder star, that 
 it should magnetize my thought, or that its 
 alluring sparkle should wing my spirit away 
 on another track from this over which I have 
 seemed to be traveling? It matters not if 
 some conscious spirit is there, and from it 
 an effluence diffusing ; or, if it be only the point 
 of immaculate beauty that has lifted my musing 
 mind, the pleasant result is the same; care 
 and weariness are fading from me, as if they 
 were haggard ghosts, unable to support them 
 selves before that fair and steady gaze, so con-
 
 346 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 stant, serene, untroubled. There! the spell 
 is complete ! I have forgotten the chill that 
 is in this air, so late at evening, and have 
 spiritualized the river-mist that has been cling 
 ing around me with eerie suggestiveness, over 
 all this lonely road. I am, or was, a tired 
 man, for this is the lull following the full 
 pressure of Sabbath activity; and what frail 
 preacher has not by that time spent his nerve 
 to tedium, to exhaustion? But, under the 
 angel-touch of this star, and with memory, 
 and this fairer than Diana face to shine upon 
 me, 
 
 "Life must be all poetry, 
 And weariness a name." 
 
 So I throw myself back under the cover of the 
 old carriage, and let Dinah, if she will, wander 
 into the land of dreams. 
 
 It is the same star that looked upon my 
 boyhood, and is one of the few objects familiar 
 to me then, I can still look upon. Blessed 
 it is that, however we wander, our heavenly 
 companions do not greatly change, nor pass 
 from our view. And now I seem to sit upon 
 a certain hill, and look upon that star. The 
 tinkle of a cow bell sounds from the corner
 
 Autumnal Notes. 347 
 
 of the pasture fence; the croak and peep of 
 frogs come from the pool in the hollow, beyond 
 the clump of spruces; the shades are falling 
 deeper where stands the white-walled cottage, 
 and I hear my mother s voice calling me, 
 but still I sit musing, held by the golden finger 
 of the star. So I am away with my old shining 
 friend to Acadia, and to that region of it to 
 me most homelike, most enchanting and 
 radiant, even like my star; most richly dow 
 ered of nature, most favored by the poetic and 
 historic muse. Is it not singular I am here so 
 quickly, and without in the least disarranging 
 present concerns, or impeding my journey 
 along this mist-muffled river? I have eluded 
 the railways; the little steamer that crosses 
 Fundy has been untrodden by my corporeal 
 feet; yet I have gone to Acadia, not leaving 
 my mare without a driver. Even so! 
 
 "How swift is a glance of the mind ! 
 
 Compared with the speed of its flight 
 The tempest itself lags behind, 
 
 And the swift-winged arrows of light 
 When I think of my dear native land 
 
 In a moment I seem to be there." . . . 
 
 Those Sabbath evenings at home! Out of 
 that past, which never comes save in dreams,
 
 348 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 and yet, it seems, must be always coming, 
 their voices break melodiously ; and move ever 
 into clearer vision the beautiful semblances of 
 our singers, chastened, sainted, filled with ho 
 liest light. O, thou star ! art thou a witness 
 where some of them are now? The hours, 
 when the shadows fell and the lamp was 
 lighted, fled away on musical wings. Again 
 the scene is full before me, and I see how 
 cares were banished, and sorrow s consoled: 
 
 "I see my father in his chair, 
 
 With his two babes upon his knee, 
 
 While grandly on the evening air 
 Roll out the strains of old Dundee: 
 
 With reverent hearts, we happy boys 
 Would soulful join the strain divine, 
 While Ocean, or Auld Lyng Syne, 
 
 Would swell the ocean of our joys. 
 
 And one sweet voice there was, which rose 
 
 In tenor musical and clear. 
 Such as from harp seolian flows ; 
 
 And evermore thy voice I hear 
 In cadence soft ning thro the years, 
 
 And still I see thy tender eye, 
 
 Look, mother, as in years gone by, 
 Our rainbow in a realm of tears !
 
 Autumnal Notes. 349 
 
 There was one more, whose deep-toned bass 
 Strengthened the music of our choir; 
 
 A vigorous form, of manly grace, 
 
 With laughing dark eyes, like his sire : 
 
 He was our buoyant sailor boy; 
 
 In life s first spring he left his home." . . .* 
 
 Thus, our family constituted a choir, and 
 each could bear his part, with some credit to 
 himself, on the scores of time and melody; 
 but not infrequently were we re-enforced from 
 the neighboring houses. On Sabbath even 
 ings, when from the village the preacher was 
 absent, for the behoof of neighboring hamlets, 
 and when there was no public service, or even 
 after the people had been dismissed from 
 prayers at the little meeting-house, the several 
 families of the neighborhood would assemble 
 in one home, and then, with the old "Vocal 
 ist" open, Music s self would breathe and 
 speak. Overhead shines the star, making a 
 loftier anthem in the ear of him who is well 
 pleased with listening; but, below the hum 
 ble roof it looks upon, our voices uttering a 
 heart-language he may esteem as sweeter. 
 
 "They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim ; 
 
 Perhaps Dundee s wild-warbling measures rise, 
 Or plaintive Martyrs worthy of the name ; 
 
 * Rev. Burton W. Lockhart, D. D.
 
 350 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Or noble Elgin beats the heavenward flame, 
 The sweetest far of Scotia s holy lays : 
 
 Compared with these Italian trills are tame ; 
 The tickl d ears no heart-felt raptures raise, 
 Nae unison hae they with our Creator s praise." 
 
 Again the group is gathered. There is the 
 aged grandmother whose passion was music 
 with closed eyes and swaying body, and 
 spirit blissfully rocking in its harmonious 
 cradle, chanting, with breaking voice, when 
 at eighty years. Not sacred songs alone had 
 moving power with her; for almost instinct 
 ively her foot would caress the floor at sound 
 of a violin, long since she ceased to be a 
 maiden. Her ear was true as the pitch-pipe. 
 Her peculiarly effective rendering of the fune 
 real, yet sympathetic, China, that score some 
 one has declared fine enough for the use of an 
 angel, lingers in memory still. Again I hear 
 the family choir busy with the tenderly-beauti 
 ful lyric of Heber, mingling the most precious 
 memory of childhood with Sharon s flowery 
 region, and hallowed waters that "run 
 softly," 
 
 "Siloam s brook that flowed 
 Fast by the oracle of God."* 
 
 * Milton.
 
 Autumnal Notes. 351 
 
 While the former things remain, and the 
 past treasures are dear unto us, the words and 
 the old-time air will not lose their charm ; 
 I shall still hear them singing, 
 
 "By cool Siloam s shady rill 
 How fair the lily grows ! 
 How sweet the breath, beneath the hill, 
 Of Sharon s dewy rose ! 
 
 Lo ! such the child whose early feet 
 The paths of peace have trod ; 
 
 Whose secret heart, with influence sweet, 
 Is upward drawn to God." 
 
 Ah, when shall we hear again that deep, 
 full-hearted singing, such as now resounds in 
 my memory, that singing with the passion 
 in it, and in which the roused soul had full 
 play? The heart of this great world pulses 
 musically, as of old; but do the sons of men 
 utter themselves in song as spontaneously as 
 in our earlier years, putting forth their 
 
 "Artless notes in simple guise, 
 Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide?" 
 
 The home has fallen into silence, almost; 
 many of the sweet singing voices have ceased ; 
 the strains that ring to-night in memory can
 
 352 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 not be heard there; the things of music that 
 please us best are in the past ; we are tempted 
 to mingle discontent with gentle memories, for 
 we are never so deeply gratified in these days of 
 organs, choirs, conservatories, trills, arias, and 
 artistic, fantastic, and self-conscious singing. 
 The change and the fault may be with us, 
 but we are compelled to cry with our poet of 
 Rydal, 
 
 "Sing aloud 
 Old Songs, the precious music of the heart !" 
 
 XIV. 
 
 "Silently the shades of evening 
 
 Gather round my lowly door ; 
 Silently they bring before me 
 Faces I shall see no more. 
 
 O the lost, the unforgotten, 
 
 Though the world be oft forgot ; 
 
 O the shrouded and the lonely, 
 In our hearts they perish not !" 
 
 Come, my love, and let us chase with song 
 the shadows of this November evening ; let 
 us drown its wailing and sobbing. The Sab 
 bath has been vested as a widow in her weeds 
 of sorrow, and has wept away the light, as
 
 Autumnal Notes. 353 
 
 one who has suffered without resignation. 
 Hark! the throbbing heart of autumn the 
 beating of the rain without, the rattle of drops 
 against the window! Let us mingle with 
 the music of the storm, like silken gold shot 
 through a darker skein, some serene fibers of 
 a cheerful human melody. This day has 
 brought no weariness, that is born of the 
 task incessant ; but my heart, unvoiced, is full 
 of pent-up ardor "is hot and restless." Come, 
 let us be seated at the organ, and let the 
 breathing reeds aid the reluctance of our un- 
 practiced voices. Music shall be a great tide, 
 like that river of God flowing from under the 
 throne; it shall be, as Jean Paul Richter de 
 clared it, "a bridge over which our chastened 
 and purified spirits shall enter a brighter 
 world." Therefore, come, my love, be thou 
 seated beside me, and give to the hymns that 
 bear the burden, and utter the aspiration of the 
 ages, "the music of thy voice." Rarely, indeed, 
 have we the courage, I know, for what was 
 our familiar exercise, and our matin and ves 
 per habit. Yes, I know that the sweet child 
 of our heart, in whom the music dwelt, lifts 
 not now her voice in our hearing, spontaneous 
 as the rolling thrush, at fall of evening; yet, 
 23
 
 354 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 let us not therefore be silent. We have 
 cares and occupations, we have regrets and 
 sorrows; but let them not stifle song. Well, 
 what shall it be? With what strain shall we 
 commence ? Shall it be 
 
 "Sun of my soul thou Savior dear," 
 or, 
 
 "Lead thou, me on?" 
 
 No ; let us begin with 
 
 "O Love divine, that stooped to share 
 
 Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear !" 
 
 or with that sweet and holy hymn of St. 
 Bernard, 
 
 "Jesus, the very thought of thee 
 
 With sweetness fills the breast; 
 But sweeter far thy face to see, 
 And in thy presence rest. 
 
 No voice can sing, no heart can frame, 
 
 Nor can the memory find 
 A sweeter sound than Jesus name, 
 
 The Savior of mankind." 
 
 That is good ! Let us have none but the 
 best. Here are the strains our hearts delight 
 in, that stimulate devotion, that awaken mem 
 ory, these divine hymns, and the well-tried, 
 sweetly-enduring airs that match them, Peter- 
 boro Windham Meditation Bolyston
 
 Autumnal Notes. 355 
 
 Marlowe Dundee ! Ah ! and here is 
 Stockwell ! so we pause over that. Suddenly 
 at the close of the second stanza the organ 
 ceases, our voices are silent. Why are tears 
 in thine eyes, my dear one ? What seest thou ? 
 What needs that question! Our vision and 
 emotion are one. O, Music! and didst thou 
 summon that procession of the vanished ones? 
 Didst thou turn their pale faces and their ap 
 pealing eyes so pathetically upon us ? Ah ! 
 and do we wish to forget them, who loved us 
 so ? Nay ! Nay ! When we forget them there 
 can be no more a remembrance. "In our 
 hearts they perish not !" But we can sing no 
 more, to-night. Depart, thou, heart-awaken 
 ing spirit of Melody ! Away ! thou disquietest 
 our thought in vain ! "Thou speakest of the 
 things that are not, and can not be," thou 
 openest the rifled treasure-box, and scatterest 
 the ashes of urns and the dust of tombs upon 
 us. Therefore, for a while, be silent. Speak 
 to us once more upon the morrow. 
 
 XV. 
 
 A bit of reminiscence. It was on a Sabbath 
 evening, during one of my latest visits to the 
 old home; my father and I had been abroad
 
 356 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 together. We had been in attendance at the 
 evening service, and had returned. The horse 
 cared for, we came to the house, and sat with 
 mother beside the kitchen fire. Over us had 
 been a clouded sky of late October. 
 
 "Keen fitful gusts were whispering here and there, 
 Among the bushes, leafless half, and dry." 
 
 It was good to stretch out our hands to the 
 warmth within, and listen to the chill moodi- 
 ness of the wind that rustled in a melancholy 
 way about the house. We sat conversing until 
 it grew late, when father suggested that before 
 retiring we should sing a hymn together, as 
 had been our wont in time past ; and he imme 
 diately struck up the tune known as Ken 
 tucky, with the familiar evening hymn of John 
 Leland : 
 
 "The day is past and gone, 
 
 The evening shades appear; 
 O may we all remember well, 
 
 The night of death draws near !" 
 
 The melancholy musing vein was one my 
 father much indulged, and the sound of the 
 strain brought back a host of recollections. 
 How often, in days when their children were
 
 Autumnal Notes. 357 
 
 all about them, had that hymn been sung ! We 
 had all joined together then; but now the 
 musical company, brother, sister, all had van 
 ished and departed. The vision of that com 
 pany, assembled "within the walls of home," 
 came before me. I saw my father and mother 
 grown aged and failing, and saw in my pros 
 pect old graves and new, and a house silent 
 and deserted. When we came to the second 
 stanza, 
 
 "We lay our garments by 
 
 Upon our beds to rest ; 
 So death will soon disrobe us all 
 Of what we ve here possessed," 
 
 the vision had overwhelmed me, and my voice 
 was silent. In the middle of the third stanza 
 
 "Lord, keep us safe this night, 
 Secure from all our fears," 
 
 my mother s voice failed, and ceased. I looked 
 up and met her eyes, and read there what is 
 unutterable by human lips. O, how pitifully 
 sad, her face! Her eyes rilled suddenly with 
 tears, and her lips quivered. My father, being 
 full of his song, with his head thrown back, 
 kept on,
 
 358 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 "And when we early rise 
 
 And view th unwearied sun," 
 
 when, suddenly, as missing our voices, he 
 checked himself, and looked upon us half in 
 surprise to witness our emotion ; then, catching 
 the infection of our mood, his eyes and lips also 
 conveyed the unspeakable things of the heart, 
 just for a moment. Then he rose suddenly, 
 and said, "Let us go to bed." The hymn was 
 left unfinished. Never again on earth did we 
 lift our voices in song together. But may I 
 not hope to meet my father and mother again 
 in that place where hymns of God s children 
 are not checked with tears, where the heart 
 bears no painful burden, and 
 
 "Where beyond these voices there is peace?" 
 
 There, perhaps, we may conclude the hymn 
 with the stanza which is my heart s fondest 
 prayer : 
 
 "And when our days are past 
 And we from time remove, 
 O may we in thy bosom rest, 
 The bosom of thy love !"
 
 Autumnal Notes. 359 
 
 XVI. 
 
 How singularly, following upon the ec 
 static incitements to musical expression, of the 
 Hebrew psalmist: "Praise God in his sanctu 
 ary : praise him in the firmament of his power. 
 Praise him for his mighty acts: praise him 
 according to his excellent greatness. Praise 
 him with the sound of the trumpet : praise him 
 with the psaltery and harp. . . . Praise 
 him upon the loud cymbals: praise him upon 
 the high-sounding cymbals. Let every thing 
 that hath breath praise the Lord !" comes such 
 a passage as this from the "Confessions of 
 St. Augustine," which shows how deeply the 
 root of that rank ascetic weed had struck into 
 his heart: "Sometimes I wish," he says, "the 
 whole melody of sweet music, to which the 
 Psalms of David are generally set, to be ban 
 ished from my ears and that of the Church 
 itself." He has the true Puritan desire to make 
 his conscience the meter of the world, and to 
 subject all differing natures to the law he im 
 poses upon his own. How singular, too, does 
 his statement seem, following the lyric of the 
 lilies and the sparrows and ravens, and the 
 hymn sung with His disciples before the an-
 
 360 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 guish of Gethsemane and the cross ; following 
 the exhortation of the Chief Apostle, who ex 
 horted his converts to the use and practice of 
 sacred harmony : "Singing and making melody 
 in your heart unto the Lord;" following the 
 testimony of the Apocalyptic Spirit, and of him 
 who "heard the voice as of a great thunder, 
 and of harpers harping with their harps," and 
 the "new song" which they sang "before the 
 throne." The Saint might fall under suspicion 
 of our Supreme Poet, who declared : 
 
 "The man that hath no music in himself, 
 Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, 
 Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils : 
 The motions of his spirit are dull as night, 
 And his affections dark as Erebus : 
 Let no such man be trusted." 
 
 Yet Augustine looked upon music, not as his 
 aversion, but his temptation. It was a thing 
 of too great delight. "He blames himself," as 
 Hugh Black says, "for letting the melody 
 please him, and is suspicious of the emotions 
 created by the music. He calls it a gratifica 
 tion of the flesh, that he should find more satis 
 faction in the divine words when they are sung 
 with a sweet and accomplished voice than in
 
 Autumnal Notes. 361 
 
 the reading of the words themselves." A mas 
 ter of hymnody and a lover of music has re 
 minded us that 
 
 "We should suspect some danger nigh, 
 When we possess delight." 
 
 But must we fly all things agreeable, on that 
 account ? Let us still use ourselves to all things 
 fair and harmonious, as counting them inno 
 cent, while still we "watch and pray that we 
 enter into no temptation to excess." Are there 
 no gardens but the exotic and exuberant ? 
 
 I would move to the accomplishment of my 
 endless choice to the rhythm of a marching 
 melody. If there be sirens in the course to 
 wreck my bark, there are also angelic voices 
 upon the waters, and they will not betray me. 
 As one has said applying his words to a lower 
 aim, 
 
 "Let music sound while he doth make his choice, 
 Then if he lose, he makes a swanlike end, 
 Fading in music." 
 
 If a woman is to be wooed with a song, God 
 is so to be worshiped. I will deem, with Car- 
 lyle, that "music is a kind of inarticulate, un 
 fathomable speech which leads us to the edge
 
 362 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 of the infinite, and lets us for a moment gaze 
 on that." Or, with Kirke White, that 
 
 "Surely melody from heaven was sent, 
 
 To cheer the soul when tired with human strife, 
 To soothe the wayward heart by sorrow rent, 
 And soften down the rugged road of life." 
 
 Or, with Addison, that, "Music is the only 
 sensual gratification which men may indulge 
 unto excess without injury to their moral or 
 religious feelings." Neither yet would I say 
 just that ; but perhaps might ask, What con 
 stitutes excess in the measure of such an im 
 palpable thing as music? Can there be an 
 excessive appropriation of the infinite deep 
 of air," or of the waters of the crystal stream ? 
 Nay, music need not harm us by its excess; 
 for, as a great preacher* once said happily, "All 
 good music is sacred, if heard sacredly." We 
 regret to know it degraded and profaned, or 
 subject to an evil spirit. As Charles Wesley 
 improvised and sung, when interrupted by a 
 military band while preaching in the open air, 
 so we adopt these words : 
 
 "Listed into the cause of sin 
 
 Why should a good be evil? 
 Music, alas ! too long has been 
 Pressed to obey the devil. 
 * Beecher.
 
 Autumnal Notes. 363 
 
 Drunken, or lewd, or light, the lay 
 Flowed to the soul s undoing, 
 
 Widened and strewed with flowers the way 
 Down to eternal ruin." 
 
 But even in this perversion, to the pure, music 
 continues pure. I have found musical sounds 
 of whatever kind a sedative to soothe and allay, 
 or a sweet excitant to exalt and ennoble the 
 emotions. To the air I furnish my own motive 
 and the train of reflection. Yet surest, divin- 
 est, it is when directed to the highest aim : 
 
 "Take my voice, and let me sing 
 Always, only, for my King." 
 
 Cecil, listening rapt to the music of the organ 
 in church, touched by genius, with the hand of 
 a master upon its stops and keys, forgets the 
 appropriate order of service, and searches 
 tremblingly the pages of his prayer-book for 
 the desired chapter of Isaiah. We forgive his 
 absent thought and spiritual agitation; it is a 
 confession of the depth of the man s soul and 
 of the power of music ! I see Milton s uplifted 
 face as he fingers the keys of his instrument, 
 and recall his words : 
 
 "I thence 
 
 Invoke Thy aid to my adventurous song 
 That with no middle flight intends to soar. . .
 
 364 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 . . . Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer 
 Before all temples the upright heart and pure, 
 Instruct me, for thou know st. Thou from the first 
 Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread, 
 Dovelike, sat st brooding on the vast abyss, 
 And madest it pregnant : what in me is dark 
 Illumine; what is low, raise and support." 
 
 And Bishop Ken, our English psalmist of the 
 morning and evening hymns, if with less of 
 poetry, worships not with an inferior devo 
 tion, has little fear of song. It delights him 
 to reflect that, when he has been translated to 
 the great congregation whose voices falter not, 
 the sons of God on the earth will still be prais 
 ing God in strains which he has given them. 
 So the Wesleyan muse confesses to a like 
 source of satisfaction: 
 
 "If well I know the tuneful art 
 To captivate the human heart, 
 
 The glory, Lord, be thine ! 
 A servant of thy blessed will, 
 I here devote my utmost skill 
 
 To sound the praise divine. 
 
 Thine own musician, Lord, inspire, 
 And let my consecrated lyre 
 
 Repeat the psalmist s part ; 
 His Son and Thine reveal in me, 
 And fill with sacred melody 
 
 The fibers of my heart."
 
 Autumnal Notes. 365 
 
 XVII. 
 
 I have, this morning, had a vision of him 
 who sang of the Messiah; and as a glimpse 
 of his interior life gave me cheer, coming to 
 the support of wavering resolution, I cried 
 Amen ! to the Being and the Word ; for this is 
 ever the fount of strength, the right arm of 
 power, that a Being lies couchant behind the 
 Word ; and not only when a noble word is 
 spoken, or a sublime emotion musically en 
 shrined, but whenever, not momentarily, but 
 through a whole career of trial, contempt, pov 
 erty, neglect, gainsaying, 
 
 "A noble deed is wrought, 
 
 Our hearts in glad surprise 
 To higher levels rise. 
 
 The tidal wave of deeper souls 
 
 Into our inmost being rolls, 
 And lifts us unawares 
 Out of all meaner cares." 
 
 Behold, in this man, Handel, another mem 
 orable instance of celestial treasure, not squan 
 dered, but wisely husbanded and possessed, for 
 mankind s behoof and his own. He had his 
 divine ideal, an unseen pearl, behind a common 
 coat, and a presence that, if not ordinary, com 
 pelled no instant acceptance. He, too, had his
 
 366 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 industries his plodding toil amid the rudi 
 ments of his art, patiently teaching his sphere 
 to roll out into its place with destined music; 
 thus, as a common man, he was a seeming 
 delver in the ways of common men, which 
 brought their wonder and their scorn that he 
 should attempt above them and propose better 
 things than they. He heard them say: "We 
 live by bread and butter, and you starve," and 
 he answered back, "Not only by bread, 
 
 " We live by Admiration, Hope, and Love, 
 And even as these are well and wisely fixed, 
 In dignity of being we ascend. " 
 
 He sung, and labored to deliver right the 
 melodious message; but England was adder- 
 deaf to him. The magnates heard only to 
 mock. They had their concerts, and were 
 crowded; he gave his and seemed alone; but 
 the King was there, though the courtly 
 sneerer would not "intrude upon the privacy 
 of his sovereign." It became the fashion to 
 scorn this musical Milton, till no mime-fol 
 lower, puppet, comic, or fool professional but 
 had his jeer to fling, and must perish rather 
 than hold it. Twice was he bankrupt ; oft was
 
 Autumnal Notes. 367 
 
 he faint, yet pursuing; but he had his mark 
 and kept to it; "The Messiah" was written, 
 and, when the time ripened, first Hibernia, and 
 then Britain, was at his feet. Haydn cried out, 
 "Handel is the Father of us all !" Mozart 
 makes response: "When he chooses, Handel 
 strikes like a thunderbolt;" and Beethoven 
 gives emphasis, pointing to "the monarch of 
 the musical world," and his forty volumes, with 
 the declaration, "There there is the truth!" 
 Surely this man must fail, the common voice 
 had said, and events seemed assenting sadly, 
 but God and Time were on his side, and were 
 found helping him ; under the weight and pres 
 sure of grave or scornful opposition his music 
 grew within him, as grass around a stone, 
 until the seeming last became first, and his 
 triumph was wonderful. He followed the 
 noble in him, and the more ennobled it; and 
 his God led him to the goal. So has it been 
 put by a modern master:* 
 
 "Of the million or two, more or less, 
 
 I rule and possess, 
 One man, for some cause undefined, 
 Was least to my mind, 
 
 *Browning.
 
 368 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 When sudden how think ye, the end ? 
 
 Did I say without friend ? 
 Say rather, from marge to blue marge 
 
 The whole sky grew his targe 
 With the Sun s self for visible boss, 
 
 While an arm ran across 
 Which the earth heaved beneath like a breast 
 
 Where the wretch was safe prest ; 
 Do you see? Just my vengeance complete, 
 
 The man sprung to his feet, 
 Stood erect, caught at God s skirts, and prayed ! 
 
 So / was afraid !" 
 
 This is a man s glory, that sometimes, in 
 stead of a mud hovel, he will build himself 
 a tent from a patch of God s infinite sky, and 
 live in it royally on one of earth s crusts turn 
 ing to manna on his lips, till the wise fingers 
 of baser choosers cease from pointing, and his 
 beautiful home gradually expands itself into 
 a palace of crystal, or place of divine enter 
 tainment for coming multitudes, and a shrine 
 and sanctuary where other like consecrated 
 ones will live entempled. It is by this, men lift 
 us, that they are better than their records show 
 the Whittiers and Elliotts, who rouse us with 
 lyrical trumpets, and build the lofty rhyme of 
 manhood; that they have a permanent some-
 
 Autumnal Notes. 369 
 
 thing, defiant of life s shifting sand ; that they 
 are true to their ideals, and hold their 
 
 "Faith in the whispers of the lonely muse 
 When the whole world seems adverse to desert." 
 
 Why is it we are so moved when these men 
 speak to us ? It is that these were true ; no 
 wealth, celebrity, or applause could be good 
 enough for them to live for. That Handel stirs 
 our blood, when the heart of the cathedral 
 throbs, and the very pave-stones tremble, as if 
 the Deity trod them, at the breath of his 
 "Messiah ;" that, when again we hear the lofty 
 strain of Paradise begin, 
 
 "Of man s first disobedience, and the fruit 
 Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste 
 Brought death into the world, and all our woe :" 
 
 or, when we see the awful minstrel roll his 
 sightless orbs to heaven, and hear the cry, 
 
 "Descend from heaven, Urania !" 
 
 our souls are conscious of wings ; or that when 
 the muse of Rydal sings of Duty and of Immor 
 tality, we learn of new powers within us, flows 
 from a parallel majesty of character in them, 
 24
 
 370 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 a might of manhood, yea, of godhood, coequal 
 with the song. Thus it moves us the more that 
 they live and practice the nobleness they teach 
 in song ; and we are stirred by a heroic strain 
 of uniform character, a might of personality, 
 superbly beyond the dashing courage that wins 
 a battle, or the hungry tenacity that resists a 
 siege. Then 
 
 "Honor to those whose words or deeds 
 Thus help us in our daily needs, 
 And by their overflow 
 Raise us from what is low." 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Now, the flame of the forest burns low, and 
 the "dreamy magical light" of "the summer of 
 All Saints" has been over us. 
 
 "Now the leaf 
 Incessant rustles from the mournful grove." 
 
 A few embers remain ; all the rest are ashes. 
 The "carmine glare," and the golden haze, 
 that seemed neighbors of the sunset, linger no 
 longer. Little birds, that cheered us of late, 
 sing no longer in their green tents. They said 
 to one another, "Let us go !" and the poet.
 
 Autumnal Notes. 371 
 
 bereft of song, is alone with his musing. Yet 
 some of the feathered tribes remain to give 
 voice to the woods, but not the jubilant 
 voice of summer. The plaintive Bob White 
 was heard a little time ago ; and yet in Septem 
 ber there are plenty of blackbirds, that, with 
 their "frequent notes," keep up the music of 
 autumn, and with their "chatter" in "the field- 
 side wood." 
 
 "Blackbird and jay share with the crafty crow," 
 
 where such as still remain "are free to glean 
 upon the stubble." But, when the swallow has 
 gone, we breathe a sigh of regret with our 
 Canadian poet :* 
 
 "In the southward sky 
 The late swallows fly, 
 The red low willows 
 
 In the river quiver ; 
 From the beeches nigh 
 Russet leaves sail by, 
 The tawny billows 
 
 In the chill wind shiver ; 
 The beech burs burst, 
 
 And the nuts down patter ; 
 The red squirrels chatter 
 O er the wealth disperst. 
 
 "Roberts.
 
 372 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 In the keen late air 
 Is an impulse rare, 
 
 A sting like fire, 
 
 A desire past naming. 
 But the crisp mists rise 
 
 And my heart falls a-sighing, 
 
 Sighing, sighing, 
 That the sweet time dies !" 
 
 Sweet, indeed, to the soul of the singer, 
 though sad, are those calm days "ere the last 
 red leaf is whirled away," and earth becomes 
 drear under the bitter blast of November. 
 Lowell loved them, for the sake of those "vis 
 ionary tints the year puts on." He, too, painted 
 well 
 
 "The swamp-oak with his royal purple, . . . 
 The chestnuts, lavish of their long-hid gold ;" 
 
 and showed us how 
 
 "The tangled blackberry, crossed and recrossed, 
 
 weaves 
 A prickly network of ensanguined leaves." 
 
 Longfellow loved them ; for it was then he saw 
 "the prodigality of the golden harvest," the 
 "revelations of light," when 
 
 "The leaves fall, russet-golden and blood-red,"
 
 Autumnal Notes. 373 
 
 and heard "from far-off farms the sound of 
 flails, beating the triumphal march of Ceres 
 through the land." Did not Thomas Buchanan 
 Read, in his "Closing Scene," give us perfect 
 autumnal pictures ? So loved them the numer 
 ous choir of musical ones whose strains are 
 slipping into memory. 
 
 We walk under a shaded sky to-day. The 
 wood is bereft of all its brightness. There is 
 a hush in the air a resonance, as of a harp- 
 string tensely drawn. Whenever there is the 
 slightest motion in the woods, you hear it ; but 
 there is not even the call of a crow or the chirr 
 of a chipmunk. The chickadee has only a 
 slender sound of cheer. There are symptoms 
 that betoken gathering storm. Now a keen 
 tinkle of the brooklet at a little distance, a 
 sharp, startling crackle of the trodden bough, 
 these are all I hear. I pause listen to the 
 beating of my own heart: there is awe in the 
 sound! A leaf loosens above me, and falls 
 from bough to bough, with tiny rustle. Hark ! 
 I hear a voice ! A far-away whisper, that 
 comes nearer, as another russet disk floats by 
 my ear : "We all do fade as a leaf." Pick it up, 
 and gaze upon it. That is the skeleton and the
 
 374 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 ashen relic of a man ! "Even so," avers one of 
 the wisest of our kind 
 
 "My way of life 
 Is fall n into the sere and yellow leaf." 
 
 "That time of year thou may st in me behold, 
 
 When yellow leaves, or few, or none, do hang 
 Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, 
 Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds 
 sang." 
 
 And so, re-echoing the same, two centuries 
 later, we hearken to "poor proud Byron," 
 woeful as proud, alas ! 
 
 "My days are in the yellow leaf; 
 
 The fruit and flower of life are gone," 
 
 and, sad alternative ! 
 
 "The worm, the canker, and the grief, 
 Are mine alone." 
 
 The same note lengthens, and the chord of 
 memory vibrates to the touch of a Scottish 
 minstrel a half-forgotten Psalmody: 
 
 "Behold the emblem of thy state 
 
 In flowers that paint the field 
 When chill the blast of winter blows, 
 Away the summer flies ;
 
 Autumnal Notes. 375 
 
 The flowers resign their sunny robes, 
 
 And all their beauty dies. 
 Nipped by the year the forest fades ; 
 
 And, shaking to the wind, 
 The leaves toss to and fro, and streak 
 
 The wilderness behind." 
 
 XIX. 
 
 "Come forth into the light of things, 
 Let Nature be your teacher." 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 I have gone into the orchard, not because 
 the fruit is ripe, but because the day is; for 
 I know Hesperia can entice without golden 
 apples. This slope, lazily overspread by trees 
 older than their owner, is a living emerald, 
 drinking light, and dips down into the sunset. 
 Afar and near, 
 
 "The day, with splendor old, 
 Sinks through the depths of gold." 
 
 Birds house plentifully among these branches ; 
 now they are convivial and sociable, as they 
 flit from tree to tree, intercommuning with 
 their neighbors, enlivening me with their chirp 
 and carol. Thoughts are flying with their
 
 376 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 wings ; power creeps silently out of the ground ; 
 inspirations drop from the sky ; fancies trickle 
 in light from leaf-lips, and float mellowly down 
 from bits of cloud, dream-white; emotions 
 startle pleasantly with the droning flight of a 
 bumble-bee, or the thud of a fallen apple ; I 
 am become the center of a cluster of beneficent 
 forces. This is such a harvest as I long to 
 reap. These mystery-bearing brains of ours 
 uppermost branches of this sentient life-tree 
 how here, in such a half solitude, they become 
 the natural resting-places, or roosting-places, 
 for ideas great and small, yet all of them with 
 a certain divine light upon their plumage. 
 Here the eagle and the wren harbor together; 
 here come 
 
 "Truths that wake 
 To perish never;" 
 
 they come and go, and return again, just as 
 these birds do; nor are they the exclusive in 
 heritance or monopoly of any man ; you can 
 enslave them no more than you can enchain a 
 ghost, or appropriate a shadow. Plato and 
 Milton walk among these trees, and you are 
 taken into a communion that makes you master
 
 Autumnal Notes. 377 
 
 of all they felt or knew. You prove one divine 
 right of kings, the divine right to ideas ; they 
 are the property of him who can entertain 
 them, who can delight in them, weave for them 
 a royal robe, or give them a spacious guest- 
 chamber. Outwardly you may be yourself in 
 rags, but, if you are inwardly fit, they will con 
 descend to you like angels, and will walk with 
 you in purple. They come down to us from 
 afar; they seem to spring up in us anew, but 
 they are not as old merely as Mencius or Soc 
 rates, or the unnamed earliest seer, these 
 thoughts with the gold of truth shot through 
 them ; they are from eternity, the old, the new, 
 forever reappearing. They are like the grass 
 that smiles in green on these green smiling 
 trees that spread leaves and shadows. Is it 
 not the grass of a thousand years ago? The 
 long-enduring, haunting thoughts, come they 
 not forth of God? and are they not rich in 
 treasure of the Infinite ? They are the peculiar 
 glory of the seer and the artist, who stand 
 where the light of Shekinah falls upon them ; 
 but we who are of the common multitude have 
 our hours when we prize them too. Their tem 
 ple-halls stand open for winds more balmy with
 
 378 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 inspiration than were ever wafted over Thes- 
 saly to blow through, and through all their 
 chambers float echoes of 
 
 "The eternal deep 
 Haunted forever by the eternal mind." 
 
 They come and go, and return again, like these 
 birds. Who has not felt the sudden accession, 
 and again desertion, of ideas and powers ; the 
 inflowing, the overflooding and entire posses 
 sion of the soul ; and then again, the 
 
 "Fallings from us, vanishings, 
 Blank misgivings," 
 
 as if premonitory of that day when "desire shall 
 fail . . . and those that look out of the 
 windows be darkened," or when 
 
 "Life and thought have gone away 
 Side by side." 
 
 Never, never three sympathetic people shall 
 come together but ideas and persentiments shall 
 flit from brain to brain, like these birds from 
 tree to tree. "That very thought occurred to 
 me just before you uttered it," said my com 
 panion, as we sat together in the twilight here 
 yesterday evening. Did poet or philosopher
 
 Autumnal Notes. 379 
 
 originate his ideas ? Rather he was en rap port f 
 and they came to him ; they settled on him from 
 somewhere, like birds on the deck of a ship 
 in midocean. They came to him who would 
 entertain them, who waited for and drew them ; 
 who passed them through the finer mold of his 
 brain and brought them to forms of higher 
 delicacy and nobler beauty. Love transfused 
 them as they passed the alembic of his individ 
 uality, and his genius converted their dusky 
 carbon into the gleaming and precious. But 
 the poet could no more create the least of them 
 than he could create a sun. We are but the 
 treasurers of a brilliant intellectual currency, 
 and there is a government that will allow the 
 master to open his mint and put thereupon his 
 private stamp and superscription ; but the bul 
 lion was found, not made, and the store can be 
 made no greater than that God hid in the cham 
 bers of the rocks. Beautiful ideas ! Inspiring, 
 ennobling ideas! Ideas that feed me and fire 
 me, that make a radiance of my way ! Divine 
 ideas ! I am glad that ye have come to me ! 
 I will delight myself in the sweet, wholesome 
 circulation, vital as the airs among these trees ; 
 or the sap within them. I will linger and wait 
 for you ; I will wash myself of the sordid and
 
 380 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 the base ; for your sake I will be passive, and I 
 will be strenuous, that all your gift and gain 
 may flow to me. Yet I can not but choose to 
 be your willing slave and captive : 
 
 "The eye it can not choose but see ; 
 
 We can not bid the ear be still ; 
 Our bodies feel, where er they be, 
 
 Against or with our will. 
 Nor less I deem that there are powers 
 
 Which of themselves our minds impress ; 
 That we can feed this mind of ours 
 
 In a wise passiveness." 
 
 XX. 
 
 "Life is to wake, not sleep, 
 Rise, and not rest." Browning. 
 
 O rich and precious decays of life, by which 
 the soul s chief treasure is amassed ! how can 
 we prosper without you? And why will we 
 mourn amid the pains by which we are en 
 dowed? Do we not grow, even as the forest 
 giants, increasing our substance with the ripe 
 result of all fallings from us ; even by having 
 counted many loves and hopes and aspirings, 
 yea, our most valued product, dead and vain? 
 And is not loss, or the shadow of it, the surest
 
 Autumnal Notes. 381 
 
 test of true possession, and the best harbinger 
 of continuance? 
 
 But if the thought born of the still woods 
 be somber, it is also soothing. We recall the 
 beautiful words of Ruskin: "If ever, in au 
 tumn, a pensiveness falls upon us as the leaves 
 drift by in their fading, may we not wisely look 
 up in hope to their mighty monuments? Be 
 hold how fair, how far prolonged, in arch and 
 aisle, the avenues of the valley ; the fringes of 
 the hills ! So stately so eternal ; the joy of 
 man, the comfort of all living creatures; the 
 glory of the earth they are but monuments of 
 those poor leaves that flit faintly past us to 
 die. Let them not pass without our under 
 standing their last counsel and example : that 
 we also, careless of monument by the grave, 
 may build it in the world monument by which 
 men may be taught to remember, not where we 
 died, but where we lived." 
 
 Ah, well ! We will be admonished. With 
 Beranger we will scatter the gold, in the joy of 
 charity, that might build our tomb. The essen 
 tial "conditions of our being are good, so we do 
 not ourselves vitiate and embitter them. May 
 we not still trust in Him who gave the flower 
 ing, and with whom is also the fading-time?
 
 382 Pagers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 We will accept our autumn, when it may come 
 after an umvasted summer. With willing 
 grace may we sink, bright at our falling, as is 
 the maple leaf; or, as the elm and the willow, 
 may we yield our honors when the gathering 
 t : me is near ! Then, when we are in the clasp 
 of Him who never relaxes, we may hear him 
 say, "Mistake me not !" 
 
 " Guess now who holds thee? Death ! I said. But 
 
 there 
 
 The silver answer rang. . . . Not Death, but 
 Love ! " 
 
 XXI. 
 AN AUTUMN HYMN. 
 
 Autumn has come sweet Sabbath of the year ! 
 
 Its feast of splendor satiates our eyes; 
 Its saddening music, falling on the ear, 
 
 Bids pensive musing in the heart arise. 
 Now earlier shadows veil the sunset skies, 
 
 And the bright stars and harvest moon do shine ; 
 The woodbine s blood-red leaves the morn espies 
 
 Hung from the dripping elm; the yellowing pine 
 
 And fading golden-rod denote the year s decline. 
 
 The light is mellow over all the hills ; 
 
 Silence in all the vales sits listening; 
 A holy hush the sky s great temple fills, 
 
 As if earth waited for her spotless King:
 
 Autumnal Notes. 383 
 
 Nor is there want of sacred ministering; 
 The laden trees seem priests all consecrate ; 
 
 The rustling cornfields seem to chant his praise. 
 Surely man s thankfulness, mid his estate, 
 
 A gladsome hymn should not forget to raise 
 
 To Him whose bounteous hand doth ever crown 
 our days. 
 
 To him be praise when harvest fields are bare, 
 And all the sheaves are safely gathered in ; 
 
 When merry threshers vex the sunny air, 
 And ruddy apples crowd the scented bin ! 
 
 Praise him, when from the dim mill s misty din, 
 In floury bags the golden meal comes home ; 
 
 And praise him for the bread ye yet shall win, 
 When steaming horses plow the fertile loam, 
 And so prepare the way for harvests yet to come. 
 
 Praise him, when round the fireside, sparkling clear. 
 
 The household group at evening smiling meet ! 
 To him whose goodness crowns the circling year 
 
 Lift up the choral hymn in accents sweet; 
 The comeliness of song lift to his seat 
 
 Who from his palace of eternal praise 
 His earth-born children hears their joys repeat, 
 
 Nor answer to their thankfulness delays, 
 
 But more their grateful love with blessing new 
 repays. 
 
 Our chasten d hearts shall hunger not for gold ; 
 Enough the splendor of these sunset skies ; 
 
 The scarlet pomp from maple bough unrolled, 
 The high-built woods resplendent fantasies :
 
 384 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 Ah, think ! if these no more could win thine eyes, 
 Nor earth, nor sky, nor the majestic sea ; 
 
 If Love were gone that jewel mortals prize, 
 With all that makes the soul s felicity, 
 What then were gems and gold, O famish d one ! 
 to thee ! 
 
 Not bread, that strengthened the heart of man 
 For this be praise ! alone our Father gives ; 
 
 More provident, the heavenly Husbandman 
 Gives that diviner food by which man lives : 
 
 Not gladdening wine alone the heart receives, 
 Nor oil, which makes his mortal face to shine ; 
 
 Like autumn rain from dripping cottage eaves, 
 He gives the thirsty soul a draught divine : 
 Come! lay your thankful sheaves, firstfruits 
 upon His shrine !
 
 (H 6ood Wish for ]^y Reader.) 
 
 thee, brother! May he give 
 
 Softly the treasure of the years 
 Into thy bosom; make thee live 
 
 The life that knows and sees and hears 
 The brightest, fairest, of the earth 
 
 The certainties of hope and time, 
 Till that supreme, immortal birth 
 
 Wherein the soul shall reach her prime;- 
 Give thee his patience, kindness, truth, 
 
 His wondrous, sacrificing love; 
 The stainless innocence of youth, 
 
 The gentleness of lamb and dove. 
 
 And when to thine Emmaus dim 
 
 Thou goest sadly, droo ping-eyed, 
 O may the hallowed feet of him 
 
 Come after, in the eventide, 
 And join thee in the way, and make 
 
 Thy heart within thee glow and burn, 
 And then to be his guest thee take; 
 
 Soon to a shape of glory turn 
 And vanish: may thy sorrow still 
 
 Be comforted; thy labor blest; 
 And may his peace thy bosom fill, 
 
 When thou shalt enter to his rest. 
 
 25 385
 
 386 Papers of Pastor Felix. 
 
 God give thee many a sunset store 
 
 Of poet fancies, golden things! 
 Sweet, simple songs, croon d o er and o er, 
 
 And many bright imaginings; 
 With music thee exalt above 
 
 All sense of care, on Rapture s wing, 
 And make thee yearn, and bid thee love, 
 
 Where Handel and Beethoven sing: 
 Give thee a fireside nook; the field 
 
 Besprent with June s fresh largess o er; 
 The comfort brooks and gardens yield; 
 
 The uplift of the hills; the lore 
 Of Ocean, and the Bards; the smile 
 
 Of wife and child and friends, at even; 
 Rest and refreshment, after toil; 
 
 And, after Earth and Time then, Heaven!
 
 
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