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From the hundred chimneys of the village,
Like the Afreet in the Arabian story,
Smoky columns

Tower aloft into the air of amber.

At the window winks the flickering fire-light;
Here and there the lamps of evening glimmer,
Social watch-fires

Answering one another through the darkness.

On the hearth the lighted logs are glowing,
And like Ariel in the cloven pine-tree

For its freedom

Groans and sighs the air imprisoned in them.
By the fireside there are old men seated,
Seeing ruined cities in the ashes,

Asking sadly

Of the Past what it can ne er restore them.

By the fireside there are youthful dreamers,
Building castles fair, with stately stairways,
Asking blindly

Of the Future what it cannot give them.

By the fireside tragedies are acted
In whose scenes appear two actors only,
Wife and husband,

And above them God the sole spectator.

By the fireside there are peace and comfort,
Wives and children, with fair, thoughtful faces,
Waiting, watching

For a well-known footstep in the passage.

Each man's chimney is his Golden Milestone,
Is the central point from which he measures
Every distance

Through the gateways of the world around him.

In his farthest wanderings still he sees it;
Hears the talking flame, the answering night-wind,
As he heard them

When he sat with those who were, but are not.

Happy he whom neither wealth nor fashion,
Nor the march of the encroaching city,

Drives an exile

From the hearth of his ancestral homestead.

We may build more splendid habitations,

Fill our rooms with paintings and with sculptures, But we cannot

Buy with gold the old associations!

THIS song of mine

Is a Song of the Vine,

CATAWBA WINE.

To be sung by the glowing embers Of wayside inns,

When the rain begins

To darken the drear Novembers.

It is not a song

Of the Scuppernong,
From warm Carolinian valleys,
Nor the Isabel

And the Muscadel
That bask in our garden alleys.

Nor the red Mustang,
Whose clusters hang
O'er the waves of the Colorado,
And the fiery flood

Of whose purple blood
Has a dash of Spanish bravado.

For richest and best

Is the wine of the West,

That grows by the Beautiful River;
Whose sweet perfume
Fills all the room

With a benison on the giver.

And as hollow trees
Are the haunts of bees,

For ever going and coming;

So this crystal hive

Is all alive

With a swarming and buzzing and humming.

Very good in its way

Is the Verzenay,

Or the Sillery soft and creamy ;

But Catawba wine

Has a taste more divine,
More dulcet, delicious, and dreamy.

There grows no vine
By the haunted Rhine,
By Danube or Guadalquivir,
Nor on island or cape,
That bears such a grape
As grows by the Beautiful River.
Drugged is their juice
For foreign use,

When shipped o'er the reeling Atlantic,
To rack our brains

With the fever pains,

That have driven the Old World frantic.

To the sewers and sinks
With all such drinks,

And after thein tumble the mixer;
For a poison malign

Is such Borgia wine,

Or at best but a Devil's Elixir.

While pure as a spring

Is the wine I sing.

And to praise it, one needs but name it; For Catawba wine

Has need of no sign,

No tavern-bush to proclaim it.

And this Song of the Vine,
This greeting of mine,

The winds and the birds shall deliver

To the Queen of the West,

In her garlands dressed,

On the banks of the Beautiful River.

DAYBREAK.

A WIND came up out of the sea,
It touched the wood-bird's folded wing,
And said, "O mists, make room for And said, "O bird, awake and sing."
And o'er the farms, "O chanticleer,

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It hailed the ships, and cried, "Sail Your clarion blow; the day is near.'

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Ye mariners, the night is gone." And hurried landward far away, Crying, "Awake! it is the day." It said unto the forest, "Shout! Hang all your leafy banners out!"

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It whispered to the fields of corn, "Bow down, and hail the coming morn." It shouted through the belfry-tower, "Awake, O bell! proclaim the hour." It crossed the churchyard with a sigh, And said, "Not yet! in quiet lie."

SANTA FILOMENA.

WHENE'ER a noble deed is wrought,
Whene'er is spoken a noble thought,
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.

Honour to those whose words or deeds
Thus help us in our daily needs,

And by their overflow

Raise us from what is low!

Thus thought I, as by night I read
Of the great army of the dead,

The trenches cold and damp,
The starved and frozen camp,-
The wounded from the battle-plain,
In dreary hospitals of pain,

The cheerless corridors,
The cold and stony floors.
Lo! in that house of misery
A lady with a lamp I see

Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room.

And slow, as in a dream of bliss,
The speechless sufferer turns to kiss
Her shadow, as it falls
Upon the darkening walls.

As if a door in heaven should be
Opened and then closed suddenly,
The vision came and went,
The light shone and was spent.

On England's annals, through the long
Hereafter of her speech and song,

That light its rays shall cast
From portals of the past.

A Lady with a Lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good,
Heroic womanhood.

Nor even shall be wanting here
The palm, the lily, and the spear,
The symbols that of yore
Saint Filomena bore.

THE FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY OF AGASSIZ.

Ir was fifty years ago,

In the pleasant month of May, In the beautiful Pays de Vaud, A child in its cradle lay.

And Nature, the old nurse, took The child upon her knee, Saying "Here is a story-book

MAY 28, 1857.

Thy Father has written for thee." "Come, wander with me," she said, "Into regions yet untrod; And read what is still unread

In the manuscripts of God."
And he wandered away and away
With Nature, the dear old nurse,
Who sang to him night and day
The rhymes of the universe.

And whenever the way seemed long,
Or his heart began to fail,
She would sing a more wonderful song,
Or tell a more marvellous tale.

So she keeps him still a child,

And will not let him go, Though at times his heart beats wild For the beautiful Pays de Vaud; Though at times he hears in his dreams The Ranz des Vaches of old, And the rush of mountain streams From glaciers clear and cold; And the mother at home says, For his voice I listen and yearn; It is growing late and dark,

"Hark!

And my boy does not return!"

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But Othere, the old sea-captain,

He neither paused nor stirred, Till the King listened, and then Once more took up his pen,

And wrote down every word.

"And now the land," said Othere,

"Bent southward suddenly, And I followed the curving shore, And ever southward bore

Into a nameless sea.

"And there we hunted the walrus,
The narwhale, and the seal;
Ha! 'twas a noble game!
And like the lightning's flame
Flew our harpoons of steel.

"There were six of us all together,
Norsemen of Helgoland;
In two days and no more

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COME to me, O ye children!

CHILDREN.

For I hear you at your play,
And the questions that perplexed me
Have vanished quite away.

Ye open the eastern windows,

That look towards the sun,
Where thoughts are singing swallows,
And the brooks of morning run.

In your hearts are the birds and the sunshine,

In your thoughts the brooklet's flow, But in mine is the wind of Autumn,

And the first fall of the snow.

Ah! what would the world be to us,

If the children were no more?
We should dread the desert behind us
Worse than the dark before.

What the leaves are to the forest,
With light and air for food,

Ere their sweet and tender juices
Have been hardened into wood,-
That to the world are children;

Through them it feels the glow
Of a brighter and sunnier climate
Than reaches the trunks below.

Come to me, O ye children!

And whisper in my ear

What the birds and the winds are singing

In your sunny atmosphere.

For what are all our contrivings,

And the wisdom of our books,
When compared with your caresses,
And the gladness of your looks?

Ye are better than all the ballads
That ever were sung or said;
For ye are living poems,

And all the rest are dead.

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