And Deering's Woods are fresh and fair,
And with joy that is almost pain,
My heart goes back to wander there,

And among the dreams of the days that were
I find my lost youth again.

And the strange and beautiful song,

The groves are repeating it still,

"A boy's will is the wind's will.

And the thoughts of a youth are long, long thoughts."

THE ROPEWALK.

IN that building, long and low,
With its windows all a-row,

Like the port-holes of a hulk,
Human spiders spin and spin,
Backward down their thread so thin
Drooping, each a hempen bulk.

At the end, an open door;
Squares of sunshine on the floor
Light the long and dusky lane;
And the whirring of a wheel,
Dull and drowsy, makes me feel
All its spokes are in my brain.
As the spinners to the end
Downward go and re-ascend,

Gleam the long threads in the sun;
While within this brain of mine
Cobwebs brighter and more fine
By the busy wheel are spun.

Two fair maidens in a swing,
Like white doves upon the wing,
First before my vision pass;
Laughing, as their gentle hands
Closely clasp the twisted strands,
At their shadow on the grass.

Then a booth of mountebanks,
With its smell of tan and planks,
And a girl poised high in air
On a cord, in spangled dress.
With a faded loveliness,

And a weary look of care.
Then a homestead among farms,
And a woman with bare arms
Drawing water from a well;
As the bucket mounts apace,
With it mounts her own fair face,
As at some magician's spell.

Then an old man in a tower,
Ringing loud the noontide hour,

While the rope coils round and round
Like a serpent at his feet,

And again, in swift retreat,

Nearly lifts him from the ground.

Then within a prison-yard,
Faces fixed, and stern, and hard,
Laughter and indecent mirth;
Ah! it is the gallows-tree;
Breath of Christian charity,

Blow, and sweep it from the earth!
Then a schoolboy, with his kite
Gleaming in a sky of light,

And an eager, upward look ;
Steeds pursued through lane and field;
Fowlers with their snares concealed;
And an angler by a brook.

Ships rejoicing in the breeze,

Wrecks that float o'er unknown seas,

Anchors dragged through faithless sand;

Sea-fog drifting overhead,

And, with lessening line and lead,

Sailors feeling for the land,

All these scenes do I behold,
These, and many left untold,

In that building long and low;

While the wheel goes round and round,
With a drowsy dreamy sound,

All the spinners backward go.

THE GOLDEN MILESTONE.

LEAFLESS are the trees; their purple branches Spread themselves abroad, like reefs of coral, Rising silent

In the Red Sea of the Winter sunset.

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!

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 them 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.

SANTA FILOMENA.81

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.