Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law,

Haply the watchful young men saw
Sweet doorway pictures of the curls
And curious eyes of merry girls,
Lifting their hands in mock defence
Against the snow-ball's compliments,
And reading in each missive tost
The charm with Eden never lost.

We heard once more the sleighbells' sound;

And, following where the teamsters
led,

The wise old Doctor went his round,
Just pausing at our door to say,
In the brief autocratic way
Of one who, prompt at Duty's call,
Was free to urge her claim on all,

That some poor neighbor sick abed At night our mother's aid would need. For, one in generous thought and deed,

What mattered in the sufferer's sight

The Quaker matron's inward light, The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed? All hearts confess the saints elect

Who, twain in faith, in love agree, And melt not in an acid sect

The Christian pearl of charity!

The village paper to our door.
Lo! broadening outward as we read,

Το warmer zones the horizon spread;

In panoramic length unrolled
We saw the marvels that it told.
Before us passed the painted Creeks,
And daft McGregor on his raids
In Costa Rica's everglades.
And up Taygetos winding slow
Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks,
A Turk's head at each saddle-bow!
Welcome to us its week-old news,
Its corner for the rustic Muse,

Its monthly gauge of snow and
rain,

Its record, mingling in a breath
The wedding knell and dirge of
death;

Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale,
The latest culprit sent to jail;
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost,
Its vendue sales and goods at cost,

And traffic calling loud for gain.
We felt the stir of hall and street,
The pulse of life that round us beat;
The chill embargo of the snow
Was melted in the genial glow;
Wide swung again our ice-locked
door,

And all the world was ours more!

once

Clasp, Angel of the backward look
And folded wings of ashen gray
And voice of echoes far away,
The brazen covers of thy book;
The weird palimpsest old and vast,
Wherein thou hid'st the spectral
past;
Where, closely mingling, pale and
glow

The characters of joy and woe;
The monographs of outlived years,
Or smile-illumed or dim with tears,
Green hills of life that slope to
death,

And haunts of home, who vistaed trees

Shade off to mournful cypresses

They rested there, escaped awhile From cares that wear the life

away,

To eat the lotus of the Nile

And drink the poppies of Cathay,

To fling their loads of custom down,

Like drift-weed, on the sand-slopes brown,

And in the sea waves drown the rest. less pack

Of duties, claims, and needs that barked upon their track.

One, with his beard scarce silvered,
bore

A ready credence in his looks,
A lettered magnate, lording o'er

An ever-widening realm of books.
In him brain-currents, near and far,
Converged as in a Leyden jar;
The old, dead authors thronged him
round about,

And Elzevir's gray ghosts from leathern graves looked out.

He knew each living pundit well, Could weigh the gifts of him or her,

And well the market value tell

Of poet and philosopher.
But if he lost, the scenes behind,
Somewhat of reverence vague and
blind,

Finding the actors human at the best,

No readier lips than his the good he saw confessed.

His boyhood fancies not outgrown, He loved himself the singer's art; Tenderly, gently, by his own

He knew and judged an author's heart.

And one there was, a dreamer born, Who, with a misson to fulfil, Had left the Muses' haunts to turn The crank of an opinion-mill, Making his rustic reed of song A weapon in the war with wrong, Yoking his fancy to the breakingplough

That beam-deep turned the soil for truth to spring and grow.

Too quiet seemed the man to ride
The winged Hippogriff Reform;
Was his a voice from side to side
To pierce the tumult of the
storm?

A silent, shy, peace-loving man,
He seemed no fiery partisan
To hold his way against the public
frown,

The ban of Church and State, the

fierce mob's hounding down.

For while he wrought with strenuous will

The work his hands had found to do,

Like letters from the sand, the work of yesterday.

And one, whose Arab face was
tanned

By tropic sun and boreal frost,
So travelled there was scarce a land

Or people left him to exhaust,
In idling mood had from him hurled
The poor squeezed orange of the
world,

And in the tent-shade, as beneath a palm,

Smoked, cross-legged like a Turk, in Oriental calm.

Untouched as yet by wealth and pride,

That virgin innocence of beach : No shingly monster, hundredeyed,

Stared its gray sand-birds out of reach;

Unhoused, save where, at intervals, The white tents showed their canvas walls,

Where brief sojourners, in the cool, soft air,

Forgot their inland heats, hard toil, and year-long care.

Sometimes along the wheel-deep sand

A one-horse wagon slowly crawled,

Deep laden with a youthful band, Whose look some homestead old recalled;

Brother perchance, and sisters twain,

And one whose blue eyes told, more

plain Than the free language of her rosy lip, Of the still dearer claim of love's relationship.

With cheeks of russet-orchard tint, The light laugh of their native rills,

The perfume of their garden's mint,

The breezy freedom of the hills, They bore, in unrestrained delight, The motto of the Garter's knight, Careless as if from every gazing thing Hid by their innocence, as Gyges by his ring.

And heard the ghosts on Haley's Isle complain,

Speak him off shore, and beg a passage to old Spain!