THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH.

BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

Under a spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands ;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan;

His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate'er he can,

And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night, You can hear his bellows blow;

You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,

Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low.

And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;

They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,

And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing floor.

He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;

He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter's voice,
Singing in the village choir,

And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother's voice
Singing in Paradise !

He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;

And with his hard rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling, rejoicing, -sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught !

Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought!

DEFINITIONS.-Smith'ỹ, a blacksmith's shop. Sin'ew y, strong, muscular. Brawn'ỹ, having large, strong muscles. Sledge, a heavy hammer used by blacksmiths. Choir (kwir), a band of singers in a church.

NOTE. This poem was first published in the Knickerbocker Magazine for November, 1840. It was suggested by a blacksmith's shop which stood beneath a horse-chestnut tree in Cambridge, not far from Mr. Longfellow's home. The tree was cut down in 1876, and from a portion of the wood a chair was afterwards made and presented to the poet.

WILL'S DREAM OF THE WORLD.

BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

The mill where Will lived with his adopted parents stood in a falling valley between pine woods and great mountains. Above, hill after hill soared upward until they soared out of the depth of the hardiest timber, and stood naked against the sky. Some way up, a long gray village lay like a seam or a rag of vapor on a wooded hillside; and when the wind was favorable, the sound of the church bells would drop down, thin and silvery, to Will. Below, the valley grew ever steeper and steeper, and at the same time widened out on either hand; and from an eminence beside the mill it was possible to see its whole length and away beyond it over a wide plain, where the river turned and shone and moved on from city to city on its voyage toward the sea.

It chanced that over this valley there lay a pass into a neighboring kingdom, so that, quiet and rural as it was, the road that ran along beside the river was a high thoroughfare between two splendid and powerful societies. All through the summer, traveling carriages came crawling up or went plunging briskly downward past the mill; and as it happened that the other side was very much easier of ascent, the path was not much frequented, except by people going in one direction; and of all the carriages that Will saw go by, five sixths were plunging briskly downward and only one sixth crawling up. Much more was this the case with foot passengers. All the light-footed tourists, all the peddlers laden with strange wares, were tending downward like the river that accompanied their path.

Nor was this all; for when Will was yet a child a disastrous war arose over a great part of the world. The newspapers were full of defeats and victories, the earth rang with cavalry hoofs, and often for days together and for miles around the coil of battle terrified good people from their labors in the field. Of all this nothing was heard for a long time in the valley; but at last one of the commanders pushed an army over the pass by forced marches, and for three days horse and foot, cannon and tumbril, drum and standard, kept pouring downward past the mill.

All day the child stood and watched them on their passage the rhythmical stride, the pale unshaven faces tanned about the eyes, the tattered flags, filled him with a sense of weariness, pity, and wonder; and all night long, after he was in bed, he could hear the cannon pounding and the feet trampling, and the great armament sweeping onward and downward past the mill.

No one in the valley ever learned the fate of the expedition; but Will saw one thing plainly—that not a man returned. Whither had they all gone? Whither went all the tourists and peddlers with strange wares? whither all the brisk carriages with servants in uniform? whither the water of the stream, ever coursing downward and ever renewed from above? Even the wind blew oftener down the valley, and carried the dead leaves along with it in the fall.

It seemed like a great conspiracy of things animate and inanimate; they all went downward, fleetly and gayly downward, and only he, it seemed, remained behind, like a stock upon the wayside. It sometimes made him glad when he noticed how the fishes kept their heads up

stream. They, at least, stood faithfully by him, while all else were posting downward to the unknown world.

One evening he asked the miller where the river went. "It goes down the valley," answered he, "and turns ever so many mills,-six-score mills they say, and it is none the wearier after all. And then it goes out into the lowlands, and waters the great corn country, and runs through many a fine city (so they say), where kings live all alone in great palaces, with a sentry walking up and down before the door. And it goes under bridges with stone men upon them, looking down and smiling at the water, and living folks leaning their elbows on the wall and looking over, too. And then it goes on and on, and down through marshes and sands, until at last it falls into the sea, where the ships are that bring parrots and tobacco from the Indies. Aye, it has a long trot before it, as it goes singing over our weir, bless its heart!"

"And what is the sea?" asked Will.

"The sea!" cried the miller. "Ah, it is the greatest thing that God made! That is where all the water in the world runs down into a great salt lake. There it lies, as flat as my hand and as innocent-like as a child; but they do say when the wind blows, it gets up into water mountains bigger than any of ours, and swallows down great ships bigger than our mill, and makes such a roaring that you can hear it miles away upon the land. There are great fish in it five times bigger than a bull, and one old serpent as long as our river and as old as all the world, with whiskers like a man, and a crown of silver on her head."

Will thought he had never heard anything like this, and he kept on asking question after question about the world