THE LOST LEADER.

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THE LOST LEADER.

UST for a handful of silver he left us :
Just for a ribbon to stick in his coat,
Found the one gift of which Fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote.

They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
So much was theirs who so little allowed:
How all our copper had gone for his service!

Rags,

were they purple, his heart had been proud! We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him, Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,

Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,
Made him our pattern to live and to die!
Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,

Burns, Shelley, were with us,-- they watch from their graves!

He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,

He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!

We shall march prospering, not through his presence;
Songs may inspirit us,
Deeds will be done, — while he boasts his quiescence,

not from his lyre:

Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire. Blot out his name then, -- record one lost soul more, One task more declined, one more footpath untrod, One more triumph for devils, and sorrow for angels, One wrong more to man, one more insult to God! Life's night begins; let him never come back to us! There would be doubt, hesitation, and pain;

Forced praise on our part, — the glimmer of twilight,

Never glad, confident morning again!

Best fight on well, for we taught him, — strike gallantly,
Aim at our heart, ere we pierce through his own;
Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us,
Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne!

Robert Browning.

TOO LATE.

"Ah! si la jeunesse savait, -si la vieillesse pouvait!"

HERE sat an old man on a rock,

THERE

And unceasing bewailed him of Fate,
That concern where we all must take stock
Though our vote has no hearing or weight;
And the old man sang him an old, old song, -
Never sang voice so clear and strong

That it could drown the old man's long,

For he sang the song "Too late! too late!"

"When we want, we have for our pains
The promise that if we but wait

Till the want has burned out of our brains,
Every means shall be present to sate;

While we send for the napkin the soup gets cold,
While the bonnet is trimming the face grows old,
When we've matched our buttons the pattern is sold,
And everything comes too late, — too late!

-

TOO LATE.

"When strawberries seemed like red heavens,

Terrapin stew a wild dream,
When my brain was at sixes and sevens,
If my mother had "folks" and ice-cream,
Then I gazed with a lickerish hunger
At the restaurant-man and fruit-monger,
But oh! how I wished I were younger

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When the goodies all came in a stream, in a stream!

“I've a splendid blood horse, and — a liver
That it jars into torture to trot;

My row-boat's the gem of the river, –
Gout makes every knuckle a knot!

I can buy boundless credits on Paris and Rome,
But no palate for ménus, no eyes for a dome,
Those belonged to the youth who must tarry at home,
When no home but an attic he'd got, he'd got!

"How I longed, in that lonest of garrets,
Where the tiles baked my brains all July,
For ground to grow two pecks of carrots,
Two pigs of my own in a sty,

-

A rosebush, - a little thatched cottage,
Two spoons-love a basin of pottage!

Now in freestone I sit, - and my dotage,

With a woman's chair empty close by, - close by!

"Ah! now, though I sit on a rock,

I have shared one seat with the great;

I have sat — knowing naught of the clock

On love's high throne of state;

But the lips that kissed, and the arms that caressed, To a mouth grown stern with delay were pressed, And circled a breast that their clasp had blessed Had they only not come too late, — too late!" Fitz-Hugh Ludlow.

A PETITION TO TIME.

OUCH us gently, Time!

TOUCH

Let us glide adown thy stream
Gently, as we sometimes glide
Through a quiet dream!

Humble voyagers are we,

Husband, wife, and children three,

(One is lost,

an angel, fled

To the azure overhead !)

Touch us gently, Time!

We've not proud nor soaring wings,

Our ambition, our content,

Lies in simple things.

Humble voyagers are we,
O'er Life's dim, unsounded sea,
Seeking only some calm clime;

Touch us gently, gentle Time!

Bryan Waller Procter.

ICHABOD.

123

S

ICHABOD.

O fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore!

The glory from his gray hairs gone

Oh! dumb is passion's stormy rage,
When he who might

Have lighted up and led his age,

Falls back in night.

Scorn!

Would the angels laugh, to mark
A bright soul driven,

Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark,
From hope and heaven ?

Let not the land, once proud of him,

Insult him now;

Nor brand with deeper shame his dim,
Dishonored brow.

But let its humbled sons, instead,

From sea to lake,

A long lament, as for the dead,

In sadness make.