Save two long rays through the hinge's

chink.

My heart seemed full as it could hold, There was place and to spare for the frank

young smile

And the red young mouth and the hair's young gold.

So, hush, I will give you this leaf to keep,

See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand. There, that is our secret! go to sleep; You will wake, and remember, and understand.

For thence a paradox

Which comforts while it mocks

Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail :

What I aspired to be,

And was not, comforts me:

Let us cry, "All good things

205

Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!"

Therefore I summon age

To grant youth's heritage,

Life's struggle having so far reached its

term:

Thence shall I pass, approved
A man, for aye removed

From the developed brute; a God though in the germ.

And I shall thereupon

not sink i' the scale.

What is he but a brute

Whose flesh hath soul to suit,

Once more on my adventure brave and

new:

Fearless and unperplexed,

When I wage battle next,

want play?

To man, propose this test,

Thy body at its best,

indue.

Youth ended, I shall try

good to live and learn?"

Not once beat, "Praise be Thine!

I see the whole design,

I, who saw Power, shall see Love perfect

too :

Perfect I call Thy plan: Thanks that I was a man! Maker, remake, complete,

thou shalt do!"

For pleasant is this flesh; Our soul, in its rose-mesh

The deed off, calls the glory from the gray : A whisper from the west

Shoots, "Add this to the rest,

Take it and try its worth: here dies another day."

Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for

rest:

Would we some prize might hold

To match those manifold

last,

"This rage was right i' the main,

That acquiescence vain :

The Future I may face now I have proved the Past."

For more is not reserved

To man, with soul just nerved

So, take and use Thy work!
Amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o' the stuff, what warpings
past the aim!

My times be in Thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death
complete the same!

THE LOST LEADER.

JUST 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!

Weshall march prospering, — not through his presence;

Songs may inspirit us, - - not from his lyre; Deeds will be done, — while he boasts his

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Then he said, "Good night!" and with muffled oar

Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magni-
fied

By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street, Wanders and watches with eager ears,

Till in the silence around him he hears The muster of men at the barrack door, The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet, And the measured tread of the grenadiers, Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed the tower of the Old
North Church,

By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him
made

Masses and moving shapes of shade, -
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret
dread

Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,
A line of black that bends and floats

On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride, Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride On the opposite shore walked Paul Re

vere.

Now he patted his horse's side,
Now gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-
girth;

But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he

turns,

But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight A second lamp in the belfry burns!