Remain the law of destiny,
The best for each and all must be,
And life its promise shall fulfil.

AN AUTOGRAPH

I WRITE my name as one, On sands by waves o'errun Or winter's frosted pane, Traces a record vain.

Oblivion's blankness claims Wiser and better names, And well my own may pass As from the strand or glass.

Wash on, O waves of time! Melt, noons, the frosty rime! Welcome the shadow vast, The silence that shall last!

When I and all who know And love me vanish so, What harm to them or me Will the lost memory be?

If any words of mine,
Through right of life divine,
Remain, what matters it

Whose hand the message writ?

Why should the "crowner's quest'
Sit on my worst or best?
Why should the showman claim
The poor ghost of my name?

Yet, as when dies a sound
Its spectre lingers round,
Haply my spent life will
Leave some faint echo still.

A whisper giving breath
Of praise or blame to death,
Soothing or saddening such
As loved the living much.
Therefore with yearnings vain
And fond I still would fain
A kindly judgment seek,
A tender thought bespeak.

And, while my words are read,
Let this at least be said:
"Whate'er his life's defeatures,

He loved his fellow-creatures.

"If, of the Law's stone table,
To hold he scarce was able
The first great precept fast,
He kept for man the last.

"Through mortal lapse and dulness
What lacks the Eternal Fulness,
If still our weakness can
Love Him in loving man?

"Age brought him no despairing
Of the world's future faring;
In human nature still
He found more good than ill.

"To all who dumbly suffered,
His tongue and pen he offered;
His life was not his own,
Nor lived for self alone.

"Hater of din and riot
He lived in days unquiet;
And, lover of all beauty,
Trod the hard ways of duty.

"He meant no wrong to any
He sought the good of many,
Yet knew both sin and folly, -
May God forgive him wholly !"

ABRAM MORRISON

413

'MIDST the men and things which will
Haunt an old man's memory still,
Drollest, quaintest of them all,
With a boy's laugh I recall

Good old Abram Morrison.

When the Grist and Rolling Mill Ground and rumbled by Po Hill, And the old red school-house stood Midway in the Powow's flood,

Here dwelt Abram Morrison.

From the Beach to far beyond Bear-Hill, Lion's Mouth and Pond, Marvellous to our tough old stock, Chips o' the Anglo-Saxon block,

Seemed the Celtic Morrison.

Mudknock, Balmawhistle, all
Only knew the Yankee drawl,
Never brogue was heard till when,

THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM

WHERE Time the measure of his hours

By changeful bud and blossom keeps, And, like a young bride crowned with flowers,

Fair Shiraz in her garden sleeps;

Where, to her poet's turban stone,

The Spring her gift of flowers imparts, Less sweet than those his thoughts have

sown

In the warm soil of Persian hearts :

There sat the stranger, where the shade Of scattered date-trees thinly lay, While in the hot clear heaven delayed

The long and still and weary day.

Strange trees and fruits above him hung, Strange odors filled the sultry air, Strange birds upon the branches swung, Strange insect voices murmured there.

And strange bright blossoms shone around, Turned sunward from the shadowy bowers,

As if the Gheber's soul had found

A fitting home in Iran's flowers.

Whate'er he saw, whate'er he heard,
Awakened feelings new and sad, -
No Christian garb, nor Christian word,
Nor church with Sabbath - bell chimes
glad,

But Moslem graves, with turban stones, And mosque-spires gleaming white, in view,

And graybeard Mollahs in low tones

Chanting their Koran service through.

The flowers which smiled on either hand,
Like tempting fiends, were such as they
Which once, o'er all that Eastern land,
As gifts on demon altars lay.

As if the burning eye of Baal

The servant of his Conqueror knew, From skies which knew no cloudy veil, The Sun's hot glances smote him through.

"Ah me!" the lonely stranger said,

"The hope which led my footsteps on, And light from heaven around them shed, O'er weary wave and waste, is gone!

"Where are the harvest fields all white, For Truth to thrust her sickle in? Where flock the souls, like doves in flight,

From the dark hiding-place of sin?