Whose eyes, like windows on a breezy summit,
Control a lovely prospect every way;

Who doth not sound God's sea with earthly plummet,
And find a bottom still of worthless clay;

Who heeds not how the lower gusts are working,
Knowing that one sure wind blows on above,
And sees, beneath the foulest faces lurking,

One God-built shrine of reverence and love;
Who sees all stars that wheel their shining marches
Around the centre fixed of Destiny,

Where the encircling soul serene o'erarches

The moving globe of being like a sky;

Who feels that God and Heaven's great deeps are nearer
Him to whose heart his fellow-man is nigh,

Who doth not hold his soul's own freedom dearer
Than that of all his brethren, low or high ;

Who to the Right can feel himself the truer
For being gently patient with the wrong,

Who sees a brother in the evil-doer,

And finds in Love the heart's-blood of his song;-
This, this is he for whom the world is waiting,
To sing the beatings of its mighty heart,
Too long hath it been patient with the grating
Of scrannel-pipes,' and heard it misnamed Art.
To him the smiling soul of man shall listen,
Laying awhile its crown of thorns aside,
And once again in every eye shall glisten
The glory of a nature satisfied.

His verse shall have a great commanding motion,
Heaving and swelling with a melody
Learnt of the sky, the river, and the ocean,
And all the pure, majestic things that be.

1 Scrannel, miserable; a word not now in prose usage.

Awake, then, thou! we pine for thy great presence

To make us feel the soul once more sublime,
We are of far too infinite an essence

To rest contented with the lies of Time.
Speak out! and lo! a hush of deepest wonder
Shall sink o'er all this many-voiced scene,

As when a sudden burst of rattling thunder
Shatters the blueness of a sky serene.

TO CHARLES ELIOT NORTON.'

AGRO-DOLCE. 2

The wind is roistering out of doors,

My windows shake and my chimney roars;
My Elmwood' chimneys seem crooning to me,
As of old, in their moody, minor key,

And out of the past the hoarse wind blows,
As I sit in my arm-chair, and toast my toes.

"Ho! ho! nine-and-forty," they seem to sing,
"We saw you a little toddling thing.

We knew you child and youth and man,

A wonderful fellow to dream and plan,

With a great thing always to come,-who knows?
Well, well! 't is some comfort to toast one's toes.

How many times have you sat at gaze

Till the mouldering fire forgot to blaze,

1 Charles Eliot Norton, writer on the fine arts and translator of

Dante; born at Cambridge, Mass., in 1829.

2 Agro-dolce, bitter-sweet.

Elmwood, the residence of the poet at Cambridge.

Shaping among the whimsical coals
Fancies and figures and shining goals!

What matters the ashes that cover those?
While hickory lasts you can toast your toes.

"O dream-ship-builder! where are they all,
Your grand three-deckers, deep-chested and tall,
That should crush the waves under canvas piles,
And anchor at last by the Fortunate Isles ?
There's gray in your beard, the years turn foes,
While you muse in your arm-chair, and toast your toes."

I sit and dream that I hear, as of yore,

My Elmwood chimneys' deep-throated roar;

If much be gone, there is much remains ;

By the embers of loss I count my gains,

You and yours with the best, till the old hope glows

In the fanciful flame, as I toast my toes.

Instead of a fleet of broad-browed ships,
To send a child's armada of chips!
Instead of the great guns, tier on tier,

A freight of pebbles and grass-blades sere!
"Well, maybe more love with the less gift goes,"
I growl, as, half moody, I toast my toes.

AUF WIEDERSEHEN !'

SUMMER.

The little gate was reached at last,
Half hid in lilacs down the lane;
She pushed it wide, and, as she past,

1
1 Auf Wiedersehen, till we meet again.

A wistful look she backward cast,
And said, "Auf Wiedersehen!"

With hand on latch, a vision white
Lingered reluctant, and again
Half doubting if she did aright,
Soft as the dews that fell that night,
She said,-"Auf Wiedersehen!"

The lamp's clear gleam flits up the stair;
I linger in delicious pain;
Ah, in that chamber, whose rich air
To breathe in thought I scarcely dare,
Thinks she,-"Auf Wiedersehen!"

'T is thirteen years; once more I
The turf that silences the lane ;

I hear the rustle of her dress,
I smell the lilacs, and—ah, yes,
I hear "Auf Wiedersehen!"

Sweet piece of bashful maiden art!

press

The English words had seemed too fain, But these they drew us heart to heart,

Yet held us tenderly apart;

She said, "Auf Wiedersehen!"

Verse may have other aims than to convey aspiration; it can serve to correct folly and to point the moral of better manners and better sense. Such an end satisfies towns-people; they like to see their sentiment of good-fellowship broadened and more thoroughly enlivened, as well as any eccentricity among them lopped away by the keen knife of ridicule. A poet who can do these things well, receives popularity, as Holmes does; though Holmes is not this alone, being capable also in poetry of dealing with philosophical truth.

Oliver Wendell Holmes was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 29, 1809. He graduated at Harvard in 1829, and after several years' professional study in Europe, took his degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1836. For a part of his life he has been a professor of medicine, but for a still longer period a man of letters. His work as an author embraces poetry, prose, fiction, and the familiar essay.

The Breakfast Table Series, the best known among his prose writings, is, in certain ways, paralleled in his verse. In both he treats of matters of