Built up its idle door,

UNDER THE VIOLETS.

HER hands are cold; her face is white;
No more her pulses come and go;
Her eyes are shut to life and light;-
Fold the white vesture, snow on snow,
And lay her where the violets blow.

But not beneath a graven stone,

To plead for tears with alien eyes;
A slender cross of wood alone

Shall say, that here a maiden lies
In peace beneath the peaceful skies.

And gray old trees of hugest limb

Shall wheel their circling shadows round

To make the scorching sunlight dim That drinks the greenness from the

ground,

And drop their dead leaves on her mound.

When o'er their boughs the squirrels run, And through their leaves the robins call,

And, ripening in the autumn sun,
The acorns and the chestnuts fall,
Doubt not that she will heed them all.

knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,

Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap, forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is bori Than ever Triton blew from wreathéd horn!

While on mine ear it rings, Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:

Its matins from the branches high,
And every minstrel-voice of Spring,
That trills beneath the April sky,
Shall greet her with its earliest cry.

When, turning round their dial-track,
Eastward the lengthening shadows pass,
Her little mourners, clad in black,
The crickets, sliding through the grass,
Shall pipe for her an evening mass.

At last the rootlets of the trees
Shall find the prison where she lies,

soul,

As the swift seasons roll!

In leaves and blossoms to the skies. So may the soul that warmed it rise!

If any, born of kindlier blood,
Should ask, What maiden lies below?
Say only this: A tender bud,

That tried to blossom in the snow,
Lies withered where the violets blow.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

[U. S. A.]

THE HERITAGE.

THE rich man's son inherits lands,
And piles of brick, and stone, and gold,
And he inherits soft, white hands,

And tender flesh that fears the cold,
Nor dares to wear a garment old;
A heritage, it seems to me,
One scarce would wish to hold in fee.

The rich man's son inherits cares;

The bank may break, the factory burn, A breath may burst his bubble shares, And soft, white hands could hardly earn A living that would serve his turn; A heritage, it seems to me, One scarce would wish to hold in fee.

The rich man's son inherits wants,

His stomach craves for dainty fare;
With sated heart, he hears the pants

Of toiling hinds with brown arms bare,
And wearies in his easy chair;

A heritage, it seems to me,

One scarce would wish to hold in fee.

What doth the poor man's son inherit? Stout muscles and a sinewy heart,

A hardy frame, a hardier spirit;

King of two hands, he does his part
In every useful toil and art;

A heritage, it seems to me,
A king might wish to hold in fee.

What doth the poor man's son inherit?
Wishes o'erjoyed with humble things,
A rank adjudged by toil-won merit,
Content that from employment springs,
A heart that in his labor sings;
A heritage, it seems to me,
A king might wish to hold in fee.

What doth the poor man's son inherit?

A patience learned by being poor, Courage, if sorrow come, to bear it,

225

clings,

slings;

gin-out!

Fust come the blackbirds clatt'rin' in tall trees,

An' settlin' things in windy Congresses, Queer politicians, though, for I'll be skinned

Ef all on 'em don't head against the wind. 'Fore long the trees begin to show belief, The maple crimsons to a coral-reef, Then saffron swarms swing off from all the willers,

So plump they look like yaller caterpillars, Then gray hosschesnuts leetle hands unfold

Softer 'n a baby's be a' three days old: Thet's robin-red breast's almanick; he knows

Thet arter this ther' 's only blossom

foam,

Jes' so our Spring gits everythin' in tune An' gives one leap from April into June; Then all comes crowdin' in; afore you think,

Young oak-leaves mist the side-hill woods with pink;

The cat-bird in the laylock-bush is loud; The orchards turn to heaps o' rosy cloud; Red-cedars blossom tu, though few folks know it,

An' look all dipt in sunshine like a poet; The lime-trees pile their solid stacks shade

An' drows❜ly simmer with the bees' sweet trade;

All down the loose-walled lanes in archin' bowers

The barb'ry droops its strings o' golden flowers,

Whose shrinkin' hearts the school-gals love to try

With pins-they 'll worry yourn so, boys, bimeby!

But I don't love your cat'logue style, — do you?

Ez ef to sell off Natur' by vendoo; One word with blood in 't 's twice ez good ez two:

Nuff sed, June 's bridesman, poet of the year,

Gladness on wings, the bobolink, is here; Half hid in tip-top apple-blooms he swings,

Or climbs aginst the breeze with quiverin' wings,

Or, givin' way to 't in a mock despair, Runs down, a brook o' laughter, thru the air.

THE COURTIN'.

GOD makes sech nights, all white an' still
Fur 'z you can look or listen,
Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill,
All silence ar.' all glisten.

Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown

An' peeked in thru the winder, An' there sot Huldy all alone,

'Ith no one nigh to hender.

A fireplace filled the room's one side
With half a cord o' wood in —
There warnt no stoves (tell comfort died)
To bake ye to a puddin'.

The wa'nut logs shot sparkles out

Towards the pootiest, bless her, An' leetle flames danced all about The chiny on the dresser. Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung, An' in amongst 'em rusted The ole queen's-arm thet gran'ther Young Fetched back from Concord busted.

The very room, coz she was in,

Seemed warm from floor to ceilin',

An' she looked full ez rosy agin Ez the apples she was peelin'.

"T was kin' o' kingdom-come to look
On sech a blessed cretur,
A dogrose blushin' to a brook
Ain't modester nor sweeter.

He was six foot o' man, A 1,

Clean grit an' human natur'; None could n't quicker pitch a ton Nor dror a furrer straighter.

He'd sparked it with full twenty gals, Hed squired 'em, danced 'em, druv 'em, Fust this one, an' then thet, by spells

All is, he could n't love 'em.

But long o' her his veins 'ould run

All crinkly like curled maple,
The side she breshed felt full o' sun
Ez a south slope in Ap'il.

She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing
Ez hisn in the choir;

My! when he made Ole Hunderd ring,
She knowed the Lord was nigher.

An' she'd blush scarlit, right in prayer,
When her new meetin'-bunnet
Felt somehow thru its crown a pair
O' blue eyes sot upon it.

Thet night, I tell ye, she looked some!
She seemed to 've gut a new soul,
For she felt sartin-sure he'd come,
Down to her very shoe-sole.

She heered a foot, an' knowed it tu,
A-raspin' on the scraper,
All ways to once her feelins flew
Like sparks in burnt-up paper.

He kin' o' l'itered on the mat,
Some doubtfle o' the sekle,
His heart kep' goin' pity-pat,
But hern went pity Zekle.

An' yit she gin her cheer a jerk
Ez though she wished him furder,
An' on her apples kep' to work,
Parin' away like murder.

"You want to see my Pa, I s'pose?"

"Wal.

signin'

To say why gals act so or so,

Or don't, 'ould be presumin';
Mebby to mean yes an' say no
Comes nateral to women.

He stood a spell on one foot fust,
Then stood a spell on t' other,
An' on which one he felt the wust
He could n't ha' told ye nuther.

Says he, "I'd better call agin";

Says she, "Think likely, Mister"; Thet last word pricked him like a pin,

An'. . . . Wal, he up an' kist her.

When Ma bimeby upon 'em slips,
Huldy sot pale ez ashes,
All kin' o' smily roun' the lips
An' teary roun' the lashes.

For she was jes' the quiet kind
Whose naturs never vary,
Like streams that keep a summer mind
Snowhid in Jenooary.

The blood clost roun' her heart felt glued
Too tight for all expressin',
Tell mother see how metters stood,
An' gin 'em both her blessin'.

Then her red come back like the tide
Down to the Bay o' Fundy,
An' all I know is they was cried
In meetin' come nex' Sunday.

AMBROSE.

NEVER, surely, was holier man
Than Ambrose, since the world began;
With diet spare and raiment thin
He shielded himself from the father of sin;
With bed of iron and scourgings oft,
His heart to God's hand as wax made soft.

Through earnest prayer and watchings long

He sought to know 'twixt right and wrong,

Much wrestling with the blessed Word To make it yield the sense of the Lord, That he might build a storm-proof creed To fold the flock in at their need.

At last he builded a perfect faith, Fenced round about with The Lord thus saith;

Meted the light to the need of his eyes.

And knew, by a sure and inward sign, That the work of his fingers was divine.

Then Ambrose said, "All those shall die The eternal death who believe not as I"; And some were boiled, some burned in fire, Some sawn in twain, that his heart's desire,

For the good of men's souls, might be satisfied,

By the drawing of all to the righteous side.

One day, as Ambrose was seeking the truth
In his lonely walk, he saw a youth
Resting himself in the shade of a tree;
It had never been given him to see
So shining a face, and the good man
thought

'T were pity he should not believe as he ought.

So he set himself by the young man's side, And the state of his soul with questions tried;

But the heart of the stranger was hardened indeed,

Nor received the stamp of the one true creed,

And the spirit of Ambrose waxed sore to find

Such face the porch of so narrow a mind.

"As each beholds in cloud and fire The shape that answers his own desire, So each," said the youth, "in the Law

227

And when over breakers to leeward
The tattered surges are hurled,
It may keep our head to the tempest,
With its grip on the base of the world.

But, after the shipwreck, tell me
What help in its iron thews,
Still true to the broken hawser,
Deep down among sea-weed and ooze?

In the breaking gulfs of sorrow,
When the helpless feet stretch out
And find in the deeps of darkness
No footing so solid as doubt,

Then better one spar of Memory,
One broken plank of the Past,
That our human heart may cling to,
Though hopeless of shore at last!

To the spirit its splendid conjectures,
To the flesh its sweet despair,
Its tears o'er the thin-worn locket.
With its anguish of deathless hair!

Immortal? I feel it and know it,
Who doubts it of such as she?
But that is the pang's very secret,-
Immortal away from me.