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feet have worn,
[Illustration]
We sit beneath their orchard-trees,
We hear, like them,
the hum of bees
And rustle of the bladed corn;
We turn the pages
that they read,
Their written words we linger o'er,
But in the sun
they cast no shade,
No voice is heard, no sign is made,
No step is
on the conscious floor!
Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust,

(Since He who knows our need is just,)

That somehow, somewhere,
meet we must.
[Illustration]
Alas for him who never sees
The stars shine through
his cypress-trees!
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to
see the breaking day
Across the mournful marbles play!
Who hath
not learned, in hours of faith,
The truth to flesh and sense unknown,


That Life is ever lord of Death,
And Love can never lose its own!
We sped the time with stories old,
Wrought puzzles out, and riddles
told,
Or stammered from our school-book lore
"The Chief of
Gambia's golden shore."
How often since, when all the land
Was
clay in Slavery's shaping hand,
As if a trumpet called, I've heard

Dame Mercy Warren's rousing word:
"_Does not the voice of reason
cry,
Claim the first right which Nature gave,
From the red scourge
of bondage fly,
Nor deign to live a burdened slave!_"
Our father
rode again his ride
On Memphremagog's wooded side;
[Illustration]
Sat down again to moose and samp
In trapper's hut
and Indian camp;
Lived o'er the old idyllic ease
Beneath St.
François' hemlock-trees;
Again for him the moonlight shone
On
Norman cap and bodiced zone;
Again he heard the violin play

Which led the village dance away,
And mingled in its merry whirl

The grandam and the laughing girl.
Or, nearer home, our steps he led

Where Salisbury's level marshes spread
[Illustration]
Mile-wide as flies the laden bee;
Where merry mowers,
hale and strong,
Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along
The
low green prairies of the sea.
We shared the fishing off Boar's Head,

And round the rocky Isles of Shoals
The hake-broil on the
drift-wood coals;
The chowder on the sand-beach made,
Dipped by
the hungry, steaming hot,
With spoons of clam-shell from the pot.
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We heard the tales of witchcraft old,
And dream and
sign and marvel told
To sleepy listeners as they lay
Stretched idly
on the salted hay,

Adrift along the winding shores,
[Illustration]
When favoring breezes deigned to blow
The square
sail of the gundalow,
And idle lay the useless oars.
Our mother, while she turned her wheel
Or run the new-knit

stocking-heel,
Told how the Indian hordes came down
At midnight
on Cochecho town,
And how her own great-uncle bore
His cruel
scalp-mark to fourscore.
Recalling, in her fitting phrase,
So rich and
picturesque and free,
(The common unrhymed poetry
Of simple life
and country ways,)
The story of her early days,--
She made us
welcome to her home;
Old hearths grew wide to give us room;
We
stole with her a frightened look
At the gray wizard's conjuring-book,

The fame whereof went far and wide
Through all the simple
country side;
We heard the hawks at twilight play,
The boat-horn
on Piscataqua,
The loon's weird laughter far away;
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We fished her little trout-brook, knew
What flowers in
wood and meadow grew,
What sunny hillsides autumn-brown
She
climbed to shake the ripe nuts down,
Saw where in sheltered cove
and bay
The ducks' black squadron anchored lay,
And heard the
wild-geese calling loud
Beneath the gray November cloud.
Then, haply, with a look more grave,
And soberer tone, some tale she
gave
From painful Sewell's ancient tome,
Beloved in every Quaker
home,
Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom,
Or Chalkley's Journal,
old and quaint,--
Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint!--
Who, when
the dreary calms prevailed,
And water-butt and bread-cask failed,

And cruel, hungry eyes pursued
His portly presence mad for food,

With dark hints muttered under breath
Of casting lots for life or death,

Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies,
To be himself the sacrifice.

Then, suddenly, as if to save

The good man from his living grave

A ripple on the water grew,
A school of porpoise flashed in view.

"Take, eat," he said, "and be content;
These fishes in my stead are
sent
By Him who gave the tangled ram
To spare the child of
Abraham."
[Illustration]
Our uncle, innocent of books,
Was rich in lore of
fields and brooks,
The ancient teachers never dumb
Of Nature's
unhoused lyceum.
In moons and tides and weather wise,
He read

the clouds as prophecies,
And foul or fair could well divine,
By
many an occult hint and sign,
Holding the cunning-warded keys,
To
all the woodcraft mysteries;
Himself to Nature's heart so near
That
all her voices in his ear
Of beast or bird had meanings clear,
Like
Apollonius of old,
Who knew the tales the sparrows told,
Or
Hermes, who interpreted
What the sage cranes of Nilus said;
A
simple, guileless, childlike man,
Content to live where life began;

Strong only on his native grounds,
The little world of sights and
sounds
Whose girdle was the parish bounds,
Whereof his fondly
partial pride
The common features magnified,
As Surrey hills to
mountains grew
In White of Selborne's loving view,--
He told how
teal and loon he shot,
[Illustration]
And how the eagle's eggs he got,
The feats on pond
and river done,
The prodigies of rod and gun;
Till, warming with
the tales he told,
Forgotten was the outside cold,
The bitter wind
unheeded blew,
From ripening corn the pigeons flew,
[Illustration]
The partridge drummed i' the wood, the mink
Went
fishing down the river-brink;
In fields with bean or clover gay,
The
woodchuck,