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freeman's will,
For
blind routine, wise-handed skill;
A school-house plant on every hill,

Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence
The quick wires of
intelligence;
Till North and South together brought
Shall own the
same electric thought,
In peace a common flag salute,
And, side by
side in labor's free
And unresentful rivalry,
Harvest the fields
wherein they fought.
[Illustration]
Another guest that winter night
Flashed back from lustrous eyes the
light.
Unmarked by time, and yet not young,
The honeyed music of
her tongue
And words of meekness scarcely told
A nature
passionate and bold,
Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide,
Its
milder features dwarfed beside
Her unbent will's majestic pride.


She sat among us, at the best,
A not unfeared, half-welcome guest,

Rebuking with her cultured phrase
Our homeliness of words and
ways.
A certain pard-like, treacherous grace
Swayed the lithe limbs
and drooped the lash,
Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash;
And
under low brows, black with night,
Rayed out at times a dangerous
light;
The sharp heat-lightnings of her face
Presaging ill to him
whom Fate
Condemned to share her love or hate.
A woman tropical,
intense
In thought and act, in soul and sense,
She blended in a like
degree
The vixen and the devotee,
Revealing with each freak or
feint
The temper of Petruchio's Kate,
The raptures of Siena's saint.

Her tapering hand and rounded wrist
Had facile power to form a
fist;
The warm, dark languish of her eyes
Was never safe from
wrath's surprise.
Brows saintly calm and lips devout
Knew every
change of scowl and pout;
And the sweet voice had notes more high

And shrill for social battle-cry.
Since then what old cathedral town
Has missed her pilgrim staff and
gown,
What convent-gate has held its lock
Against the challenge of
her knock!
Through Smyrna's plague-hushed thoroughfares,
[Illustration]
Up sea-set Malta's rocky stairs,
Gray olive slopes of
hills that hem
Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem,
Or startling on her
desert throne
The crazy Queen of Lebanon
With claims fantastic as
her own,
Her tireless feet have held their way;
And still, unrestful,
bowed, and gray,
She watches under Eastern skies,
[Illustration]
With hope each day renewed and fresh,

The Lord's
quick coming in the flesh,
Whereof she dreams and prophesies!
Where'er her troubled path may be,
The Lord's sweet pity with her go!

The outward wayward life we see,
The hidden springs we may not
know.
Nor is it given us to discern
What threads the fatal sisters
spun,
Through what ancestral years has run
The sorrow with the
woman born,
What forged her cruel chain of moods,
What set her

feet in solitudes,
And held the love within her mute,
What mingled
madness in the blood,
A life-long discord and annoy,
Water of tears
with oil of joy,
And hid within the folded bud
Perversities of flower
and fruit.
It is not ours to separate
The tangled skein of will and fate,

To show what metes and bounds should stand
Upon the soul's
debatable land,
And between choice and Providence
Divide the
circle of events;
But He who knows our frame is just,
Merciful, and
compassionate,
And full of sweet assurances
And hope for all the
language is,
That He remembereth we are dust!
At last the great logs, crumbling low,
Sent out a dull and duller glow,
[Illustration]
The bull's-eye watch that hung in view,
Ticking its
weary circuit through,
Pointed with mutely-warning sign
Its black
hand to the hour of nine.
That sign the pleasant circle broke:
My
uncle ceased his pipe to smoke,
Knocked from its bowl the refuse
gray,
And laid it tenderly away,
Then roused himself to safely cover

The dull red brands with ashes over.
And while, with care, our
mother laid
The work aside, her steps she stayed
One moment,
seeking to express
Her grateful sense of happiness
For food and
shelter, warmth and health,
And love's contentment more than wealth,

With simple wishes (not the weak,
Vain prayers which no
fulfilment seek,
But such as warm the generous heart,
O'er-prompt
to do with Heaven its part)
That none might lack, that bitter night,

For bread and clothing, warmth and light.
Within our beds awhile we heard

The wind that round the gables
roared,
With now and then a ruder shock,
Which made our very
bedsteads rock.
We heard the loosened clapboards tost,
The
board-nails snapping in the frost;
And on us, through the unplastered
wall,
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall.
But sleep stole on, as
sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new;
Faint and more
faint the murmurs grew,
Till in the summer-land of dreams
They
softened to the sound of streams,
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars,


And lapsing waves on quiet shores.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Next morn we wakened with the shout
Of merry voices high and
clear;
And saw the teamsters drawing near
To break the drifted
highways out.
Down the long hillside treading slow
We saw the
half-buried oxen go,
Shaking the snow from heads uptost,
Their
straining nostrils white with frost.
Before our door the straggling train

Drew up, an added team to gain.
The elders threshed their hands
a-cold,
Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes
From lip to lip; the
younger folks
Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling, rolled,
Then
toiled again the cavalcade
O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine,

And woodland paths that wound between
Low drooping pine-boughs
winter-weighed.
[Illustration]
From every barn a team afoot,
At every house a new
recruit,
Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law,
Haply the watchful
young men saw
[Illustration]
Sweet doorway pictures of the curls
And curious eyes
of merry girls,
Lifting their hands in