The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems | Page 8

light illuming the gray woods,
I shall be gone away.
Ah! wood-walks winding sweet
Through all the valleys sloping to the
west,
Where glad brooks wander with melodious feet,
In musical
unrest,--
Ye will not miss me here
With all the bright things of the coming
May,
And the rejoicing of the awakened year,--
I shall be far away.
Yet in your loneliest nooks,
I know where all the greenest mosses
grow,
And where the violets lift their first sweet looks,
Out of the
waning snow.
And I have heard, unsought,
Under the musing shadows of the beech,

Wood-voices answering my unspoken thought,
In half-articulate
speech.
And oh! ye shadowy bands,
Rank above rank along yon rocky height,

That lift into the heavens your mailed hands,
And linked armour
bright.
What other eyes will trace
From this dear window haunted with the
past,
Strange likeness to some well beloved face,
Among your
profiles vast?

What stranger hands will tend
The nameless treasures I must leave
behind,--
My flowers, my birds, and each inanimate friend,
Linked
closer than my kind.
These glorious landscapes old,
Framed in my cottage
windows,--hill-sides dun,
With umber shadows lightened to pale gold

By touches of the sun,--
Valleys like emeralds set
Lonely and sweet in the dusk hills afar,

That half enclose them, like a carcanet
That holds a diamond star.
Will any gentler face,
Weary and sad sometimes, like mine grow
bright
Touched with your simple beauty-in my place,
My garden of
delight?--
I know not,--yet farewell
Sweet home of mine,--my parting song is
o'er,
And stranger forms among your bowers shall dwell,
Where I
return no more.
THE NEWS-BOY'S DREAM OF THE NEW YEAR
Under the bare brown rafters,
In his garret bed he lay,
And dreamed
of the bright hereafters.
And the merry morns of May.
The snow-flakes slowly sifted
In through each cranny and seam,

But only the sunshine drifted
Into the news-boy's dream.
For he dreamed of the brave to-morrows,
His eager eyes should scan,

When battling with wants and sorrows,
He felt himself a Man.
He felt his heart grow bolder
For the struggle and the strife,
When
shoulder joined to shoulder,
In the battle-field of life.
And instead of the bare brown rafters,
And the snowflakes sifting in,

He saw in the glad hereafters,
The home his hands should win.

The flowers that grew in its shadow,
And the trees that drooped
above;
The low of the kine in the meadow,
And the coo of the
morning dove.
And dearer and more tender,
He saw his mother there,
As she knelt
in the sunset splendour,
To say the evening prayer.
His face--the sun had burned it,
And his hands were rough and hard,

But home, he had fairly earned it,
And this was his reward!
The morning star's faint glimmer
Stole into the garret forlorn,
And
touched the face of the dreamer
With the light of a hope new-born.
Oh, ring harmonious voices
Of New Year's welcoming bells!
For
the very air rejoices.
Through all its sounding cells!
I greet ye! oh friends and neighbours
The smith and the artizan;
I
share in your honest labours,
A Canadian working-man.
To wield the axe or the hammer,
To till the yielding soil,
Enroll me
under your banner,
Oh Brotherhood of Toil!
Ring, bells of the brave to-morrows!
And bring the time more near:

Ring out the wants and the sorrows,
Ring in the glad New Year!
THE OLD CHURCH ON THE HILL.
Moss-grown, and venerable it stands,
From the way-side dust and
noise aloof,
And the great elms stretch their sheltering hands
To
bless its grey old roof.
About it summer's greenery waves;
The birds build fearless overhead;

Its shadow falls among the graves;
Around it sleep the dead.
The summer sunshine softly takes
The chancel window's pictured
gloom;
The moonlight enters too, and makes
The shadow of a

tomb.
Along these aisles the bride hath passed,
And brightened, with her
innocent grace.
The pensive twilight years have cast
About the holy
place.
They brought her here--a tiny maid,
Unweeting any gain or loss,

And on her baby forehead laid
The symbol of the Cross.
And here they brought her once again,
White-robed, and smiling as
she slept;
While lips, that trembled, breathed her name,
And eyes
that saw her wept.
And still, when sunset lights his fire
Along the gold and crimsoned
west,
She sleeps beneath the shadowing spire,
The cross upon her
breast.
I watch it from my lonely cot,
When stars shine o'er the hallowed
ground,
And think there is no sweeter spot,
The whole wide earth
around.
The Sabbath chimes there sink and swim
Along the consecrated air,

The benediction and the hymn,
The voice of praise and prayer:
These mingle with the wind's free song,
The hum of bees, the notes of
birds,
And make an anthem sweet and strong
Of inarticulate words.
There let me rest, when I have found
The peace of God, the immortal
calm,
Where still above my sleep profound,
Goes up the Sabbath
psalm.
THE BURNING OF CHICAGO.
Out of the west a voice--a shudder of horror and pity;
Quivers along
the pulses of all the winds that blow;--
Woe for the fallen queen, for
the proud and beautiful city. Out of the North a cry--lamentation and

mourning and woe.
Dust and ashes and darkness her splendour and brightness cover, Like
clouds above the glory of purple mountain peaks;
She sits with her