My lids have long been dry, Tom, but tears came in my eyes, Some are in the church-yard laid-some sleep beneath the sea, THE AGED STRANGER. BRET HARTE. "I WAS with Grant "-the stranger said; "I was with Grant "-the stranger said; I prithee sit at my frugal board, "How fares my boy,-my soldier boy, In the smoke and the battle's roar!" "I know him not," said the aged man, I was with Grant "-"Nay, nay, I know," "He fell in battle,-I see, alas! Thou'dst smooth these tidings o'er- OUR PATTERN. "How fell he,—with his face to the foe, O say not that my boy disgraced "I cannot tell," said the aged man, Then the farmer spake him never a word, That aged man who had worked for Grant OUR PATTERN. PHEBE CARY. A WEAVER sat one day at his loom But the weaver's thoughts were wandering Wearily forward and back. And he turned his dim eyes to the ground And tears fell on the woof, For his thoughts, alas! were not with his home When her voice recalled him suddenly "Ah, woe is me! for your work is spoiled, 281 And then the weaver looked and saw His work must be undone; For the threads were wrong, and the colors dimmed Where the bitter tears had run. "Alack! alack!" said the weaver, If I had not looked at my work, but kept Ah, sad it was for the weaver, "The colors that we had to weave But we wove the tissues wrong and stained "We wove a web of doubt and fear- AN ORDER FOR A PICTURE. O GOOD painter, tell me true, Has your hand the cunning to draw Shapes of things that you never saw? Ay? Well, here is an order for you. Woods and cornfields, a little brown, The picture must not be over-bright, Alway and alway, night and morn, AN ORDER FOR A PICTURE. Lying between them, not quite sere, When the wind can hardly find breathing room Biting shorter the short, green grass, These, and the house where I was born, With woods and cornfields and grazing herds, Looked down upon, you must paint for me; The clear blue eyes, the tender smile, That are beaming on me all the while, That all the rest may be thrown away. Two little urchins at her knee You must paint, sir; one like me, The other with a clearer brow, And the light of his adventurous eyes At ten years old he went to sea,— God knoweth if he be living now; 283 He sailed in the good ship "Commodore,"- To bring us news, and she never came back. With my great-hearted brother on her deck: The time we stood at our mother's knee: Out in the fields one summer night, Of the corn-leaves' rustling, and the shade Of the high hills, stretching so still and far,Loitering till after the low little light Of the candle shone through the open door, And over the haystack's pointed top, All of a tremble and ready to drop, The first half hour, the great yellow star, Had often and often watched to see, Propped and held in its place in the skies By the fork of a tall red mulberry tree, Which close in the edge of our flax-field grew,— Dead at the top,-just one branch full Of leaves, notched round, and lined with wool, Afraid to go home, sir; for one of us bore The berries we gave her she wouldn't eat, |