My lids have long been dry, Tom, but tears came in my eyes,
I thought of her I loved so well, those early broken ties;
I visited the old church-yard, and took some flowers to strew
Upon the graves of those we loved, some forty years ago.

Some are in the church-yard laid-some sleep beneath the sea,
But few are left of our old class, excepting you and me;
And when our time shall come, Tom, and we are called to go,
I hope they'll lay us where we played, just forty years ago.

THE AGED STRANGER.

BRET HARTE.

"I WAS with Grant "-the stranger said;
Said the farmer, "Say no more,
But rest thee here at my cottage porch,
For thy feet are weary and sore."

"I was with Grant "-the stranger said;
Said the farmer, "Nay, no more,—

I prithee sit at my frugal board,
And eat of my humble store.

"How fares my boy,-my soldier boy,
Of the old Ninth Army Corps?
I warrant he bore him gallantly

In the smoke and the battle's roar!"

"I know him not," said the aged man,
"And, as I remarked before,

I was with Grant "-"Nay, nay, I know,"
Said the farmer, "say no more;

"He fell in battle,-I see, alas!

Thou'dst smooth these tidings o'er-
Nay, speak the truth, whatever it be,
Though it rend my bosom's core.

OUR PATTERN.

"How fell he,—with his face to the foe,
Upholding the flag he bore?

O say not that my boy disgraced
The uniform that he wore!

"I cannot tell," said the aged man,
"And should have remarked before,
That I was with Grant-in Illinois-
Some three years before the war."

Then the farmer spake him never a word,
But beat with his fist full sore

That aged man who had worked for Grant
Some three years before the war.

OUR PATTERN.

PHEBE CARY.

A WEAVER sat one day at his loom
Among the colors bright,
With the pattern for his copying
Hung fair and plain in sight.

But the weaver's thoughts were wandering
Away on the distant track,
As he threw the shuttle in his hand

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
Nor the wife beneath its roof.

When her voice recalled him suddenly
To himself, as she sadly said;

"Ah, woe is me! for your work is spoiled,
And what will we do for bread?"

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,
"And this had all been right

If I had not looked at my work, but kept
The pattern in my sight."

Ah, sad it was for the weaver,
And sad for his luckless wife;
And sad it will be for us if we say,
At the end of our task of life:

"The colors that we had to weave
Were bright in our early years;

But we wove the tissues wrong and stained
The woof with bitter tears.

"We wove a web of doubt and fear-
Not faith, and hope and love-
Because we looked at our work, and not
Our pattern above."

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,
Yet all in the golden and gracious light
Of a cloud, when the summer sun is down.

Alway and alway, night and morn,
Woods upon woods, with fields of corn

AN ORDER FOR A PICTURE.

Lying between them, not quite sere,
And not in the full, thick, leafy bloom,

When the wind can hardly find breathing room
Under their tassels,-cattle near,

Biting shorter the short, green grass,
And a hedge of sumach and sassafras,
With bluebirds twittering all around,-
(Ah, good painter, you can't paint sound!)

These, and the house where I was born,
Low and little, and black and old,
With children, many as it can hold,
All at the windows, open wide,-
Heads and shoulders clear outside,
And fair young faces all ablush:
Perhaps you may have seen, some day,
Roses crowding the self-same way,
Out of a wilding, wayside bush.

With woods and cornfields and grazing herds,
A lady, the loveliest ever the sun

Looked down upon, you must paint for me;
Oh, if I only could make you see

The clear blue eyes, the tender smile,
The sovereign sweetness, the gentle grace,
The woman's soul, and the angel's face

That are beaming on me all the while,
I need not speak these foolish words:
Yet one word tells you all I would say,-
She is my mother: you will agree

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
Flashing with boldest enterprise:

At ten years old he went to sea,—

God knoweth if he be living now;

283

He sailed in the good ship "Commodore,"-
Nobody ever crossed her track

To bring us news, and she never came back.
Ah, 'tis twenty long years and more
Since that old ship went out of the bay

With my great-hearted brother on her deck:
I watched him till he shrank to a speck,
And his face was toward me all the way.
Bright his hair was, a golden brown,

The time we stood at our mother's knee:
That beauteous head, if it did go down,
Carried sunshine into the sea!

Out in the fields one summer night,
We were together, half afraid

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,
That we with staring, ignorant eyes,

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,
From which it tenderly shook the dew
Over our heads, when we came to play
In its handbreadth of shadow day after day.

Afraid to go home, sir; for one of us bore
A nest full of speckled and thin-shelled eggs;
The other, a bird, held fast by the legs,
Not so big as a straw of wheat:

The berries we gave her she wouldn't eat,
But cried and cried, till we held her bill,
So slim and shining, to keep her still.