ROSE AND ROOT.

A FABLE OF TWO LIVES.

THE Rose aloft in sunny air,
Beloved alike by bird and bee,
Takes for the dark Root little care,
That toils below it ceaselessly.

I put my question to the flower:
"Pride of the Summer, garden-queen,
Why livest thou thy little hour?"
And the Rose answered, "I am seen."

I put my question to the Root:

I mine the earth content," it said,

“A hidden miner underfoot ;
I know a Rose is overhead."

THE BLACKBERRY FARM.

NATURE gives with freest hands
Richest gifts to poorest lands.
When the lord has sown his last,
And his field's to desert passed,
She begins to claim her own,
And instead of harvests flown,
Sunburnt sheaves and golden ears-
Sends her hardier pioneers.

Barbarous brambles, outlawed seeds,
The first families of weeds
Fearing neither sun nor wind,
With the flowers of their kind
(Outcasts of the garden-bound),
Colonize the expended ground,
Using (none her right gainsay)
Confiscations of decay.

Thus she clothes the barren place,
Old disgrace, with newer grace.
Title-deeds, which cover lands

Ruled and reaped by buried hands,
She disowning owners old,
Scorning their "to have and hold"-
Takes herself; the mouldering fence
Hides with her munificence;
O'er the crumbled gatepost twines
Her proprietary vines;

On the doorstep of the house
Writes in moss Anonymous,"

And, that beast and bird may see, "This is public property;

To the bramble makes the sun
Bearer of profusion.

Blossom-odours breathe in June
Promise of her later boon,
And in August's brazen heat
Grows the prophecy complete-
Lo, her largess glistens bright,
Blackness diamonded with light!
Then, behold, she welcomes all
To her annual festival.

"Mine the fruit, but yours as well,"

Speaks the Mother Miracle.

"Rich and poor are welcome; come, Make to-day millennium

In my garden of the sun :

Black and white to me are one.

This my freehold use, content

Here no landlord rides for rent ;
I proclaim my jubilee,

In my Black Republic, free.

Come," she beckons; "Enter, through

Gates of gossamer, doors of dew (Lit with Summer's tropic fire), My Liberia of the briar."

THE LOST HORIZON.

I STOOD at evening in the crimson air :
The trees shook off their dusky twilight glow;
The wind took up old burdens of despair,

And moaned like Atlas with his world of woe.

Like the great circle of a bronzèd ring,

That clasped the vision of the vanished day, I saw the vague horizon vanishing

Around me into darkness, far away.

Then, while the night came fast with cloudy roar, Lo, all about me, rays of hearths unknown Sprang from the gloom with light unseen before, And made a warm horizon of their own.

I sighed: "The wanderer in the desert sees
Strange ghosts of summer lands arising, sweet
With restless waters, green with gracious trees
Whose shadows beckon welcome to his feet.

"For erst, where now the desert far away
Stretches a wilderness of hopeless sand,
Clasping fair fields and sunburnt harvests, lay
The heavenly girdles of a fruitful land."

I thought of a sweet mirage now no more:
Warm windows radiant with a dancing flame-
Dear voices heard within a happy door-

A face that to the darkness, lighted, came.

No hearth of mine was waiting, near or far;
No threshold for my coming footstep yearned
To touch its slumber; no warm window-star,
The tender Venus, to my longing burned.

The darkened windows slowly lost their fire,
But shimmered with the ghostly ember-light:

A wanderer, with old embers of desire,

The lost horizon held me in the night.

TO ONE IN A DARKENED HOUSE.
O FRIEND, whose loss is mine in part,
Your grief is mine in part, although
I cannot measure in my heart
The immeasurable woe.

As, from a shining window cast,
The fireside's gleam abroad is known,
I knew the brightness that is passed-
Its inner warmth your own.

O vanished firelight!-dark, without,
The late illumined sphere of space;
The warmth within has died about
Your darkened heart and face.

If I could hide your gloom with light,

Or breathe you back the warmth of old ...
Oh vain! I stand in outer night,

And feel your inner cold!

AWAKE IN DARKNESS.

MOTHER, if I could cry from out the night
And you could come (Oh tearful memory!)
How softly close! to soothe and comfort me,
As when a child awakened with affright,-
My lips again, as weak and helpless quite,

Would call you, call you, sharp and plaintively!... Oh vain, vain, vain! Your face I could not see; Your voice no more would bring my darkness light. To this shut room, though I should wail and weep, You would not come to speak one brooding word, And let its comfort warm me into sleep,

And leave me dreaming of its comfort heard: Though all the night to morn at last should creep, My cry would fail, your answer be deferred.

SONNET-IN 1862.

STERN be the Pilot in the dreadful hour
When a great nation, like a ship at sea
With the wroth breakers whitening at her lee,
Feels her last shudder if her Helmsman cower;
A godlike manhood be his mighty dower!
Such and so gifted, Lincoln, mayst thou be,
With thy high wisdom's low simplicity
And awful tenderness of voted power.

From our hot records then thy name shall stand
On Time's calm ledger out of passionate days-—
With the pure debt of gratitude begun,

And only paid in never-ending praise-
One of the many of a mighty Land,

Made by God's providence the Anointed One.

THE UNBENDED BOW.

In some old realm, we read, when war had come,
The bended bow, a warlike sign, was sent
Across the land—a summoner fierce but dumb;
When peace returned, the bow was passed unbent.

Oh sacred Land! not many years ago

(The symbol breathes its meaning evermore), Thy holy summons, came the bended bowThy fiery bearers moved from door to door.

Then sprang thy brave from threshold and from hearth;
Their angry footsteps sounded, moving far,
As when an earthquake moves across the earth;
Shone on thy hills the flame-lit tents of war.

O tender wife, in all thy weakness stern

With the great purpose which thy husband drew;

O mother dreaming of thy son's return,

Strong with the arm whose strength thy country

knew ;