Low moans the river from its bed,
The distant pines reply;
Like mourners shrinking from the

dead,

They stand apart and sigh.

Unshaded smites the summer sun,
Unchecked the winter blast;
The school-girl learns the place to
shun,

With glances backward cast.

For thus our fathers testified, That he might read who ran, The emptiness of human pride, The nothingness of man.

They dared not plant the grave with flowers,

Nor dress the funeral sod, Where, with a love as deep as ours, They left their dead with God.

The hard and thorny path they kept
From beauty turned aside;
Nor missed they over those who slept
The grace to life denied.

Yet still the wilding flowers would blow,

The golden leaves would fall, The seasons come, the seasons go, And God be good to all.

Above the graves the blackberry hung In bloom and green its wreath, And harebells swung as if they rung The chimes of peace beneath.

The beauty Nature loves to share,
The gifts she hath for all,
The common light, the common air,
O'ercrept the graveyard's wall.

It knew the glow of eventide, The sunrise and the noon, And glorified and sanctified It slept beneath the moon.

With flowers or snow-flakes for its sod,

Around the seasons ran, And evermore the love of God Rebuked the fear of man.

We dwell with fears on either hand, Within a daily strife,

And spectral problems waiting stand Before the gates of life.

The doubts we vainly seek to solve,
The truths we know, are one;
The known and nameless stars re-

volve

Around the Central Sun.

And if we reap as we have sown,
And take the dole we deal,
The law of pain is love alone,
The wounding is to heal.

Unharmed from change to change we glide,

We fall as in our dreams;
The far-off terror at our side
A smiling angel seems.

Secure on God's all-tender heart
Alike rest great and small;
Why fear to lose our little part,
When he is pledged for all?

O fearful heart and troubled brain!
Take hope and strength from this, -
That Nature never hints in vain,
Nor prophesies amiss.

Her wild birds sing the same sweet

stave,

Her lights and airs are given Alike to playground and the grave; And over both is Heaven.

THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW.

PIPES of the misty moorlands,
Voice of the glens and hills;
The droning of the torrents,
The treble of the rills!

Not the braes of broom and heather,
Nor the mountains dark with rain,
Nor maiden bower, nor border tower,
Have heard your sweetest strain!

Dear to the Lowland reaper,
And plaided mountaineer, -
To the cottage and the castle

The Scottish pipes are dear;
Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch
O'er mountain, loch, and glade;
But the sweetest of all music

The Pipes at Lucknow played.

Day by day the Indian tiger

Louder yelled, and nearer crept; Round and round the jungle-serpent Near and nearer circles swept. "Pray for rescue, wives and mothers, Pray to-day!" the soldier said; "To-morrow, death's between us

And the wrong and shame we dread."

O, they listened, looked, and waited,
Till their hope became despair;
And the sobs of low bewailing
Filled the pauses of their prayer.
Then up spake a Scottish maiden,
With her ear unto the ground:
"Dinna ye hear it? - dinna ye hear
it?

The pipes o' Havelock sound!"

Hushed the wounded man his groan-
ing;
Hushed the wife her little ones;
Alone they heard the drum-roll
And the roar of Sepoy guns.
But to sounds of home and childhood

The Highland ear was true;
As her mother's cradle-crooning
The mountain pipes she knew.

Like the march of soundless music
Through the vision of the seer,
More of feeling than of hearing,
Of the heart than of the ear,
She knew the droning pibroch,
She knew the Campbell's call:

"Hark! hear ye no' MacGregor's, The grandest o' them all!"

O, they listened, dumb and breathless, And they caught the sound at last; Faint and far beyon the Goomtee Rose and fell the piper's blast! Then a burst of wild thanksgiving Mingled woman's voice and man's; "God be praised! - the March of

Havelock!

The piping of the clans!"

Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance,
Sharp and shrill as swords at strife,
Came the wild MacGregor's clan-cali,
Stinging all the air to life.
But when the far-off dust-cloud

To plaided legions grew,
Full tenderly and blithesomely
The pipes of rescue blew!

Round the silver domes of Lucknow, Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine, Breathed the air to Britons dearest,

The air of Auld Lang Syne.
O'er the cruel roll of war-drums
Rose that sweet and homelike
strain;

And the tartan clove the turban,
As the Goomtee cleaves the plain.

Dear to the corn-land reaper
And plaided mountaineer, –
To the cottage and the castle
The piper's song is dear.
Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch
O'er mountain, glen, and glade;
But the sweetest of all music
The Pipes at Lucknow played!

MY PSALM.

I MOURN no more my vanished years:
Beneath a tender rain,
An April rain of smiles and tears,
My heart is young again.

Rebukes my painful care.

I break my pilgrim staff, - I lay
Aside the toiling oar;
The angel sought so far away
I welcome at my door.

The airs of spring may never play
Among the ripening corn,
Nor freshness of the flowers of May
Blow through the autumn morn ;

Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look
Through fringed lids to heaven,
And the pale aster in the brook
Shall see its image given; -

The woods shall wear their robes of

praise,

And so the shadows fall apart, And so the west-winds play;

Melt down the amber sky.

Not less shall manly deed and word

Rebuke an age of wrong; The graven flowers that wreathe the sword

Make not the blade less strong.

But smiting hands shall learn to heal,

To build as to destroy;
Nor less my heart for others feel
That I the more enjoy.

I open to the day.

LE MARAIS DU CYGNE.

A BLUSH as of roses

Where rose never grew! Great drops on the bunch-grass, But not of the dew! A taint in the sweet air

For wild bees to shun! A stain that shall never Bleach out in the sun!

Back, steed of the prairies! Sweet song-bird, fly back! Wheel hither, bald vulture! Gray wolf, call thy pack! The foul human vultures Have feasted and fled; The wolves of the Border

Have crept from the dead.

From the hearths of their cabins,
The fields of their corn,
Unwarned and unweaponed,
The victims were torn,
By the whirlwind of murder
Swooped up and swept on
To the low, reedy fen-lands,
The Marsh of the Swan.

With a vain plea for mercy
No stout knee was crooked;
In the mouths of the rifles
Right manly they looked.
How paled the May sunshine,
O Marais du Cygne!
On death for the strong life,
On red grass for green!

In the homes of their rearing,
Yet warm with their lives,
Ye wait the dead only,
Poor children and wives!
Put out the red forge-fire,
The smith shall not come;
Unyoke the brown oxen,

The ploughman lies dumb.

Wind slow from the Swan's Marsh,
O dreary death-train,
With pressed lips as bloodless
As lips of the slaın!
Kiss down the young eyelids,
Smooth down the gray hairs;
Let tears quench the curses

That burn through your prayers.

Strong men of the prairies,
Mourn bitter and wild!
Wail, desolate woman!
Weep, fatherless child!

But the grain of God springs up
From ashes beneath,
And the crown of his harvest
Is life out of death.

Not in vain on the dial
The shade moves along,
To point the great contrasts
Of right and of wrong:
Free homes and free altars,
Free prairie and flood,
The reeds of the Swan's Marsh,
Whose bloom is of blood!

On the lintels of Kansas
That blood shall not dry;
Henceforth the Bad Angel
Shall harmless go by;
Henceforth to the sunset,
Unchecked on her way,
Shall Liberty follow
The march of the day.

"THE ROCK" IN EL GHOR.

DEAD Petra in her hill-tomb sleeps, Her stones of emptiness remain; Around her sculptured mystery sweeps The lonely waste of Edom's plain.

From the doomed dwellers in the cleft The bow of vengeance turns not back;

Of all her myriads none are left
Along the Wady Mousa's track.

Clear in the hot Arabian day

Her arches spring, her statues climb ; Unchanged, the graven wonders pay No tribute to the spoiler, Time!

Unchanged the awful lithograph
Of power and glory undertrod, -
Of nations scattered like the chaff
Blown from the threshing-floor of
God.

Yet shall the thoughtful stranger turn From Petra's gates, with deeper awe