Home scenes made vivid by the sad refrain
Of Perkiomen singing all the day.

Yet mid the gloom and doubt the living learned
How still defeat to victory might be turned,
Until the cannon thundered from the hill
A conquest's tale, and glad below the mill
The Perkiomen sang on that great day.

But nature soon forgets: that camp is lost,
She hides the graves of all that arméd host;
On the same site now stands another mill,
Another miller leans on the white sill

To hear the Perkiomen sing to-day.

Let not our hearts forget. Lo! Time makes plain
How from the sacrifice has grown our gain;
Here orchards bloom; each year its harvest brings,
And clearer still of peace and plenty sings

The Perkiomen all the autumn day.

Stands on the banks of its beautiful stream the city he founded.

There all the air is balm, and the peach is the emblem of beauty,

And the streets still re-echo the names of the trees of the forest,

As if they fain would appease the Dryads whose haunts they molested.

There from the troubled sea had Evangeline landed,

an exile,

Finding among the children of Penn a home and a

country.

There old René Leblanc had died; and when he de

parted,

Saw at his side only one of all his hundred descendants. Something at least there was in the friendly streets of the city,

Something that spake to her heart, and made her no longer a stranger;

And her ear was pleased with the Thee and Thou of the Quakers,

For it recalled the past, the old Acadian country,

Where all men were equal, and all were brothers and

sisters.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

THE MESCHIANZA.

"THE Meschianza was chiefly a tilt and tournament, with other entertainments, as the term implies, and was given on Monday, the 18th of May, 1778, at Wharton's country-seat, in Southwark, by the officers of General Howe's army, to that officer on his quitting the command to return to England."- WATSON.

0

CITY, the beloved of Penn,

How was your quiet startled when
Red Mars made your calm harbor glow
With all the splendors he can show!

How looked your tranquil founder down
That day upon his cherished town,
That town which in the sylvan wild
He reared and tended like a child?

Methinks that patriarch and his peers,

Who fashioned all your staid retreats,
Groaned then in their celestial seats
With sad offended eyes and ears;
And, had their loving faith allowed,
That day, in mournful spirit bowed,
Each had turned his olive-wand
Into a rod of reprimand.

The May was there, the blue-eyed May;
The sweet south breeze came up the bay,
Fanning the river where it lay
Voiceless, with astonished stare,
The great sea-drinking Delaware.

There, in the broad, clear afternoon,
With myriad oars, and all in tune,

A swarm of barges moved away,
In all their grand regatta pride,
As bright as in a blue lagune,
When gondolas from shore to shore
Swam round the golden Bucentaur
On a Venetian holiday,

What time the Doge threw in the tide
The ring which made the sea his bride.

Mid these were mighty platforms drawn,
Each crowded like a festal lawn,

Great swimming floors, o'er which were rolled
Cloth of scarlet, green, and gold,

Like tropic isles of flowery light
Unmoored by some enchanter's might,
O'erflowed with music, floated down
Before the wharf-assembled town.

A thousand rowers rocked and sung,
A thousand light oars flashed and flung
A fairy rainbow where they sprung.
Conjoining with the singers' voice,
In ecstatic rival trial,
Every instrument of choice,

Mellow flute and silver viol,
Wooed the soft air to rejoice;
Till on wings of splendor met,
Clearer, louder, wilder yet,
Clarion and clarionet,