LONE MOUNTAIN CEMETERY.

THIS is that hill of awe

That Persian Sindbad saw,
The mount magnetic;
And on its seaward face,
Scattered along its base,

The wrecks prophetic.

Here come the argosies
Blown by each idle breeze,
To and fro shifting ;

Yet to the hill of Fate

All drawing, soon or late,

Day by day drifting ;

Drifting forever here

Barks that for many a year

Braved wind and weather;

Shallops but yesterday

Launched on yon shining bay,

Drawn all together.

This is the end of all:

Sun thyself by the wall,
O poorer Hindbad!

Envy not Sindbad's fame:
Here come alike the same,

Hindbad and Sindbad.

Bret Harte.

THE GOLDEN GATE.

THE air is chill, and the day grows late,

And the clouds come in through the Golden Gate: Phantom fleets they seem to me,

From a shoreless and unsounded sea;

Their shadowy spars and misty sails,

Unshattered, have weathered a thousand gales:
Slow wheeling, lo! in squadrons gray,
They part, and hasten along the bay;
Each to its anchorage finding way.
Where the hills of Saucelito swell,
Many in gloom may shelter well;
And others—behold — unchallenged pass
By the silent guns of Alcatras :

No greetings of thunder and flame exchange
The armèd isle and the cruisers strange.
Their meteor flags, so widely blown,
Were blazoned in a land unknown;

So, charmed from war or wind or tide,
Along the quiet wave they glide.

What bear these ships? what news, what freight,
Do they bring us through the Golden Gate?
Sad echoes to words in gladness spoken,

And withered hopes to the poor heart-broken:
Oh, how many a venture we

Have rashly sent to the shoreless sea!

How many an hour have you and I,

Sweet friend, in sadness seen go by,

While our eager, longing thoughts were roving
Over the waste, for something loving,
Something rich and chaste and kind,
To brighten and bless a lonely mind;
And only waited to behold

Ambition's gems, affection's gold,
Return as remorse, and a broken vow,
In such ships of mist as I see now.

The air is chill, and the day grows late,
And the clouds come in through the Golden Gate,
Freighted with sorrow, heavy with woe;-
But these shapes that cluster, dark and low,
To-morrow shall be all aglow!

In the blaze of the coming morn these mists,
Whose weight my heart in vain resists,
Will brighten and shine, and soar to heaven,
In thin white robes, like souls forgiven;
For Heaven is kind, and everything,
As well as a winter, has a spring.

o, praise to God! who brings the day
hat shines our regrets and fears away;

For the blessed morn I can watch and wait,

While the clouds come in through the Golden Gate.

Edward Pollock.

AT THE GOLDEN GATE.

EARS, years of waiting, while in shapes terrific

YEAR

Have loomed the obstacles that held me back; And now I see, at length, the broad Pacific

Rolling far westward in the sunset's track; And now I know how that discoverer Spanish, Balboa, his long toilsome journey made,

One first glimpse caught, in fear the whole might vanish,

A mirage, dropped upon his knees and prayed.

The Sunset Sea! The noblest and the broadest
Of all the oceans girdling wave-washed earth;
The calmest, gentlest, yet at times the maddest,
In raving paroxysms of stormy mirth.

The Eagle's continent its eastern border;

Its western, that on which one half mankind Sit under despotisms of deadly order

And bow to superstitions old as blind.

And yet how near together, spite of distance,
Stand the two mighty continents, to-day!
How nearly, at this stage of man's existence,
Current to current makes its powerful way!
Within this Golden Gate, the noblest, surely,
Of all the entrances of all the seas,
The Asian barks-of-hope float in securely,

And furl their lateen sails, and ride at ease.