Ah! but Elsie's thoughts will stray
Where, a child, she used to play
In the shadow of the pines:
Moss and scarlet-berried vines
Carpeted the granite ledge,
Sloping to the brooklet's edge,
Sweet with violets, blue and white;
While the dandelions, bright
As if Night had spilt her stars,
Shone beneath the meadow-bars.

Could she hold her babe, to look
In that merry, babbling brook,
See it picturing his eye

As the violet's blue and shy,

See his dimpled fingers creep

Where the sweet-breathed Mayflowers peep

With pale pink anemones,

Out among the budding trees!

On his soft cheek falls a tear

For the hillside home so dear.

At her household work she dreams;
And the endless prairie seems
Like a broad, unmeaning face
Read through in a moment's space,
Where the smile so fixed is grown,
Better you would like a frown.

Elsie sighs, "We learn too late,
Little things are more than great.
Hearts like ours must daily be

Fed with some kind mystery,
Hidden in a rocky nook,
Whispered from a wayside brook,
Flashed on unexpecting eyes,
In a winged, swift surprise:
Small the pleasure is to trace
Boundlessness of commonplace."

But the south-wind, stealing in,
Her to happier moods will win.
In and out the little gate
Creep wild roses delicate :
Fragrant grasses hint a tale
Of the blossomed intervale
Left behind, among the hills.
Every flower-cup mystery fills;
Every idle breeze goes by,
Burdened with life's blissful sigh.

Elsie hums a thoughtful air;
Spreads the table, sets a chair

Where her husband first shall see

Baby laughing on her knee;

While she watches him afar,

Coming with the evening star

Through the prairie, through the sky,

Each as from eternity.

Lucy Larcom.

MICHIGAN.

GEEHALE: AN INDIAN LAMENT.

HE blackbird is singing on Michigan's shore

THE

As sweetly and gayly as ever before;

For he knows to his mate he at pleasure can hie,
And the dear little brood she is teaching to fly.
The sun looks as ruddy, and rises as bright,
And reflects o'er the mountains as beamy a light
As it ever reflected, or ever expressed,

When my skies were the bluest, my dreams were the best.

The fox and the panther, both beasts of the night, Retire to their dens on the gleaming of light, And they spring with a free and a sorrowless track, For they know that their mates are expecting them

back.

Each bird and each beast, it is blessed in degree:
All nature is cheerful, all happy, but me.

I will go to my tent, and lie down in despair; I will paint me with black, and will sever my hair; I will sit on the shore, where the hurricane blows, And reveal to the god of the tempest my woes; I will weep for a season, on bitterness fed, For my kindred are gone to the hills of the dead; But they died not by hunger or lingering decay; The steel of the white man hath swept them away.

This snake-skin, that once I so sacredly wore,
I will toss, with disdain, to the storm-beaten shore:
Its charms I no longer obey or invoke,

Its spirit hath left me, its spell is now broke.
I will raise up my voice to the source of the light;
I will dream on the wings of the bluebird at night;
I will speak to the spirits that whisper in leaves,
And that minister balm to the bosom that grieves;
And will take a new Manito, such as shall seem
To be kind and propitious in every dream.

Oh, then I shall banish these cankering sighs, And tears shall no longer gush salt from my eyes; I shall wash from my face every cloud-colored stain; Red red shall alone on my visage remain!

I will dig up my hatchet, and bend my oak bow;
By night and by day I will follow the foe;
Nor lakes shall impede me, nor mountains, nor snows;
His blood can, alone, give my spirit repose.

They came to my cabin when heaven was black: I heard not their coming, I knew not their track; But I saw, by the light of their blazing fusees, They were people engendered beyond the big seas: My wife and my children, oh, spare me the tale! For who is there left that is kin to Geehale?

-

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft.

KENTUCKY.

OVER IN KENTUCKY.

HIS is the smokiest city in the world,"

"THIS

A slight voice, wise and weary, said, “I know. My sash is tied, and, if my hair was curled, I'd like to have my prettiest hat and go There where some violets had to stay, you said, Before your torn-up butterflies were dead

Over in Kentucky."

Then one whose half-sad face still wore the hue
The North Star loved to light and linger on,
Before the war, looked slowly at me too,
And darkly whispered: "What is gone is gone.
Yet, though it may be better to be free,

I'd rather have things as they used to be

Over in Kentucky."

Perhaps I thought how fierce the master's hold,
Spite of all armies, kept the slave within;
How iron chains, when broken, turned to gold,
In empty cabins, where glad songs had been
Before the Southern sword knew blood and rust,
Before wild cavalry sprang from the dust,
Over in Kentucky.

Perhaps But, since two eyes, half full of tears,
Half full of sleep, would love to keep awake