And the dread, like mist in sunshine,
Furled serenely from her mind.

"Once my love, my love forever,
Flesh or spirit, still the same,
If I failed at time of trysting,
Deem thou not my faith to blame;
I, alas, was made a captive,

As from Holy Land I came.

"On a green spot in the desert,

Gleaming like an emerald star, Where a palm-tree, in lone silence, Yearning for its mate afar, Droops above a silver runnel, Slender as a scimitar,

"There thou 'lt find the humble postern

To the castle of my foe;
If thy love burn clear and faithful,

Strike the gateway, green and low,
Ask to enter, and the warder

Surely will not say thee no."

Slept again the aspen silence,

But her loneliness was o'er; Round her soul a motherly patience Clasped its arms forevermore; From her heart ebbed back the sorrow, Leaving smooth the golden shore.

Donned she now the pilgrim scallop,

Took the pilgrim staff in hand; Like a cloud-shade, flitting eastward, Wandered she o'er sea and land; And her footsteps in the desert

Fell like cool rain on the sand.

Soon, beneath the palm-tree's shadow,
Knelt she at the postern low;
And thereat she knocked full gently,
Fearing much the warder's no;
All her heart stood still and listened,
As the door swung backward slow.

There she saw no surly warder

With an eye like bolt and bar; Through her soul a sense of music Throbbed, and, like a guardian Lar, On the threshold stood an angel, Bright and silent as a star.

Fairest seemed he of God's seraphs,
And her spirit, lily-wise,
Opened when he turned upon her
The deep welcome of his eyes,
Sending upward to that sunlight
All its dew for sacrifice.

I sat and mused; the fire burned low,
And, o'er my senses stealing,
Crept something of the ruddy glow

That bloomed on wall and ceiling;
My pictures (they are very few,

The heads of ancient wise men)
Smoothed down their knotted fronts,
and grew
As rosy as excisemen.

My antique high-backed Spanish chair
Felt thrills through wood and leather,
That had been strangers since whilere,
'Mid Andalusian heather,
The oak that built its sturdy frame
His happy arms stretched over
The ox whose fortunate hide became
The bottom's polished cover.

It came out in that famous bark, That brought our sires intrepid, Capacious as another ark

For furniture decrepit ;

A pair for propagation,
So has the seed of these increased

And furnished half the nation.

Kings sit, they say, in slippery seats;
But those slant precipices
Of ice the northern voyager meets
Less slippery are than this is;
To cling therein would pass the wit
Of royal man or woman,
And whatsoe'er can stay in it

Is more or less than human.

I offer to all bores this perch,

Dear well-intentioned people With heads as void as week-day church, Tongues longer than the steeple ; To folks with missions, whose gaunt eyes

See golden ages rising,
Salt of the earth! in what queer Guys
Thou 'rt fond of crystallizing!

My wonder, then, was not unmixed
With merciful suggestion,
When, as my roving eyes grew fixed
Upon the chair in question,
I saw its trembling arms enclose
A figure grim and rusty,
Whose doublet plain and plainer hose
Were something worn and dusty.

Now even such men as Nature forms
Merely to fill the street with,
Once turned to ghosts by hungry worms,
Are serious things to meet with;
Your penitent spirits are no jokes,
And, though I'm not averse to
A quiet shade, even they are folks
One cares not to speak first to.

Who knows, thought I, but he has come,
By Charon kindly ferried,
To tell me of a mighty sum

Behind my wainscot buried?
There is a buccaneerish air

About that garb outlandish
Just then the ghost drew up his chair
And said, "My name is Standish.

"I come from Plymouth, deadly bored With toasts, and songs, and speeches, As long and flat as my old sword,

As threadbare as my breeches : They understand us Pilgrims! they, Smooth men with rosy faces,

'No, Freedom, no! blood should not stain

The hem of thy white vesture.
"I feel the soul in me draw near
The mount of prophesying;
In this bleak wilderness I hear
A John the Baptist crying;
Far in the east I see upleap

The streaks of first forewarning,
And they who sowed the light shall reap
The golden sheaves of morning.

"Child of our travail and our woe,
Light in our day of sorrow,
Through my rapt spirit I foreknow
The glory of thy morrow;

I hear great steps, that through the shade
Draw nigher still and nigher,

And voices call like that which bade
The prophet come up higher.”

I looked, no form mine eyes could find,
I heard the red cock crowing,
And through my window-chinks the
wind

A dismal tune was blowing; Thought I, My neighbor Buckingham

Hath somewhat in him gritty, Some Pilgrim-stuff that hates all sham, And he will print my ditty.

shielded ruffians slay

The men who fain would win their own, the heroes of to-day!

Are we pledged to craven silence? fling it to the wind,

O,

The parchment wall that bars us from the least of human kind, That makes us cringe and temporize, and dumbly stand at rest, While Pity's burning flood of words is

red-hot in the breast!

God works for all. Ye cannot hem the hope of being free

With parallels of latitude, with mountain-range or sea.

Put golden padlocks on Truth's lips, be

callous as ye will, From soul to soul, o'er all the world, leaps one electric thrill.

Chain down your slaves with ignorance,

ye cannot keep apart, With all your craft of tyranny, the human heart from heart: When first the Pilgrims landed on the Bay State's iron shore, The word went forth that slavery should one day be no more.

creed our slaves shall go,

And signs to us are offered, as erst to Pharaoh ;

If we are blind, their exodus, like Israel's of yore,

Through a Red Sea is doomed to be, whose surges are of gore.

T is ours to save our brethren, with peace and love to win Their darkened hearts from error, ere they harden it to sin; But if before his duty man with listless spirit stands,

Erelong the Great Avenger takes the work from out his hands.

THE GHOST-SEER.

YE who, passing graves by night,
Glance not to the left nor right,
Lest a spirit should arise,
Cold and white, to freeze your eyes,
Some weak phantom, which your doubt
Shapes upon the dark without
From the dark within, a guess
At the spirit's deathlessness,
Which ye entertain with fear
In your self-built dungeon here,
Where ye sell your God-given lives
Just for gold to buy you gyves, –
Ye without a shudder meet
In the city's noonday street,
Spirits sadder and more dread
Than from out the clay have fled,
Buried, beyond hope of light,
In the body's haunted night!

See ye not that woman pale?
There are bloodhounds on her trail!
Bloodhounds two, all gaunt and lean,
(For the soul their scent is keen,)
Want and Sin, and Sin is last,
They have followed far and fast;
Want gave tongue, and, at her howl,
Sin awakened with a growl.
Ah, poor girl! she had a right
To a blessing from the light;
Title-deeds to sky and earth
God gave to her at her birth;
But, before they were enjoyed,
Poverty had made them void,
And had drunk the sunshine up
From all nature's ample cup,
Leaving her a first-born's share
In the dregs of darkness there.
Often, on the sidewalk bleak,
Hungry, all alone, and weak,
She has seen, in night and storm,
Rooms o'erflow with firelight warm,
Which, outside the window-glass,
Doubled all the cold, alas!
Till each ray that on her fell
Stabbed her like an icicle,
And she almost loved the wail
Of the bloodhounds on her trail.
Till the floor becomes her bier,
She shall feel their pantings near,
Close upon her very heels,
Spite of all the din of wheels;
Shivering on her pallet poor,
She shall hear them at the door
Whine and scratch to be let in,
Sister bloodhounds, Want and Sin!