To learn such a simple lesson,

Need I go to Paris and Rome,

That the many make the household,
But only one the home?

"T was just a womanly presence,

An influence unexprest,

But a rose she had worn, on my grave-sod Were more than long life with the rest!

'Twas a smile, 't was a garment's rustle, 'T was nothing that I can phrase,

But the whole dumb dwelling grew conscious, And put on her looks and ways.

Were it mine I would close the shutters,
Like lids when the life is fled,

And the funeral fire should wind it,
This corpse of a home that is dead.

For it died that autumn morning
When she, its soul, was borne

To lie all dark on the hillside

That looks over woodland and corn.

A MOOD.

INE in the distance,

PINE

Patient through sun or rain,

Meeting with graceful persistence,
With yielding but rooted resistance,
The northwind's wrench and strain,
No memory of past existence
Brings thee pain;

Right for the zenith heading,
Friendly with heat or cold,

Thine arms to the influence spreading
Of the heavens, just from of old,
Thou only aspirest the more,
Unregretful the old leaves shedding
That fringed thee with music before,
And deeper thy roots embedding
In the grace and the beauty of yore;
Thou sigh'st not, "Alas, I am older,

The green of last summer is sear!"
But loftier, hopefuller, bolder,

Wins broader horizons each year.

To me 't is not cheer thou art singing:

There's a sound of the sea,

O mournful tree,

In thy boughs forever clinging,

And the far-off roar

Of waves on the shore

A shattered vessel flinging.

As thou musest still of the ocean

On which thou must float at last,

And seem'st to foreknow

The shipwreck's woe

And the sailor wrenched from the broken mast,

Do I, in this vague emotion,

This sadness that will not pass,

Though the air throbs with wings,
And the field laughs and sings,
Do I forebode, alas !

The ship-building longer and wearier,
The voyage's struggle and strife,

And then the darker and drearier
Wreck of a broken life?

THE VOYAGE TO VINLAND.

I.

BIURN'S BECKONERS.

OW Biörn, the son of Heriulf, had ill days

Now

Because the heart within him seethed with

blood

That would not be allayed with any toil,
Whether of war or hunting or the oar,

But was anhungered for some joy untried:
For the brain grew not weary with the limbs,
But, while they slept, still hammered like a Troll,
Building all night a bridge of solid dream.
Between him and some purpose of his soul,
Or will to find a purpose. With the dawn
The sleep-laid timbers, crumbled to soft mist,
Denied all foothold. But the dream remained,
And every night with yellow-bearded kings
His sleep was haunted, - mighty men of old,
Once young as he, now ancient like the gods,
And safe as stars in all men's memories.