The Mill-Child's Last Dream.*

I.

WHAT time the mill-room's dusty gloom
Was fleck'd with sunset's yellow bars,
She lean'd against the noisy loom

That thrill'd her with its ceaseless jars:
A childish form and childish face,
Whereon the purpling twilight play'd,
And round about its lowly grace

A lustrous limning softly made,
And touch'd her cheek with rosy tinge,
And crown'd with gold her loosen'd hair,
And trimm'd her russet robe with fringe
More royal than a queen might wear.

II.

From earliest gray of morning's dawn
To wintry evening's welcome bound,
Her childhood's trembling fleece was drawn
Through Toil's unvarying spindle-round:
A dreary web of weary hours,

A dizzy whirl of noisy days,

With here and there some wayside-flowers,
And here and there some Sabbath lays.

Of little worth in worldly count,

Of little space in human scan;

A fraction in that large amount

Of matter, merchandise, and-man.

III.

Beneath the drone of belt and shaft,

And 'wildering whir of tireless wheels,
The child had plied her simple craft

All day among the mazy reels.

In the terrible catastrophe of the Pemberton Mills, in Laurence, Massachusetts, six hundred operatives were involved in the fall of the buildings, and nearly twothirds of the number killed or maimed. One young girl of ten years had fallen asleep at her loom, and was afterwards discovered to be alive among the ruins, wedged in by the machinery in such a manner as to defy extrication. She lingered several hours, and was heard singing with her last breath some simple Sabbath

melodies.

And now, as evening glooms o'ercrept,
Her fluttering pulse grew strangely still;
And half she waked and half she slept
Midst all the noises of the mill;
And half forgot the whir of wheels,

And lumbering roll of whirling drums, And bobbin's clack, through labouring creels, And restless throstle's bird-like hums!

IV.

The air grew rich from floor to roof

With fleecy sheen of sunset bloom; In lustrous warp and gorgeous woof

It shimmered from each golden loom. The wheels went round with drowsy croon, The throstles sang like linnets rare; The spindles whirl'd in rhythmic tune,

Like swallows twittering through the air. No more shut in with walls of brick,

The mill through gardens seem'd to spread; And round its base the grass grew thick, With lilies white and roses red.

V.

With roses red and lilies white,

All sweetly paved as gardens be; And arch'd above with sapphire light, And wanton'd o'er by breezes free! And all the mill-girls singing were,

And all the children weaving flowers;

And, oh! no overseer was there,

And none kept time-book of the hours!
The mill-girls sang with voices clear,
With cadence sweet and tender swell,

As if 'twere Sunday all the year,

And every one forgot-the BELL!

VI.

With iron throb and brazen thrill,

With shivering pause and quivering clang

As if through all the shuddering mill

Some tortur'd engine roared and rang.

That iron BELL!-God help us all !—

No more 'twill wake the slumbering child :

A harsher tongue, an angrier call,

Alarmed her soul with terrors wild ;

With sudden swirl from roof to base,

And violent throes through wall and beam, The huge mill, surging from its place,

Sank earthward-crumbling like her dream!

VII.

With all its weight of looms and mules,
And all its wealth of woven rolls,
And shuttle-frames and cards and spools,

And twice three hundred human souls!
Through plunging wall and yawning floor,
Destruction's shuttles fiercely sped,

And downward whirled, with dreadful roar,
The warp of Quick, the woof of Dead!
Destroyed! O World, compute the Loss!
Insured! O World, the Gain record!
Man reckoneth for his shattered dross ;

But who for these dumb souls, O Lord?

VIII.

Great wrecks of ponderous spinning-gear,
Of ruin'd wealth a wildering store!
And underneath,-O stony bier!-

What woful weight of death it bore!-
Poor rent and mangled human shreds,

And tattered folds of heart and brain;
Poor tangled skeins of mortal threads,
New-woven in webs of fiery pain;
For up and down crept serpent-flames,

Among those deepening prison-glooms,

And trailed around the iron frames,

And coiled above the blood-stained looms !

IX.

O dreaming child!-awake thou art!

I hear thy small voice rippling low, Through singing brain and dancing heart, Like murmuring brooklet's liquid flow. In fiery clasp of martyr's doom,

She heard the throstles, whistling still,

And saw the sunset's purple bloom

Slant downward through the dusky mill;

But all below like churchyard seemed,
With long green grasses thickly spread;
And underneath the turf (she dreamed)
Were lilies white and roses red.

X.

Her lips with scorching vapours crisped,
And hands uplifted from the blaze,
Her mother's prayers she sweetly lisped,

And sang the hymns of Sabbath days:
Till all the dreadful world of pain

Seem'd brooded o'er by tenderest balm,
And dove-like pinions fanned her brain,
And whispering voices joined her psalm;
For all the mill-girls singing were,

And all the children weaving flowers,
And Heaven was shimmering through the air,
Where-none kept time-book of the hours!

XI.

O busy Hands! O weary Feet!

O Eyes! consumed by daily tears!
O Heart of Toil! I hear thy beat

Through all the immemorial years.
For strangers' bread, in strangers' band,
O Giant Slave! thou grindest still:
The Nazarite of our Christian land,-
A blinded Samson of the Mill!

Still bow'd and bruised like him of old,

Still crush'd and slain with murderous walls,

Still scorn'd by DAGON'S priests,-behold!—
The Christian to the Hebrew calls!

Summer Days.

LYING on my back under one of the magnificent old trees in Windsor Park on a sultry day in June, giving myself up to the thousand peaceful influences of the chequered shade above me, the clear sky in the distance, the soft air, the blessed stillness broken but by the bird's song,-lying here supine, indolent, happy, I thought that I could write an essay on "Summer Days," and straightway fell a thinking over my subject and its tone, and arranging in my own mind its composition and treatment. So many pleasant memories of bygone times rose before me during these cogitations, that I began to feel I was progressing satisfactorily, and to hope that I might perhaps be enabled to convey to the readers of Temple Bar some portion of my own enjoyment. The subject seemed to me one on which I might gossip in a desultory manner, and the tone of which, though necessarily somewhat egotistical, must, from its nature, be broad and healthy, affording little opportunity for the exhibition of that twopenny cynicism and petty whining jealousy, which, as I think, we are most of us now-adays too apt to ape, and which crops out like a foul weed in the pretty sparkling parterre of our periodical literature.

So during the remainder of that glorious day-my two dear companions knowing my love of silence in the country, and kindly humoring my fancy-I was chewing the cud of my thought, and revolving in my mind how best I could express my feelings. No place could have been more favourable for such rumination: the majestic avenues of the Park stretching far away, and crowned in the distance by the gray stern old Castle; "the innumerable ear and tail" of the deer "twinkling" in the luxuriant fern; farther on the placid, broad Virginia Water, bordered by a velvety lawn, inviting more repose and limb-stretching; the solemn quiet, the stillness that could be felt,-all helped me in my purpose. Dining in a hot room of the "White Hart" at Windsor, though grateful, was perhaps a little antagonistic to my sentimental state; but there must have been revivifying influence in the ice-bound fire of the sparkling Moselle, as I mounted my "Summer Days" hobby again immediately on entering the train, and rode it all the way to town.

But before I went to bed that night, I took from a little book-case placed handy to my easy chair, and filled only with special favourites,— read and re-read, opening at well-remembered passages, pencil-scored and worn, -a volume of Essays, written by one whom I am so happy as to call my friend; and in the second series of the Recreations of that Country Parson, whose charming writings are so well known to and so loved by all who appreciate a rare combination of talent and simplicity, of healthy judgment and elegant taste,-in this volume I found an article, the substance of which I knew, though I had forgotten its title, headed "Concerning Summer Days."