Old Monmouth, so touched with glory,
So tinted with burning shame,
As Washington's pride we remember,
Or Lee's long-tarnished name.

'Twas a little brass half-circlet;
And knocking the rust away,
And clearing the ends and the middle
From their burial-shroud of clay,
I saw, through the damp of ages,
And the thick, disfiguring grime,
The buckle-heads and the rowel
Of a spur of the olden time.

And I said, "What gallant horseman,
Who revels and rides no more,
Perhaps twenty years back, or fifty,
On his heel that weapon wore?
Was he riding away to his bridal,
When the leather snapped in twain ?
Was he thrown, and dragged by the stirrup,
With the rough stones crushing his brain?"

Then I thought of the Revolution,
Whose tide still onward rolls;

Of the free and the fearless riders,

Of the "times that tried men's souls."

What if, in the day of battle

That raged and rioted here,

It had dropped from the foot of a soldier, As he rode in his mad career?

What if it had ridden with Forman,
When he leaped through the open door,
With the British dragoon behind him,
In his race o'er the granary-floor?
What if-but the brain grows dizzy
With the thoughts of the rusted spur-
What if it had fled with Clinton,
Or charged with Aaron Burr?

But bravely the farmer's urchin

Had been scraping the rust away;

And, cleaned from the soil that swathed it, The spur before me lay.

Here are holes in the outer circle;

No common heel it has known, For each space, I see by the setting, Once held some precious stone.

And here, not far from the buckle-
Do my eyes deceive their sight?-
Two letters are here engraven,

That initial a hero's might!"G. W.!" Saints of heaven!

Can such things in our lives occur? Do I grasp such a priceless treasure? Was this George Washington's spur?

Did the brave old Pater Patriæ

Wear that spur, like a belted knight,-
Wear it, through gain and disaster,
From Cambridge to Monmouth fight?
Did it press his steed in hot anger
On Long Island's day of pain?
Did it drive him at terrible Princeton
'Tween two streams of leaden rain?

And here did the buckles loosen,
And no eye look down to see,
When he rode to blast with the lightning
The defiant eyes of Lee?

Did it fall, unfelt and unheeded,

When that fight of despair was won, And Clinton, worn and discouraged, Crept away at the set of the sun?

The lips have long been silent

That could send an answer back; And the spur, all broken and rusted, Has it forgotten its rider's track?

I only know that the pulses

Leap hot, and the senses reel,

When I think that the Spur of Monmouth

May have clasped George Washington's

heel!

Henry Morford.

LIGHTLY the hoar-frost freezes

The young grass of the field,
Nor yet have blander breezes
The buds of the oak unsealed;
Not yet pours out the vine
His airy resinous wine;
But over the southern slope
The wands of the peach-tree first
Into rosy beauty burst;

A breath, and the sweet buds ope!
A day, and the orchards bare,
Like maids in haste to be fair,
Lightly themselves adorn

With a scarf the Spring at the door
Has sportively flung before,

Or a stranded cloud of the morn!

Afar, through the mellow hazes

Where the dreams of June are stayed,
The hills, in their vanishing mazes,
Carry the flush, and fade!
Southward they fall, and reach
To the bay and the ocean beach,
Where the soft, half-Syrian air
Blows from the Chesapeake's
Inlets, coves, and creeks

On the fields of Delaware!

And the rosy lakes of flowers,
That here alone are ours,
Spread into seas that pour
Billow and spray of pink,
Even to the blue wave's brink,
All down the Eastern Shore !

NEVER in tenderer quiet lapsed the day

From Pennsylvania's vales of spring away, Where, forest-walled, the scattered hamlets lay

Along the wedded rivers. One long bar
Of purple cloud, on which the evening star
Shone like a jewel on a scimitar,

Held the sky's golden gateway. Through the deep Hush of the woods a murmur seemed to creep, The Schuylkill whispering in a voice of sleep.

All else was still. The oxen from their plows Rested at last, and from their long day's browse Came the dun files of Krisheim's home-bound

COWS.