AN EVENING RIDE.

Was stealing on us.

Genoa broke with day,

The Doria's long pale palace striking out

From green hills in advance of the white town,

A marble finger dominant to ships,

185

Seen glimmering through the uncertain gray of dawn.

Mrs. Browning.

AN EVENING RIDE.

From Glashütte to Mügeln, in Saxony.

WE

E ride and ride. High on the hills
The fir-trees stretch into the sky;
The birches which the deep calm stills
Quiver again as we speed by.

Beside the road a shallow stream
Goes leaping o'er its rocky bed :
Here lie the corn-fields, with a gleam
Of daisies white and poppies red.
A faint star trembles in the west;

A fire-fly sparkles, fluttering bright
Against the mountain's sombre breast;
And yonder shines a village light.

Oh! could I creep into thine arms,
Beloved! and upon thy face

Read the arrest of dire alarms

That press me close; from thy embrace

View the sweet earth as on we ride.
Alas! how vain our longings are!

Already night is spreading wide
Her sable wing, and thou art far.

Owen Innsly.

SAUN

THE SEA-GULL.

AUNTERING hither on listless wings,
Careless vagabond of the sea,

Little thou heedest the surf that sings,

The bar that thunders, the shale that rings,Give me to keep thy company.

Little thou hast, old friend, that's new, Storms and wrecks are old things to thee; Sick am I of these changes, too;

Little to care for, little to rue,—

I on the shore and thou on the sea.

All of thy wanderings, far and near,
Bring thee at last to shore and me;
All of my journeyings end them here,
This our tether must be our cheer,-
I on the shore and thou on the sea.

Lazily rocking on ocean's breast,

Something in common, old friend, have we ; Thou on the shingle seek'st thy nest,

I to the waters look for rest,—

I on the shore, and thou on the sea.

THE CREED OF LIFE.

CANO

Bret Harte.

ANONS and rubrics own I none,
Save one upon the granite writ :
"I, Lord of Lords, have fashioned it,
And graved it with my rains and sun."

AMONG THE FIR-TREES.

One creed, all other creeds above
I take into my soul like fire,
Till, flashing through me with desire,
The world is molten in my prayer.

It is my beating heart! I turn,

I face the streams, I brave the hills:

With the same word the bird's breast fills;

With the same God the bushes burn.

187

John Tunis.

AMONG THE FIR-TREES.

N the bare hill-top, by the pinewood's edge,

ON

how joyously rang the noise

Of the mountain wind in the topmost boughs! a spell there was in its voice.

It drew me to leave the goodly sight of the plain sweeping far away,

And enter the solemnly shaded depths to hear what the trees would say.

But no sooner I trod the russet floor than hushed were the magic tones :

No stir but the flight of a startled bird, no sound but my foot on the cones.

All silently rose the stately shafts, kirtled with lich

ens gray,

And the sunlight-flakes on their reddening tops were as still and unmoved as they.

Was it joy or dread that pressed my heart? I felt as one who must hear

Some long-kept secret, and knows not as yet if it bring him hope or fear;

I stood as still as the solemn firs, and hearkened with waiting mind;

Then I heard far away in the topmost boughs the eternal sough of the wind.

And the thrill of that mystic murmur so entered my listening heart,

That the very soul of the forest trees became with my soul a part;

I seemed to be raised and borne aloft in that ever

ascending strain,

With a throb too solemn and deep for joy, too perfect and pure for pain.

Many voices there are in Nature's choir, and none but were good to hear

Had we mastered the laws of their music well, and could read their meaning clear;

But we who can feel at Nature's touch cannot think

as yet with her thought,

And I only know that the sough of the firs with a spell of its own is fraught.

For the wind when it howls in the chimneys at night hath a heavy and dreary sound

Of the dull everlasting treadmill of life, which goes so wearily round;

AMONG THE FIR-TREES.

189

And the choirs of waves on the long-drawn sands, too well I hear in their strain

The throb of our human anguish deep, where triumph wrestles with pain.

But neither passion nor sorrow I hear in this rhythmic steady course,

Only the movement resistless and strong of some all-pervading Force;

The one universal Life which moves the whole of the outward plan,

Which throbs in winds, and waters, and flowers, in insect, and bird, and man.

Oh, would that the unknown finer touch which makes us other than those

Did not hold us so far asunder in soul from their

harmony and repose!

The self-same fountain doth life and growth to us and to them impart,

But only at moments we taste and know the peace which is Nature's heart.

And yet it may be that long, long hence, when æons of effort have pass'd,

We shall come-not blindly impelled, but free-to the orbit of order at last,

And a finer peace shall be wrought out of pain than the stars in their courses know!

Ah me! but my soul is in sorrow till then, and the feet of the years are slow!

Fraser's Magazine.