Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood. Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse, HESTER. WHEN maidens such as Hester die, Their place ye may not well supply, Though ye among a thousand try, With vain endeavor. A month or more has she been dead, A springy motion in her gait, I know not by what name beside She did inherit. Her parents held the Quaker rule, Which doth the human feelings cool; But she was trained in nature's school, Nature had blessed her. A waking eye, a prying mind, Ye could not Hester. My sprightly neighbor, gone before Seeking to find the old familiar To that unknown and silent shore! faces. Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling? So might we talk of the old familiar faces How some they have died, and some they have left me, And some are taken from me; all are departed, All, all are gone, the old familiar faces! Shall we not meet as heretofore When from thy cheerful eyes a ray THE HOUSEKEEPER. THE frugal snail, with forecast of repose, Carries his house with him where'er he goes; Flashes red triumph in the noonday sun; The poet, when his lyre hangs on the palm; The statesman, when the crowd proclaim his voice, And mould opinion on his gifted tongue: They count not life's first steps, and never think Upon the many miserable hours When hope deferred was sickness to the heart. They reckon not the battle and the march, The long privations of a wasted youth; They never see the banner till unfurled. What are to them the solitary nights Passed pale and anxiously by the sickly lamp, Till the young poet wins the world at last To listen to the music long his own? The crowd attend the statesman's fiery mind That makes their destiny; but they do not trace Its struggle, or its long expectancy. Hard are life's early steps; and, but that youth Is buoyant, confident, and strong in Men would behold its threshold, and hope, despair. Whereat their stupid tongues, to And down the hollow from a ferny nook Bright leaps a living brook! BETRAYAL. THE sun has kissed the violet sea, Mere violet still? Who knows? who knows? Well hides the violet in the wood: The sun has burnt the rose-red sea: LUCY LARCOM. HANNAH BINDING SHoes. POOR lone Hannah, Sitting at the window, binding shoes, Faded, wrinkled, Sitting, stitching, in a mournful muse. Bright-eyed beauty once was she, When the bloom was on the tree: Spring and winter, Fair young Hannah, Hannah's at the window, binding Ben, the sunburnt fisher, gayly woos: shoes. Not a neighbor, Passing nod or answer will refuse, Hale and clever, For a willing heart and hand he sues. May-day skies are all aglow, And the waves are laughing so! |