In 1852 appeared The Chapel of the Hermits, Poems. The Panorama, and other Poems, constituted volume, issued in 1856. As the most significant a tiful of the miscellaneous poems of the last-named we present, beginning with the eighth stanza, A child, with wonder-widened eyes, "What dost thou here, poor man? No shade Of cool, green doums, nor grass, nor well, Nor corn, nor vines." The hermit said: "With God I dwell. "Alone with Him in this great calm, The child gazed round him. "Does God live "My brother tills beside the Nile' 66 His little field: beneath the leaves And when the millet's ripe heads fall, "And when to share our evening meal, Adown the hermit's wasted cheeks Within his arms the child he took, And thought of home and life with men And all his pilgrim feet forsook Returned again. MANUAL OF AMERICAN LITERATU He rose from off the desert sand, And, leaning on his staff of thorn, They crossed the desert's burning line, Unquestioning, his childish guide. He followed as the small hand led She rose, she clasped her truant boy, "For, taught of him whom God hath sent, Even as his foot the threshold crossed, Its holiest saint the Thebaid lost, The above volume was followed successively by Ballads, Later Poems, Home Ballads, and Occasional Poems. Of the "Ballads," the most eventful and poetic is MARY GARVIN. THE evening gun had sounded from gray Fort Mary's walls; Through the forest, like a wild beast, roared and plunged the Saco's falls. And westward on the sea-wind, that damp and gusty grew, Over cedars darkening inland the smokes of Spurwink blew. On the hearth of Farmer Garvin blazed the crackling walnut log; Right and left sat dame and goodman, and between them lay the dog, Head on paws, and tail slow wagging, and beside him on her mat, Sitting drowsy in the fire-light, winked and purred the mot tled cat. "Twenty years!" said Goodman Garvin, speaking sadly, under breath, And his gray head slowly shaking, as one who speaks of death. The Goodwife dropped her needles: "It is twenty years, to day, Since the Indians fell on Saco, and stole our child away." Then they sank into the silence, for each knew the other's thought, Of a great and common sorrow, and words were needed not. |