With a slow and noiseless footstep
Comes that messenger divine,
Takes the vacant chair beside me,
Lays her gentle hand in mine;

And she sits and gazes at me,

With those deep and tender eyes,
Like the stars, so still and saint-like,
Looking downward from the skies.

Uttered not, yet comprehended,
Is the spirit's voiceless prayer-
Soft rebukes, in blessings ended,
Breathing from her lips of air.

Oh, though oft depressed and lonely,
All my fears are laid aside,

If I but remember only

Such as these have lived and died!

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

Heroes.

'HE winds that once the Argo bore

THE

Have died by Neptune's ruined shrines :

And her hull is the drift of the deep-sea floor,

Though shaped of Pelion's tallest pines. You may seek her crew on every isle

Fair in the foam of Ægean seas;

But out of their rest no charm can wile
Jason and Orpheus and Hercules.

And Priam's wail is heard no more
By windy Ilion's sea-built walls;
Nor great Achilles, stained with gore,
Cries "O ye gods, 't is Hector falls !"

HEROES.

On Ida's mount is the shining snow;

But Jove has gone from its brow away;

And red on the plain the poppies grow

Where the Greek and the Trojan fought that day.

Mother Earth, are the heroes dead?

Do they thrill the soul of the years no more?
Are the glearning snows and the poppies red
All that is left of the brave of yore?
Are there none to fight as Theseus fought,
Far in the young world's misty dawn?
Or to teach as the gray-haired Nestor taught?
Mother Earth, are the heroes gone?

Gone? In a grander form they rise!

Dead? We may clasp their hands in ours, And catch the light of their clearer eyes,

And wreathe their brows with immortal flowers. Wherever a noble deed is done,

'Tis the pulse of a hero's heart is stirred; Wherever the Right has a triumph won,

There are the heroes' voices heard.

Their armor rings on a fairer field

Than the Greek or the Trojan ever trod : For Freedom's sword is the blade they wield, And the light above is the smile of God. So in his isle of calm delight

Jason may sleep the years away;

For the heroes live, and the skies are bright,

And the world is a braver world to-day.

EDNA DEAN PROCTOR.

14

349

A

The Difference.

LITTLE river with its rock-laid banks

In sombre elm and laughing linden dressed,
A setting sun behind their highest ranks,
A light skiff floating on the river's breast.

You must remember yet that fair June day!
It was a time when setting suns said less
Of speeding time and glorious things' decay,
And vacant watches through the sunlessness;

But more of newer sun and fresher dawn,
More of the inner glories hinted through
The orange gates of sunset half withdrawn,
And burning inward as the glory grew.

You know we talked philosophy-or thought
We did; and flippantly aside we threw
All that the solemn-thoughted prophets taught,
All that the glorious-visioned exile drew,

The untaught record of their simple page

Whose footsteps paced with His the morning-land, As rude inscriptions of a younger age, Unworthy of the ripe world's freer hand.

A whiter light should rise upon the years,
A freer wave should break on every strand,
The New assuage the Old World's toils and tears,
The West should tell it to the morning-land.

But many suns since then have died in flame,
And many skies for them been sable-clad :
The quiet stream moves onward still the same,
With shades to chill, and dawns to make it glad.

MY PSALM.

Much have we seen since then, and much outgrown;
The world of may-be broadens on our sight,
And vaster grows the shadow-clothed unknown-
And ever grander in the growing light.

But while the world's great possible grows more,
And wider outlooks face the eternal hills,
A narrowing vista through the years' dull score
Becomes the vale our straitened pathway fills.

And suns set earlier now, and twilights have
A shade of chill we hardly care to own,
And thinner breaks the water's measured stave,
And evening skies seem not so brightly sown.

And we, apostles of the new time's youth,
Are treading in the way our fathers trod,
Still blest to grasp their store of well-tried truth,
And follow in their patient path to God.

EVANGELINE M. JOHNSON,

My Psalm.

I

MOURN no more my vanished years;

Beneath a tender rain,

An April rain of smiles and tears,

My heart is young again,

The west winds blow, and singing low,
I hear the glad streams run :

The windows of my soul I throw
Wide open to the sun.

No longer forward nor behind
I look in hope and fear;
But grateful take the good I find,

The best of now and here.

351

I plow no more a desert land,

To harvest weed and tare;

The manna dropping from God's hand
Rebukes my painful care.

I break my pilgrim-staff, I lay
Aside the toiling oar;

The angel sought so far away
I welcome at my door.

The airs of spring may never play
Among the ripening corn,
Nor freshness of the flowers of May
Blow through the autumn morn;

Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look
Through fringed lids to heaven;
And the pale aster in the brook
Shall see its image given;

The woods shall wear their robes of praise,
The south-wind softly sigh,

And sweet calm days in golden haze
Melt down the amber sky.

Not less shall manly deed and word
Rebuke an age of wrong:

The graven flowers that wreathe the sword
Make not the blade less strong.

But smiting hands shall learn to heal,

To build as to destroy;

Nor less my heart for others feel,
That I the more enjoy.

All as God wills, who wisely heeds
To give or to withhold,

And knoweth more of all my needs

Than all my prayers have told!