We looked upon a world unknown,
On nothing we could call our own.
Around the glistening wonder bent
The blue walls of the firmament,
No cloud above, no earth below, -
A universe of sky and snow!

The old familiar sights of ours

Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,

Or garden-wall, or belt of wood;

A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,
A fenceless drift what once was road;

The bridle-post an old man sat

With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;

The well-curb had a Chinese roof;

And even the long sweep, high aloof,

In its slant splendor, seemed to tell

Of Pisa's leaning miracle.

John Greenleaf Whittier.

OUR NEIGHBOR.

LD neighbor, for how many a year

OLD

The same horizon, stretching here,

Has held us in its happy bound

From Rivermouth to Ipswich Sound!

How many a wave-washed day we've seen

Above that low horizon lean,

And marked within the Merrimack

The selfsame sunset reddening back,

Or in the Powow's shining stream,
That silent river of a dream!

Where Craneneck o'er the woody gloom
Lifts her steep mile of apple-bloom;
Where Salisbury Sands, in yellow length,
With the great breakers measure strength;
Where Artichoke in shadow slides,
The lily on her painted tides,

There's naught in the enchanted view
That does not seem a part of you:
Your legends hang on every hill,
Your songs have made it dearer still.

Yours is the river-road; and yours
Are all the mighty meadow floors
Where the long Hampton levels lie
Alone between the sea and sky.
Sweeter in Follymill shall blow

The Mayflowers, that you loved them so;
Prouder Deer Island's ancient pines
Toss to their measure in your lines;
And purpler gleam old Appledore,
Because your foot has trod her shore.

Still shall the great Cape wade to meet
The storms that fawn about her feet,
The summer evening linger late
In many-rivered Stackyard-Gate,
When we, when all your people here,
Have fled. But, like the atmosphere,

You still the region shall surround,
The spirit of the sacred ground,

Though you have risen, as mounts the star,

Into horizons vaster far!

Harriet Prescott Spofford.

ESIDE the stream the grist-mill stands,

Bwith bending roof and leaning wall;

So old, that when the winds are wild,
The miller trembles lest it fall:
And yet it baffles wind and rain,
Our brave old Mill! and will again.

Its dam is steep, and hung with weeds:
The gates are up, the waters pour,
And tread the old wheel's slippery round,
The lowest step forevermore.

Methinks they fume, and chafe with ire,
Because they cannot climb it higher.

From morn to night in autumn time,
When harvests fill the neighboring plains,

Up to the mill the farmers drive,

And back anon with loaded wains:

And when the children come from school
They stop, and watch its foamy pool.

The mill inside is small and dark;
But peeping in the open door
You see the miller flitting round,
The dusty bags along the floor,
The whirling shaft, the clattering spout,
And the yellow meal a-pouring out!

All day the meal is floating there,
Rising and falling in the breeze;
And when the sunlight strikes its mist
It glitters like a swarm of bees:
Or like the cloud of smoke and light
Above a blacksmith's forge at night.

I love our pleasant, quaint old Mill,
It still recalls my boyish prime;
'Tis changed since then, and so am I,

We both have known the touch of time:
The mill is crumbling in decay,
And I-my hair is early gray.

I stand beside the stream of Life,
And watch the current sweep along:
And when the flood-gates of my heart
Are raised it turns the wheel of Song:
But scant, as yet, the harvest brought
From out the golden fields of Thought!

Richard Henry Stoddard.