Her step grew firmer on the hills

That watch our homesteads over;
On cheek and lip, from summer fields,
She caught the bloom of clover.

For health comes sparkling in the streams,
From cool Chocorua stealing,
There's iron in our northern winds,
Our pines are trees of healing.

She sat beneath the broad-armed elms
That skirt the mowing-meadow,
And watched the gentle west-wind weave
The grass with shine and shadow.

Beside her, from the summer heat
To share her grateful screening,
With forehead bared, the farmer stood,
Upon his pitchfork leaning.

Framed in its damp, dark locks, his face
Had nothing mean or common—
Strong, manly, true, the tenderness
And pride beloved of woman.

She looked up, glowing with the health
The country air had brought her,
And, laughing said: "You lack a wife,
Your mother lacks a daughter.

"To mend your frock and bake your bread You do not need a lady:

Be sure among these brown old homes
Is some one waiting ready-

"Some fair, sweet girl with skilful hand
And cheerful heart for treasure,
Who never played with ivory keys,
Or danced the polka's measure."

He bent his black brows to a frown,
He set his white teeth tightly.
"Tis well," he said, "for one like you
To choose for me so lightly.

"You think, because my life is rude,
I take no note of sweetness;
I tell you love has naught to do
With meetness or unmeetness.

"Itself its best excuse, it asks

No leave of pride or fashion,
When silken zone or homespun frock
It stirs with throbs of passion.

"You think me deaf and blind; you bring Your winning graces hither,

As free as if from cradle-time,
We two had played together.

"You tempt me with your laughing eyes,.
Your cheeks of sundown's blushes,
A motion as of waving grain,

A music as of thrushes.

"The plaything of your summer sport, The spells you weave around me,

You cannot at your will undo,

Nor leave me as you found me.

"You go as lightly as you came,
Your life is well without me;
What care you that these hills will close
Like prison-walls about me?

"No mood is mine to seek a wife,
Or daughter for my mother;
Who loves you loses in that love
All power to love another!

"I dare your pity or your scorn,
With pride your own exceeding;
I fling my heart into your lap
Without a word of pleading."

She looked up in his face of pain,
So archly, yet so tender:

"And if I lend you mine," she said,

66 Will you forgive the lender?

"Nor frock nor tan can hide the man;
And see you not, my farmer,
How weak and fond a woman waits
Behind this silken armor?

"I love you: on that love alone,
And not my worth, presuming,
Will you not trust for summer fruit
The tree in May-day blooming ?"

Alone the hangbird overhead,

His hair-swung cradle straining,
Looked down to see love's miracle-
The giving that is gaining.

And so the farmer found a wife,
His mother found a daughter;

There looks no happier home than hers
On pleasant Bearcamp Water.

Flowers spring to blossom where she walks
The careful ways of duty;

Our hard, stiff lines of life with her
Are flowing curves of beauty.

Our homes are cheerier for her sake,
Our door-yards brighter blooming,
And all about, the social air
Is sweeter for her coming.

We send the squire to eneral Court;
He takes his young wife thither:

No prouder man election-day

Rides through the sweet June weather.

So spake our landlord as we drove
Beneath the deep hill-shadows.
Below us wreathes of white fog walked
Like ghosts the haunted meadows.

Until, at last, beneath its bridge,
We heard the Bearcamp flowing,
And saw across the mapled lawn
The welcome home-lights glowing;--

And, musing on the tale I heard,
'Twere well, thought I, if often
To rugged farm-life came the gift
To harmonize and soften ;-

If more and more we found the troth
Of fact and fancy plighted,

And culture's charm and labor's strength
In rural homes united-

The simple life, the homely hearth,
With beauty's sphere surrounding,
And blessing toil where toil abounds
With graces more abounding.

THE FIRE-FIEND.-C. D. Gardette.

A NIGHTMARE.

The Author of this was challenged to produce a poem, in the manner of "The Raven," which should be accepted by the general critic as a genuine composition of Mr. Poe's, and "The Fire-Fiend" was the result. It was printed as "from an unpublished MS. of the late Edgar A. Poe," and the hoax proved sufficiently successful to deceive a number of critics in this country, and also in England.

IN the deepest dearth of Midnight, while the sad and solemn swell

Still was floating, faintly echoed from the Forest Chapel Bell

Faintly, falteringly floating o'er the sable waves of air That were through the Midnight rolling, chafed and billowy with the tolling

In my chamber I lay dreaming by the fire-light's fitful gleaming,

And my dreams were dreams foreshadowed on a heart foredoomed to Care!

As the last long lingering echo of the Midnight's mystic chime

Lifting through the sable billows to the Thither Shore of Time

Leaving on the starless silence not a token nor a traceIn a quivering sigh departed; from my couch in fear I started:

Started to my feet in terror, for my Dream's phantasmal Error

Painted in the fitful fire, a frightful, fiendish, flaming face!

On the red hearth's reddest centre, from a blazing knot of oak,

Seemed to gibe and grin this Phantom when in terror I awoke,

And my slumberous eyelids straining as I staggered to the

floor,

Still in that dread Vision seeming, turned my gaze toward the gleaming

Hearth, and there !-oh, God! I saw It! and from out Its flaming jaw It

Spat a ceaseless, seething, hissing, bubbling, gurgling stream of gore!

Speechless; struck with stony silence; frozen to the floor I stood,

Till methought my brain was hissing with that hissing, bubbling blood:

Till I felt my life-stream oozing, oozing from those lambent lips :-

Till the Demon seemed to name me:-then a wondrous calm o'ercame me,

And my brow grew cold and dewy, with a death-damp stiff and gluey,

And I fell back on my pillow in apparent soul-eclipse!

Then, as in Death's seeming shadow, in the icy Pall of Fear

I lay stricken, came a hoarse and hideous murmur to my

ear:

Came a murmur like the murmur of assassins in their sleep :

66

Higher! higher! higher! I am Demon of

Muttering,
the Fire!

I am Arch-Fiend of the Fire! and each blazing roof's my

pyre,

And my sweetest incense is the blood and tears my victims weep!

"How I revel on the Prairie! How I roar among the

Pines !

How I laugh when from the village o'er the snow the red flame shines,

And I hear the shrieks of terror, with a Life in every breath!

How I scream with lambent laughter as I hurl each crackling rafter

Down the fell abyss of Fire, until higher! higher! higher! Leap the High-Priests of my Altar in their merry Dance of Death!

"I am Monarch of the Fire! I am Vassal-King of Death!

World-encircling, with the shadow of its Doom upon my breath!

With the symbol of Hereafter flaming from my fatal face! I command the Eternal Fire! Higher! higher! higher! higher!

Leap my ministering Demons, like Phantasmagoric lemans Hugging Universal Nature in their hideous embrace !"

Then a sombre silence shut me in a solemn, shrouded sleep,

And I slumbered, like an infant in the "Cradle of the

Deep,"