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Fresh every day to my untainted ears
When birds and flowers were happy peers.

How like a prodigal doth nature seem, When thou, for all thy gold, so common art! Thou teachest me to deem

More sacredly of every human heart,

Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam

Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret shov
Did we but pay the love we owe,

And with a child's undoubting wisdom look
On all these living pages of God's book.

THE FIRST SNOW-FALL

The snow had begun in the gloaming,
And busily all the night

Had been heaping field and highway
With a silence deep and white.

Every pine and fir and hemlock

Wore ermine too dear for an earl,
And the poorest twig on the elm-tree
Was ridged inch deep with pearl.

From sheds new-roofed with Carrara
Came Chanticleer's muffled crow,

The stiff rails were softened to swan's-down,
And still fluttered down the snow.

I stood and watched by the window
The noiseless work of the sky,
And the sudden flurries of snow-birds,
Like brown leaves whirling by.

I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn
Where a little headstone stood;

How the flakes were folding it gently,
As did robins the babes in the wood.

Up spoke our own little Mabel,

Saying, "Father, who makes it snow?" And I told of the good All-father Who cares for us here below.

Again I looked at the snow-fall,

And thought of the leaden sky That arched o'er our first great sorrow, When that mound was heaped so high.

I remembered the gradual patience
That fell from that cloud like snow,
Flake by flake, healing and hiding
The scar of our deep-plunged woe.

And again to the child I whispered,
"The snow that husheth all,
Darling, the merciful Father
Alone can make it fall!"

Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her;
And she, kissing back, could not know

That my kiss was given to her sister,
Folded close under deepening snow.

ALADDIN

When I was a beggarly boy,
And lived in a cellar damp,
I had not a friend nor a toy,
But I had Aladdin's lamp;

When I could not sleep for cold,

I had fire enough in my brain, And builded, with roofs of gold,

My beautiful castles in Spain !

Since then I have toiled day and night,
I have money and power good store,
But I'd give all my lamps of silver bright,
For the one that is mine no more;
Take, Fortune, whatever you choose,
You gave, and may snatch again;
I have nothing 't would pain me to lose,
For I own no more castles in Spain !

LONGING

Of all the myriad moods of mind

That through the soul come thronging Which one was e'er so dear, so kind, So beautiful as Longing? The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment, Before the Present poor and bare Can make its sneering comment.

Still, through our paltry stir and strife,
Glows down the wished Ideal,
And Longing moulds in clay what Life
Carves in the marble Real;

To let the new life in, we know,

Desire must ope the portal;

Perhaps the longing to be so

Helps make the soul immortal.

Longing is God's fresh heavenward will

With our poor earthward striving;

We quench it that we may be still
Content with merely living;

But, would we learn that heart's full scope

Which we are hourly wronging,

Our lives must climb from hope to hope
And realize our longing.

Ah! let us hope that to our praise
Good God not only reckons

The moments when we tread his ways,
But when the spirit beckons, -
That some slight good is also wrought
Beyond self-satisfaction,

When we are simply good in thought,

Howe'er we fail in action.

SONNET

Great Truths are portions of the soul of man;

Great souls are portions of Eternity;

Each drop of blood that e'er through true heart ran

With lofty message, ran for thee and me;

For God's law, since the starry song began,

Hath been, and still for evermore must be,

That every deed which shall outlast Time's span
Must spur the soul to be erect and free;
Slave is no word of deathless lineage sprung;
Too many noble souls have thought and died,
Too many mighty poets lived and sung,
And our good Saxon, from lips purified
With martyr-fire, throughout the world hath rung
Too long to have God's holy cause denied.

WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS

FROM "THE BIGLOW PAPERS"

SERIES I

Guvener B. is a sensible man;

He stays to his home an' looks arter his folks ;
He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can,
An' into nobody's tater-patch pokes ;
But John P.
Robinson he

Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.

My! aint it terrible? Wut shall we du?

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We can't never choose him o' course, thet 's flat; Guess we shall hev to come round, (don't you?)

An' go in fer thunder an' guns, an' all that;
Fer John P.
Robinson he

Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.

Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man :

He's ben on all sides thet give places or pelf;

But consistency still wuz a part of his plan, —
He's ben true to one party, — an' thet is himself;
So John P.
Robinson he

Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.

Gineral C. he goes in fer the war;

He don't vally principle more 'n an old cud;
Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer,
But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' blood?
So John P.
Robinson he

Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.

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