THE BIRCH-TREE. RIPPLING througn thy branches goes the sunshine, The soul once of some tremulous inland river, Quivering to tell her woe, but, ah! dumb, dumb for ever! While all the forest, witched with slumberous moonshine, Holds up its leaves in happy, happy silence, Waiting the dew, with breath and pulse suspended, I hear afar thy whispering, gleamy islands, And track thee wakeful still amid the wide-hung silence. Upon the brink of some wood-nestled lakelet, Thy foliage, like the tresses of a Dryad, Dripping about thy slim white stem, whose shadow Thou shrink'st as on her bath's edge would some startled Dryad. Thou art the go-between of rustic lovers; Thy white bark has their secrets in its keeping; Thou art to me like my beloved maiden, So frankly coy, so full of trembly confidences; Thy shadow scarce seems shade, thy pattering leaflets Whether my heart with hope or sorrow tremble, AN INTERVIEW WITH MILES STANDISH. 1 SAT one evening in my room, In that sweet hour of twilight When blended thoughts, half light, half gloom, Throng through the spirit's skylight; The flames by fits curled round the bars, Or up the chimney crinkled, While embers dropped like falling stars, And in the ashes tinkled. I sat and mused; the fire burned low, That bloomed on wall and ceiling; My pictures (they are very few, — The heads of ancient wise men) Smoothed down their knotted fronts, and grew As rosy as excisemen. My antique high-backed Spanish chair Felt thrills through wood and leather, That had been strangers since whilere, 'Mid Andalusian heather, The oak that made its sturdy frame His happy arms stretched over The ox whose fortunate hide became It came out in that famous bark That brought our sires intrepid, Capacious as another ark For furniture decrepid ; For, as that saved of bird and beast A pair for propagation, So has the seed of these increased And furnished half the nation. Kings sit, they say, in slippery seats; But those slant precipices Of ice the northern voyager meets And whatsoe'er can stay in it Is more or less than human. My wonder, then, was not unmixed With merciful suggestion, When, as my roving eyes grew fixed I saw its trembling arms inclose A figure grim and rusty, Whose doublet plain and plainer hose Were something worn and dusty. Now even such men as Nature forms Merely to fill the street with, Once turned to ghosts by hungry worms, Are serious things to meet with; |