Why does the bride turn pale, and hide her face on his shoulder?

Is it a phantom of air,-a bodiless, spectral illusion?

Is it a ghost from the grave, that has come to forbid the betrothal?

Long had it stood there unseen, a guest uninvited, unwelcomed;

Over its clouded eyes there had passed at times an expression

Softening the gloom and revealing the warm heart hidden beneath them, As when across the sky the driving rack of the rain-cloud

Grows for a moment thin, and betrays the sun by its brightness.

Once it had lifted its hand, and moved its lips, but was silent,

As if an iron will had mastered the fleeting intention.

30

But when were ended the troth and the

prayer and the last benediction, Into the room it strode, and the people beheld with amazement

Bodily there in his armor Miles Standish, the Captain of Plymouth! Grasping the bridegroom's hand, he said with emotion, "Forgive me!

I have been angry and hurt, too long have I cherished the feeling;

I have been cruel and hard, but now, thank God! it is ended.

Mine is the same hot blood that leaped in the veins of Hugh Standish, Sensitive, swift to resent, but as swift in atoning for error.

Never so much as now was Miles Stand

ish the friend of John Alden." Thereupon answered the bridegroom:

"Let all be forgotten between us.- 40 All save the dear old friendship, and that shall grow older and dearer!" Then the Captain advanced, and, bowing, saluted Priscilla,

Gravely, and after the manner of oldfashioned gentry in England,

Whom they had mourned as dead; and

they gathered and crowded about him, Eager to see him and hear him, forgetful of bride and of bridegroom, Questioning, answering, laughing, and each interrupting the other, Till the good Captain declared, being quite overpowered and bewildered,

He had rather by far break into an Indian encampment,

Than come again to a wedding to which he had not been invited.

Meanwhile the bridegroom went forth and stood with the bride at the doorway,

Breathing the perfumed air of that warm and beautiful morning.

Touched with autumnal tints, but lonely and sad in the sunshine,

Lay extended before them the land of toil and privation;

60

There were the graves of the dead, and the barren waste of the sea-shore, There the familiar fields, the groves of pine, and the meadows;

But to their eyes transfigured, it seemed as the Garden of Eden,

Filled with the presence of God, whose voice was the sound of the ocean.

Soon was their vision disturbed by the noise and stir of departure, Friends coming forth from the house, and impatient of longer delaying, Each with his plan for the day, and the work that was left uncompleted. Then from a stall near at hand, amid exclamations of wonder,

Alden the thoughtful, the careful, so happy, so proud of Priscilla, Brought out his snow-white bull, obeying the hand of its master,

70

Led by a cord that was tied to an iron

ring in its nostrils,

Covered with crimson cloth, and a cush

ion placed for a saddle. She should not walk, he said, through the dust and heat of the noonday; Nay, she should ride like a queen, not plod along like a peasant.

Somewhat alarmed at first, but reassured by the others,

Placing her hand on the cushion, her foot in the hand of her husband, Gayly, with joyous laugh, Priscilla mounted her palfrey.

"Nothing is wanting now," he said with a smile, "but the distaff;

Then you would be in truth my queen, my beautiful Bertha !"

80

Onward the bridal procession now moved to their new habitation, Happy husband and wife, and friends conversing together.

Pleasantly murmured the brook, as they crossed the ford in the forest, Pleased with the image that passed, like a dream of love, through its bosom, Tremulous, floating in air, o'er the depths of the azure abysses.

Down through the golden leaves the sun was pouring his splendors, Gleaming on purple grapes, that, from branches above them suspended, Mingled their odorous breath with the balm of the pine and the fir-tree, Wild and sweet as the clusters that grew in the valley of Eshcol.

Like a picture it seemed of the primitive, pastoral ages,

Fresh with the youth of the world, and recalling Rebecca and Isaac,

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Old and yet ever new, and simple and beautiful always,

Love immortal and young in the endless

I remember the bulwarks by the shore, And the fort upon the hill;

The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar, 30 The drum-beat repeated o'er and o'er, And the bugle wild and shrill.

And the music of that old song Throbs in my memory still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

I remember the sea-fight far away,
How it thundered o'er the tide!
And the dead captains, as they lay
In their graves, o'erlooking the tranquil
bay

Where they in battle died.

40

And the legend, I feel, is a part

Of the hunger and thirst of the heart, 50
The frenzy and fire of the brain,
That grasps at the fruitage forbidden,
The golden pomegranates of Eden,
To quiet its fever and pain.

The Atlantic Monthly, April, 1858.

PAUL REVERE'S RIDE

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-
five;

Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and

year.

He said to his friend, "If the British march

By land or sea from the town to-night, Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch Of the North Church tower as a signal light,

ΤΟ

One, if by land, and two, if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm,

For the country folk to be up and to arm."

Then he said, "Good-night!" and with muffled oar

Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

21

He has left the village and mounted the steep,

And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,

Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides; And under the alders that skirt its edge, Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,

Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

It was twelve by the village clock,
When he crossed the bridge into Medford
town.

He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer's dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.

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You know the rest. In the books you have read,

How the British Regulars fired and fled.How the farmers gave them ball for ball, From behind each fence and farm-yard wall,

Chasing the red-coats down the lane,

Then crossing the fields to emerge again Under the trees at the turn of the road, And only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere; And so through the night went his cry of alarm

To every Middlesex village and farm,A cry of defiance and not of fear,

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A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,

And a word that shall echo forevermore!

King Robert of Sicily1

Robert of Sicily, brother of Pope Urbane
And Valmond, Emperor of Allemaine,
Apparelled in magnificent attire,
With retinue of many a knight and squire,
On St. John's eve, at vespers, proudly sat
And heard the priest chant the Magnificat.
And as he listened, o'er and o'er again
Repeated, like a burden or refrain,
He caught the words, "Deposuit potentes
De sede, et exaltavit humiles;"
And slowly lifting up his kingly head,
He to a learned clerk beside him said,
"What mean these words?" The clerk

made answer meet,

10

1 This tale has had wide distribution and many retellings from Gesta Romanorum to William Morris's The Earthly Paradise.