Telling tales of the fairy who travelled like steam, In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for her

team!

Then thanks for thy present!-none sweeter or

better

E'er smoked from an oven or circled a platter ! Fairer hands never wrought at a pastry more fine, Brighter eyes never watched o'er its baking than

thine!

And the prayer, which my mouth is too full to express,

Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less; That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below, And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin-vine

grow,

And thy life be as sweet, and its last sunset sky Golden-tinted and fair as thy own Pumpkin Pie !

EXTRACT FROM "A NEW ENGLAND LEGEND."

How has New England's romance fled,
Even as a vision of the morning!
Its rites fordone-its guardians dead-
Its priestesses, bereft of dread,

Waking the veriest urchin's scorning!
Gone like the Indian wizard's yell

And fire-dance round the magic rock,
Forgotten like the Druid's spell

At moonrise by his holy oak!
No more along the shadowy glen,
Glide the dim ghosts of murdered men ;
No more the unquiet churchyard dead
Glimpse upward from their turfy bed,
Startling the traveller, late and lone;

As, on some night of starless weather,
They silently commune together,

Each sitting on his own head-stone !
The roofless house, decayed, deserted,
Its living tenants all departed,
No longer rings with midnight revel
Of witch, or ghost, or goblin evil;
No pale, blue flame sends out its flashes
Through creviced roof and shattered sashes!-
The witch-grass round the hazel spring
May sharply to the night-air sing,
But there no more shall withered hags
Refresh at ease their broomstick nags,
Or taste those hazel-shadowed waters
As beverage meet for Satan's daughters;
No more their mimic tones be heard-
The mew of cat-the chirp of bird,
Shrill blending with the hoarser laughter
Of the fell demon following after!

The cautious good-man nails no more
A horseshoe on his outer door,
Lest some unseemly hag should fit
To his own mouth her bridle-bit-
The good-wife's churn no more refuses
Its wonted culinary uses
Until, with heated needle burned,
The witch has to her place returned!
Our witches are no longer old
And wrinkled beldames, Satan-sold,
But young and gay and laughing creatures,
With the heart's sunshine on their features--
'Their sorcery-the light which dances
Where the raised lid unveils its glances;
Or that low breathed and gentle tone,
The music of Love's twilight hours,
Soft, dreamlike, as a fairy's moan
Above her nightly closing flowers,
Sweeter than that which sighed of yore,

Along the charmed Ausonian shore !
Even she, our own weird heroine,
Sole Pythoness of ancient Lynn,

Sleeps calmly where the living laid her;
And the wide realm of sorcery,
Left by its latest mistress free,

Hath found no gray and skilled invader:
So perished Albion's "glammarye,"
With him in Melrose Abbey sleeping,
His charmed torch beside his knee,
That even the dead himself might see

The magic scroll within his keeping.
And now our modern Yankee sees
Nor omens, spells, nor mysteries ;
And naught above, below, around,
Of life or death, of sight or sound,
Whate'er its nature, form, or look,
Excites his terror or surprise-
All seeming to his knowing eyes
Familiar as his " catechize,"

Or "Webster's Spelling Book."

HAMPTON BEACH.

THE sunlight glitters keen and bright,

Where, miles away,

Lies stretching to my dazzled sight
A luminous belt, a misty light,

Beyond the dark pine bluffs and wastes of sandy

gray.

The tremulous shadow of the Sea!

Against its ground

Of silvery light, rock, hill, and tree,
Still as a picture, clear and free,

With varying outline mark the coast for miles On-on-we tread with loose-flung rein

Our seaward way,

Through dark-green fields and blossoming grain, Where the wild brier-rose skirts the lane, And bends above our heads the flowering locust

spray.

Ha! like a kind hand on my brow
Comes this fresh breeze,

Cooling its dull and feverish glow,
While through my being seems to flow
The breath of a new life-the healing of the seas!

Now rest we, where this grassy mound
His feet hath set

In the great waters, which have bound
His granite ancles greenly round

With long and tangled moss, and weeds with cool

spray wet.

Good-bye to Pain and Care! I take

Mine ease to-day;

Here where these sunny waters break,
And ripples this keen breeze, I shake

All burdens from the heart, all weary thoughts away.

I draw a freer breath-I seem

Like all I see

Waves in the sun-the white-winged gleam
Of sea-birds in the slanting beam-

And far-off sails which flit before the South wind

free.

So when Time's veil shall fall asunder,

The soul may know

No fearful change, nor sudden wonder,

Nor sink the wei

weight of mystery under,

But with the upward rise, and with the vastness

And all we shrink from now may seem

No new revealing;

Familiar as our childhood's stream,

Or pleasant memory of a dream

The loved and cherished Past upon the new life

stealing.

Serene and mild the untried light

May have its dawning;

And, as in Summer's northern night
The evening and the dawn unite,

The sunset hues of Time blend with the soul's new

morning.

I sit alone: in foam and spray
Wave after wave

Breaks on the rocks which, stern and gray,

Shoulder the broken tide away,

Or murmurs hoarse and strong through mossy cleft

and cave.

What heed I of the dusty land

And noisy town?

I see the mighty deep expand

From its white line of glimmering sand

To where the blue of heaven on bluer waves shuts

down!

In listless quietude of mind,

I yield to all

The change of cloud and wave and wind,
And passive on the flood reclined,

I wander with the waves, and with them rise and fall.

But look, thou dreamer!-wave and shore

In shadow lie;

The night-wind warns me back once more

To where my native hill-tops o'er

Bends like an arch of fire the glowing sunset sky!