"Wait till the laurel bursts its buds, "Then, when the sky, the air, the grass, So will we bear him! Human heart Lessons to one who held them dearer. His noble living for the ends God set him (duty underlying Each thought, word, action) naught transcends In lustre, save his nobler dying. Do homage, sky, and air, and grass, All things he cherished, sweet and tender, Anonymous. THE Hampton, Va. THREE SUMMER STUDIES. MORNING. THE cock hath crowed. I hear the doors unbarred; Down to the grass-grown porch my way I take, And hear, beside the well within the yard, - all Full many an ancient quacking, splashing drake, The dew is thick upon the velvet grass, Each one, alternate, slowly halts and crops A humid polish is on all the leaves, The birds flit in and out with varied notes, Up comes the sun! Through the dense leaves a spot And slumbrous sounds come from marauding bees: The burnished river like a sword-blade shines, Save where 't is shadowed by the solemn pines. NOON. Over the farm is brooding silence now, No reaper's song, no raven's clangor harsh, No bleat of sheep, no distant low of cow, No croak of frogs within the spreading marsh, No bragging cock from littered farmyard crows, The scene is steeped in silence and repose. A trembling haze hangs over all the fields, The leaves are motionless, the song-birds mute; Show in the sunshine all their clusters thick, The sky has but one solitary cloud, Like a dark island in a sea of light; The parching furrows 'twixt the corn-rows ploughed Seem fairly dancing in my dazzled sight, While over yonder road a dusty haze Grows luminous beneath the sun's fierce blaze. EVENING. That solitary cloud grows dark and wide, The lazy cattle are no longer there, But homeward come, in long procession slow, Darker and wider spreading o'er the west Tell in advance the coming of a storm, The air of evening is intensely hot, The breeze feels heated as it fans my brows, Now sullen rain-drops patter down like shot, Strike in the grass, or rattle mid the boughs. A sultry lull, and then a gust again, And now I see the thick advancing rain! It fairly hisses as it drives along, And where it strikes breaks up in silvery spray As if 't were dancing to the fitful song Made by the trees, which twist themselves and sway And now, the sudden, fitful storm has fled, Crimson, or gold. The scene is one of rest; And on the bosom of yon still lagoon I see the crescent of the pallid moon. James Barron Hope. Hampton Roads, Va. THE ATTACK. N Hampton Roads the airs of March were bland, IN Peace on the deck, and in the fortress sleeping, Till, in the lookout of the Cumberland, The sailor, with his well-poised glass in hand, A sudden wonder seized on land and bay, Seeking with steady course his ocean wallow. And still it came, and largened on the sight; Should turn to iron in the mid-Atlantic. Then ship and fortress gazed with anxious stare, |