I praise him not; it were too late; And some innative weakness there must be

In him who condescends to victory
Such as the Present gives, and cannot
wait,

Safe in himself as in a fate.
So always firmly he:

He knew to bide his time,
And can his fame abide,
Still patient in his simple faith sublime,
Till the wise years decide.
Great captains, with their guns and
drums,

Disturb our judgment for the hour,
But at last silence comes:

These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,

Our children shall behold his fame,
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing

229

"T is not the grapes of Canaan that repay, But the high faith that failed not by the way;

Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave;

No bar of endless night exiles the brave; And to the saner mind

We rather seem the dead that stayed behind.

Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow! For never shall their aureoled presence lack:

I see them muster in a gleaming row, With ever-youthful brows that nobler show;

We find in our dull road their shining track;

In every nobler mood
We feel the orient of their spirit glow,
Part of our life's unalterable good,
Of all our saintlier aspiration;

They come transfigured back, Secure from change in their high-hearted

They, in the valley's sheltering care, Soon crop the meadow's tender prime, And when the sod grows brown and bare, The shepherd strives to make them climb

To airy shelves of pasture green,

That hang along the mountain's side, Where grass and flowers together lean, And down through mist the sunbeams slide.

But naught can tempt the timid things

The steep and rugged paths to try, Though sweet the shepherd calls and sings,

And seared below the pastures lie,

Till in his arms their lambs he takes,

Along the dizzy verge to go; Then, heedless of the rifts and breaks, They follow on, o'er rock and snow.

And in those pastures, lifted fair,

More dewy-soft than lowland mead, The shepherd drops his tender care, And sheep and lambs together feed.

This parable, by Nature breathed,

Blew on me as the south-wind free O'er frozen brooks, that flow unsheathed From icy thraldom to the sea.

A blissful vision, through the night, Would all my happy senses sway, Of the good Shepherd on the height, Or climbing up the starry way,

Holding our little lamb asleep,

While, like the murmur of the sea, Sounded that voice along the deep, "Arise and follow me!" Saying,

THOMAS W. PARSONS.

[U. S. A.]

CAMPANILE DE PISA.

SNOW was glistening on the mountains, but the air was that of June, Leaves were falling, but the runnels playing still their summer tune,

And the dial's lazy shadow hovered nigh the brink of noon.

On the benches in the market, rows of languid idlers lay,

When to Pisa's nodding belfry, with a friend, I took my way.

From the top we looked around us, and as far as eye might strain, Saw no sign of life or motion in the town, or on the plain,

Hardly seemed the river moving, through the willows to the main; Nor was any noise disturbing Pisa from her drowsy hour,

Save the doves that fluttered 'neath us, in and out and round the tower.

Not a shout from gladsome children, or the clatter of a wheel,

Nor the spinner of the suburb, winding his discordant reel,

Nor the stroke upon the pavement of a hoof or of a heel.

Even the slumberers, in the churchyard of the Campo Santo seemed Scarce more quiet than the living world that underneath us dreamed.

Dozing at the city's portal, heedless guard the sentry kept,

| More than oriental dulness o'er the sunny farms had crept,

Near the walls the ducal herdsman by the dusty roadside slept; While his camels, resting round him, half alarmed the sullen ox, Seeing those Arabian monsters pasturing with Etruria's flocks.

Then it was, like one who wandered, lately, singing by the Rhine,

Strains perchance to maiden's hearing sweeter than this verse of mine, That we bade Imagination lift us on her wing divine.

And the days of Pisa's greatness rose from the sepulchral past,

When a thousand conquering galleys bore her standard at the mast.

Memory for a moment crowned her sovereign mistress of the seas, When she braved, upon the billows, Venice and the Genoese, Daring to deride the Pontiff, though he shook his angry keys.

self the joyful day,

231

Never on the thronged Rialto showed the Carnival more gay.

Suddenly the bell beneath us broke the vision with its chime; "Signors," quoth our gray attendant, "it is almost vesper time"; Vulgar life resumed its empire, - down we dropt from the sublime. Here and there a friar passed us, as we paced the silent streets, And a cardinal's rumbling carriage roused the sleepers from the seats.

The lips, as Cuma's cavern close,

The cheeks, with fast and sorrow thin, The rigid front, almost morose,

But for the patient hope within, Declare a life whose course hath been Unsullied still, though still severe, Which, through the wavering days of sin, Keep itself icy-chaste and clear.

Not wholly such his haggard look

When wandering once, forlorn he strayed,

With no companion save his book,

To Corvo's hushed monastic shade: Where, as the Benedictine laid

His palm upon the pilgrim-guest, The single boon for which he prayed The convent's charity was rest.

-

Betrays no spirit of repose;
The sullen warrior sole we trace,
The marble man of many woes.
Such was his mien when first arose

The thought of that strange tale divine,
When hell he peopled with his foes,
The scourge of many a guilty line.

War to the last he waged with all

The tyrant canker-worms of earth; Baron and duke, in hold and hall, Cursed the dark hour that gave him birth;

He used Rome's harlot for his mirth;
Plucked bare hypocrisy and crime;
But valiant souls of knightly worth
Transmitted to the rolls of Time.

while

Thine office is berated,

"T is only by the vile and weak

That thou art feared and hated.

"And though thy work on earth has given

To all a shade of sadness; Consider every saint in heaven Remembers thee with gladness!"

SARAH HELEN WHITMAN.
[U. s. A.]

A STILL DAY IN AUTUMN.

I LOVE to wander through the woodlands hoary

In the soft light of an autumnal day, When Summer gathers up her robes of glory,

And like a dream of beauty glides

away.

How through each loved, familiar path she lingers,

Serenely smiling through the golden mist,

leaves and flowers