No more shall the war-cry sever, Or the winding rivers be red; They banish our anger forever

Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment day;Love and tears for the Blue, Tears and love for the Gray.

HENRY ABBEY.

THE STATUE.

IN Athens, when all learning centred there,

Men reared a column of surpassing height

In honor of Minerva, wise and fair,

And on the top, that dwindled to the sight,

A statue of the goddess was to stand, That wisdom might obtain in all the land.

And he who, with the beauty in his heart, Seeking in faultless work immortal youth,

Would mould this statue with the finest art,

Making the wintry marble glow with truth,

Should gain the prize. Two sculptors sought the fame;

The prize they craved was an enduring

name.

Alcamenes soon carved his little best; But Phidias, beneath a dazzling thought

That like a bright sun in a cloudless west Lit up his wide, great soul, with pure love wrought

A statue, and its face of changeless stone With calm, far-sighted wisdom towered and shone.

Then to be judged the labors were unveiled;

But at the marble thought, that by degrees

Of hardship Phidias cut, the people railed. "The lines are coarse; the form too large," said these;

"And he who sends this rough result of

haste

| Those faces brighten from the years
In rising suns long set in tears;
Those hearts,-far in the Past they beat,
Unheard within the morning street.

A city of the world's gray prime,
Lost in some desert far from Time,
Where noiseless ages, gliding through,
Have only sifted sand and dew, -
Yet a mysterious hand of man
Lying on all the haunted plan,
The passions of the human heart
Quickening the marble breast of Art, -
Were not more strange to one who first
Upon its ghostly silence burst
Than this vast quiet where the tide
Of life, upheaved on either side,
Hangs trembling, ready soon to beat
With human waves the morning street.
Ay, soon the glowing morning flood
Breaks through the charméd solitude:
This silent stone, to music won,
Shall murmur to the rising sun;
The busy place, in dust and heat,
Shall rush with wheels and swarm with
feet;

The Arachne-threads of Purpose stream
Unseen within the morning gleam;
The life shall move, the death be plain;
The bridal throng, the funeral train,
Together, face to face, shall meet
And pass within the morning street.

From rose to red the level heaven burned; Then sudden, as if a sword fell from on high,

A blade of gold flashed on the horizon's rim.

THE SOWER.

I.

A SOWER went forth to sow,
His eyes were wild with woe;
He crushed the flowers beneath his feet,
Nor smelt the perfume, warm and sweet,
That prayed for pity everywhere.
He came to a field that was harried
By iron, and to heaven laid bare:
He shook the seed that he carried
O'er that brown and bladeless place.
He shook it, as God shakes hail
Over a doomed land,
When lightnings interlace
The sky and the earth, and his wand
Of love is a thunder-flail.

Thus did that Sower sow;
His seed was human blood,
And tears of women and men.
And I, who near him stood,
Said: When the crop comes, then
There will be sobbing and sighing,
Weeping and wailing and crying,
And a woe that is worse than woe.

II.

When next I went that way.
It was an autumn day
What was it that I heard?
And what, think you, did I see?

329

The song of a sweet-voiced bird?
Thrilled through with praising prayer.
Nay, but the songs of
many,

Were sad of memory:
Of all those voices not any
And a golden harvest glowed!
And a sea of sunlight flowed,

On my face I fell down there;
I hid my weeping eyes,

I said: O God, thou art wise!
And I thank thee, again and again,
For the Sower whose name is Fain.

WILLIAM BELL SCOTT.

THE DANCE.

(From "THE WITCH'S BALLAD."} O, I HAE come from far away,

From a warm land far away,
A southern land ayont the sea,
With sailor lads about the mast
Merry and canny and kind to me.

And I hae been to yon town,

To try my luck in yon town: Nort, and Mysie, Elspie too, Right braw we were to pass the gate Wi' gowden clasps on girdles blue.

Mysie smiled wi' miming mouth,

Innocent mouth, miming mouth; Elspie wore her scarlet gown, Nort's gray eyes were unco' gleg, My Castile comb was like a crown.

We walked abreast all up the street,

Into the market up the street: Our hair wi' marygolds was wound, Our bodices wi' love-knots laced, Our merchandise wi' tansy bound.

Nort had chickens, I had cocks,

Gamesome cocks, loud-crowing cocks; Mysie ducks, and Elspie drakes. For a wee groat or a pound,

We lost nae time wi' gives and takes.