Silently hops the hermit-thrush,

The withered leaves keep dumb for him; The irreverent buccaneering bee

Hath stormed and rifled the nunnery

Of the lily, and scattered the sacred floor With haste-dropt gold from shrine to door; There, as of yore,

The rich, milk-tingeing buttercup

Its tiny polished urn holds up,
Filled with ripe summer to the edge,
The sun in his own wine to pledge;
And our tall elm, this hundredth year
Doge of our leafy Venice here,
Who, with an annual ring, doth wed
The blue Adriatic overhead,
Shadows with his palatial mass
The deep canals of flowing grass.

O unestranged birds and bees!
O face of nature always true!
O never-unsympathizing trees!
O never-rejecting roof of blue,
Whose rash disherison never falls
On us unthinking prodigals,
Yet who convictest all our ill,
So grand and unappeasable!

Methinks my heart from each of these
Plucks part of childhood back again,
Long there imprisoned, as the breeze
Doth every hidden odor seize
Of wood and water, hill and plain.
Once more am I admitted peer
In the upper house of Nature here,
And feel through all my pulses run
The royal blood of breeze and sun.

Upon these elm-arched solitudes
No hum of neighbor toil intrudes;
The only hammer that I hear
Is wielded by the woodpecker,
The single noisy calling his
In all our leaf-hid Sybaris;

The good old time, close-hidden here,
Persists, a loyal cavalier,

While Roundheads prim, with point of fox,
Probe wainscot-chink and empty box;
Here no hoarse-voiced iconoclast
Insults thy statues, royal Past;

Myself too prone the axe to wield,

I touch the silver side of the shield
With lance reversed, and challenge peace,
A willing convert of the trees.

How chanced it that so long I tost
A cable's length from this rich coast,
With foolish anchors hugging close
The beckoning weeds and lazy ooze,
Nor had the wit to wreck before
On this enchanted island's shore,
Whither the current of the sea,
With wiser drift, persuaded me?

O, might we but of such rare days
Build up the spirit's dwelling-place!
A temple of so Parian stone
Would brook a marble god alone,
The statue of a perfect life,

Far-shrined from earth's bestaining strife.
Alas! though such felicity

In our vext world here may not be,
Yet, as sometimes the peasant's hut
Shows stones which old religion cut
With text inspired, or mystic sign
Of the Eternal and Divine,
Torn from the consecration deep
Of some fallen nunnery's mossy sleep,
So, from the ruins of this day.
Crumbling in golden dust away,

The soul one gracious block may draw
Carved with some fragment of the law,
Which, set in life's uneven wall,
Old benedictions may recall,

And lure some nunlike thoughts to take
Their dwelling here for memory's sake.

CARY.

ALICE CARY was born in Mount Healthy, in the vicinity of Cincinnati, April, 1820. Furnished with but a very limited schooling, and unsurrounded by the incitements of cultured and literary society, she surrendered herself fully to the teachings of her own sweet spirit, and the poetical influences of Nature that lay in variety and beauty around her home.

At the age of eighteen she contributed verses to the Cincinnati press, which were well received; but it was by a series of sketches of rural life, published, under the disguise of "Patty Lee," in the National Era, that she first attracted marked attention. In 1850, in company with her sister Phoebe, she removed to New York, where, the same year, the two gave to the public a first volume of Poems. The works that have since been issued by Alice are:

Clovernook; or, Recollections of our Neighborhood in the West, a volume of prose sketches, in 1851; Lyra, and other Poems, in 1852; Hagar, a Story of To-Day, in 1852; Clovernook, second series, in 1853; Clovernook Children, in 1854; Poems, a new collection, in 1855; Married, not Mated, and Hollywood, novels, in 1856; Pictures of Country Life, in 1859; The Bishop's Son, in 1867; Snow Berries, in 1867.

She died at her residence in New York City, February 12, 1871.

Of her Clovernook sketches one of our greatest poets * has said: "They bear the true stamp of genius-simple, natural, truthful—and evince a keen sense of the humor and pathos, of the comedy and tragedy of life in the country." "It is impossible to deny that she has original and extraordinary powers, or that the elements of genius are poured forth in her verses with an astonishing richness and prodigality."+

* John G. Whittier.

+ E. P. Whipple.

"Her characters are remarkable, considering their variety, for fidelity to nature, and her sentiments are marked by womanly delicacy, humanity, and reverence for religion; while over all is the charm of a powerful imagination, with frequent manifestations of the most quiet and delicious humor."*

"No American woman has evinced in prose or poetry anything like the genius of Alice Cary."†

From the insect's little story
To the fartherest star above,
All are waves of glory, glory,
In the ocean of his love.

RESPITE.

FROM “LYRA, AND OTHER Poems.”
LEAVE me, dear ones, to my slumber,
Daylight's faded glow is gone;

In the red light of the morning
I must rise and journey on.

I am weary, oh, how weary!
And would rest a little while;
Let your kind looks be my blessing,
And your last "Good-night" a smile.

We have journeyed up together,

Through the pleasant day-time flown; Now my feet have pressed life's summit, And my pathway lies alone.

And, my dear ones, do not call me,
Should you haply be awake,
When across the eastern hill-tops
Presently the day shall break.

For, while yet the stars are lying
In the gray lap of the dawn,
On my long and solemn journey
I shall be awake and gone;
Far from mortal pain and sorrow,
And from passion's stormy swell,
Knocking at the golden gateway
Of the eternal citadel.

Therefore, dear ones, let me slumber-
Faded is the day and gone;

And with morning's early splendor,
I must rise and journey on.