WHEN life hath run its largest round
Of toil and triumph, joy and woe,
How brief a storied page is found
To compass all its outward show!
The world-tried sailor tires and droops;
His flag is rent, his keel forgot;
His farthest voyages seem but loops
That float from life's entangled knot.

But when within the narrow space
Some larger soul hath lived and
wrought,

Whose sight was open to embrace

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The boundless realms of deed and thought, -

When, stricken by the freezing blast,

A nation's living pillars fall,
How rich the storied page, how vast,
A word, a whisper, can recall!

No medal lifts its fretted face,

Nor speaking marble cheats your eye,
Yet, while these pictured lines I trace,
A living image passes by:

A roof beneath the mountain pines;
The cloisters of a hill-girt plain;
The front of life's embattled lines;
A mound beside the heaving main.

These are the scenes: a boy appears;
Set life's round dial in the sun,
Count the swift arc of seventy years,
His frame is dust; his task is done.

Yet pause upon the noontide hour,
Ere the declining sun has laid
His bleaching rays on manhood's power,
And look upon the mighty shade.

No gloom that stately shape can hide,
No change uncrown its brow; behold!

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30

Dark, calm, large-fronted, lightning-eyed, Earth has no double from its mould!

Ere from the fields by valor won

The battle-smoke had rolled away, And bared the blood-red setting_sun,

His eyes were opened on the day.

His land was but a shelving strip

Black with the strife that made it free; He lived to see its banners dip

Their fringes in the Western sea.

The boundless prairies learned his name, His words the mountain echoes knew. The Northern breezes swept his fame From icy lake to warm bayou.

In toil he lived; in peace he died;

When life's full cycle was complete Put off his robes of power and pride,

And laid them at his Master's feet.

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50

No rest that throbbing slave may ask,
Forever quivering o'er his task,
While far and wide a crimson jet
Leaps forth to fill the woven net
Which in unnumbered crossing tides
The flood of burning life divides,
Then, kindling each decaying part,
Creeps back to find the throbbing heart.

But warmed with that unchanging flame
Behold the outward moving frame,
Its living marbles jointed strong
With glistening band and silvery thong,
And linked to reason's guiding reins
By myriad rings in trembling chains,
Each graven with the threaded zone
Which claims it as the master's own.

See how yon beam of seeming white Is braided out of seven-hued light,

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30

1 Having read our company so much of the Professor's talk about age and other subjects connected with physical life, I took the next Sunday morning to repeat to them the following poem of his, which I have had by me for some time. He calls it-I suppose for his professional friends - The Anatomist's Hymn,' but I shall name it The Living Temple.' (HOLMES, introducing the poem, in the Autocrat.)

Yet in those lucid globes no ray
By any chance shall break astray.
Hark how the rolling surge of sound,
Arches and spirals circling round,
Wakes the hushed spirit through thine

ear

With music it is heaven to hear.

Then mark the cloven sphere that holds
All thought in its mysterious folds;
That feels sensation's faintest thrill,
And flashes forth the sovereign will;
Think on the stormy world that dwells
Locked in its dim and clustering cells!
The lightning gleams of power it sheds
Along its hollow glassy threads !

O Father! grant thy love divine
To make these mystic temples thine!
When wasting age and wearying strife
Have sapped the leaning walls of life,
When darkness gathers over all,
And the last tottering pillars fall,
Take the poor dust thy mercy warms,
And mould it into heavenly forms!

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1858.

THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE

OR, THE WONDERFUL ONE-HOSS SHAY'

A LOGICAL STORY

HAVE you heard of the wonderful one-hoss

shay,

That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it—ah, but stay,
I'll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,

Frightening people out of their wits, -
Have you ever heard of that, I say?

But the Deacon swore (as deacons do, With an 'I dew vum,' or an 'I tell yeou") He would build one shay to beat the taown 'N' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun'; 30 It should be so built that it could n' break daown:

'Fur,' said the Deacon, ''t's mighty plain Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain;

'N' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain,

Is only jest

For the wheels were just as strong as the thills,

And the floor was just as strong as the sills,

And the panels just as strong as the floor, And the whipple-tree neither less nor more, And the back crossbar as strong as the

fore,

And spring and axle and hub encore. And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt In another hour it will be worn out!

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First of November, 'Fifty-five! This morning the parson takes a drive. Now, small boys, get out of the way! Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay, Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay. 'Huddup!' said the parson. Off went they.

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The parson was working his Sunday's