which, seek through the world is meer met with elsewhere! Home, home! sweet, sweet Home! There's no place like Home! Therei place like lume! An exile from Home, splendour daggles in vain! для lowly thatch'd cottage again! The birds singing garly that came at my call Sive me them! - and the peace of mind dearer than allt Gushed, warm with hope and courage yet, Now all is calm and fresh and still; And bell of wandering kine, are heard. No solemn host goes trailing by The black-mouthed gun and staggering wain; Men start not at the battle-cry; Oh, be it never heard again! Soon rested those who fought; but thou A friendless warfare! lingering long Yet nerve thy spirit to the proof, And blench not at thy chosen lot; The timid good may stand aloof, The sage may frown; yet faint thou not. Nor heed the shaft too surely cast, Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again; Yea, though thou lie upon the dust, When they who helped thee flee in fear, Die full of hope and manly trust, Like those who fell in battle here! Another hand thy sword shall wield, THE ACADIAN FARMHOUSE. (FromEvangeline.") IRMLY builded with rafters of oak, the house of the farmer Rudely carved was the porch, with seats beneath; and a foot-path Led through an orchard wide, and disappeared in the meadow. Under the sycamore trees were hives overhung by a pent-house, Such as a traveler sees in regions remote by the roadside, Built o'er a box for the poor, or the blessed image of Mary. Farther down, on the slope of the hill, was the well, with its moss-grown Bucket, fastened with iron, and near it a trough for the horses. Shielding the house from storms, on the north, were the barns and the farm-yard; There stood the broad-wheeled wains, and the antique plows, and the harrows; There were the folds for the sheep; and there, in his feathered seraglio, Strutted the lordly turkey, and crowed the cock, with the self-same Voice that in ages of old had startled the penitent Peter. Bursting with hay were the barns, themselves a village. In each one Far o'er the gable projected a roof of thatch; and a stair-case Under the sheltering eaves, led up to the odorous corn-loft; There, too, the dove-cot stood, with its meek and innocent inmates, Murmuring ever of love; while above in the variant breezes, Numberless noisy weathercocks rattled and sang of mutation. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. Stood on the side of a hill commanding the And notch His centuries in the eternal rocks. sea; wreathing around it, Deep called unto deep. And what are we, That hear the question of that voice sublime! Who drowned a world, and heaped the waters Yea, what is all the riot man can make, far wave, light That breaks, and whispers of its Maker's might. JOHN G. C. BRAINARD. NOONDAY REST. (From "Walden.") OMMONLY I rested an hour or two in the shade at noon, after planting; and ate my lunch, and read a little by a spring which was the source of a spring and a brook, oozing from under Brister's Hill, half a mile from my field. The approach to this was through a succession of descending grassy hollows, full of young pitch-pines, into larger wood about the swamp. There, in a very secluded and shady spot, under a spreading white-pine, there was yet a clean, firm sward, to sit on. I had dug out the spring and made a well of clear, gray water, where I could dip up a pailful without roiling it, and thither I went almost every day in midsummer, when the pond was warmest. Thither, too, the woodcock leč her brood, to probe the mud for worms, flying but a foot above them down the bank, while they ran in a troop beneath; but at last, spying me, she would leave her young and circle round and round me, nearer and nearer till within four or five feet, pretending broken wing and legs, to attract my attention, and get off her young, who would already have taken up the march, with faint wiry peep single file through the swamp, as she directed. Or I heard the peep of the young when I could not see the parent bird. There, too, the turtle-doves sat over the spring, or fluttered from bough to bough of the soft white-pines over my head; or the red squir rel, coursing down the nearest bough, was particularly familiar and inquisitive. You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns. HENRY DAVID THOREAU. THE BATTLE-FIELD. (From The Battle of Life.") NCE upon a time, it matters little when, and in stalwart England, it matters little where, a fierce battle was fought. It was fought upon a long summer day when the waving grass was green. Many a wild flower, formed by the Almighty Hand to be a perfumed goblet for the dew, felt its enameled cup filled high with blood ths: day, and shrinking, dropped. Many an insect, deriving its delicate colour from harmless leaves and herbs, was stained anew that day by dying men, and marked its frightened way with an unnatural track. The painted butterfly took blood into the air upon the edges of its wings. The stream ran red. The trodden ground became a quagmire, whence, from sullen pools collected in the prints of human feet and horses' hoofs, the one prevailing hue still lowered and glimmered at the sun. Heaven keep us from a knowledge of the sights the moon beheld upon that field, when, coming up above the black line of distant rising ground, softened and blurred at the edge by trees, she rose into the sky and looked upon the plain, strewn with upturned faces that had once at mothers' breasts sought mothers' eyes, or slumbered happily! Heaven keep us from a knowledge of the secrets whispered afterwards upon the tainted wind that blew across the scene of that day's work and that night's death and suffering! Many a lonely moon was bright upon the battle-ground, and many a star kept mournful watch upon it, and many a wind from every quarter of the earth blew over it, before the traces of the fight were worn away. They lurked and lingered for a long time, but survived in little things; for, Nature, far above the evil passions of men, soon recovered her serenity, and smiled upon the guilty battle-ground as she had done before, when it was innocent. The larks sang high above it; the swallows skimmed and dipped, and flitted to and fro; the shadows of the flying clouds pursued each other swiftly over grass and corn and turnip-field and wood, and over roof and church spire in the nestling town among the trees, away into the bright distance on the bor ders of the sky and earth, where the red sunsets faded. Crops were sown and grew up, and were gathered in; the stream that had been crimsoned turned a water-mill; men whistled at the plough; gleaners and haymakers were seen in quiet groups at work; sheep and oxen pastured; boys whooped and called in fields, to scare away the birds; smoke rose from cottage chimneys; Sabbath bells rang peacefully; old people lived and died; the timid creatures of the field, and simple flowers of the bush and garden, grew and withered in their destined terms; and all upon the fierce and bloody battle-ground, where thousands upon thousands had been killed in the great fight. But, there were deep green patches in the growing corn, at first, that people looked at awfully. Year after year they reappeared; and it was known that, underneath those fertile spots, heaps of men and horses lay buried indiscriminately, enriching the ground. The husbandmen who ploughed those places shrunk from the great worms abounding there; and the sheaves they yielded were, for many a long year, called the Battle Sheaves, and set apart : and no one ever knew a Battle Sheaf to be among the last load at a Harvest Home. For a long time, every furrow that was turned revealed some fragments of the fight. For a long time there were wounded trees upon the battle-ground; and scraps of hacked and broken fence and wall, where deadly struggles had been made; and trampled parts where not a leaf or blade would grow. For a long time, no village girl would dress her hair or bosom with the sweetest flower from that field of death; and, after many a year had come and gone, the berries growing there were still believed to leave too deep a stain upon the hand that plucked them. CHARLES DICKENS. |