IN THE CHURCHYARD AT TARRYTOWN1

HERE lies the gentle humorist, who died.
In the bright Indian Summer of his fame!
A simple stone, with but a date and name,
Marks his secluded resting-place beside
The river that he loved and glorified.
Here in the autumn of his days he came,
But the dry leaves of life were all aflame
With tints that brightened and were multi-
plied.

How sweet a life was his; how sweet a death!
Living, to wing with mirth the weary hours,
Or with romantic tales the heart to cheer;
Dying, to leave a memory like the breath
Of summers full of sunshine and of showers,
A grief and gladness in the atmosphere.

O YE dead Poets, who are living still
Immortal in your verse, though life be fled,
And ye, O living Poets, who are dead
Though ye are living, if neglect can kill,
Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill,
With drops of anguish falling fast and
red

From the sharp crown of thorns upon your head,

Ye were not glad your errand to fulfil?
Yes; for the gift and ministry of Song
Have something in them so divinely sweet,
It can assuage the bitterness of wrong;
Not in the clamor of the crowded street,
Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,
But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.
(1878.)

1876.

THREE Silences there are: the first of speech,

The second of desire, the third of thought; This is the lore a Spanish monk, distraught With dreams and visions, was the first to teach.

These Silences, commingling each with each,

Made up the perfect Silence that he sought And prayed for, and wherein at times he caught

Mysterious sounds from realms beyond our reach.

O thou, whose daily life anticipates
The life to come, and in whose thought and
word

The spiritual world preponderates,
Hermit of Amesbury! thou too hast heard
Voices and melodies from beyond the gates,
And speakest only when thy soul is stirred!
(1878.)

1877.

WAPENTAKE &

TO ALFRED TENNYSON

POET! I come to touch thy lance with mine; Not as a knight, who on the listed field

2 Written for Whittier's seventieth birthday.

3 When any came to take the government of the Hundred or Wapentake in a day and place appointed, as they were accustomed to meete, all the better sort met him with lances, and he alighting from his horse, all rise up to him, and he setting or holding his lance upright, all the rest come with their lances, according to the auncient custome in confirming league and publike peace and obedience, and touch his lance or weapon, and thereof called Wapentake, for the Saxon or

old English wapun is weapon, and tac, tactus, a touching, thereby this meeting called Wapentake, or touching of weapon, because that by that signe and ceremonie of touching weapon or the lance, they were sworne and confederate. Master Lamberd in Minshew. (LONGFELLOW.)

1 After the capture of Louisburg in 1745 by the Massachusetts colonists, the French in revenge sent a large fleet against Boston the next year; but it was so disabled by storms that it had to put back.

Mr Thomas Prince was the pastor of the Old South Meeting-house.

In 1877, when the Old South was in danger of being destroyed, Rev. Edward Everett Hale wrote to Longfellow: You told me that if the spirit moved, you would try to sing us a song for the Old South Meeting-house. I have found such a charming story that I think it will really tempt you. I want at least to tell it to you.. The whole story of the fleet is in Hutchinson's Massachusetts, ii. 384, 385. The story of Prince and the prayer is in a tract in the College Library, which I will gladly send you, or Mr. Sibley will. I should think that the assembly in the meetinghouse in the gale, and then the terror of the fleet when the gale struck them, would make a ballad-if the spirit moved!'

Compare Whittier's 'In the Old South' and 'The Landmarks,' and Holmes's 'An Appeal for the Old South.'

1877.

ROBERT BURNS1

I SEE amid the fields of Ayr
A ploughman, who, in foul and fair,
Sings at his task

So clear, we know not if it is
The laverock's song we hear, or his,
Nor care to ask.

For him the ploughing of those fields A more ethereal harvest yields

Than sheaves of grain;

Songs flush with purple bloom the rye, The plover's call, the curlew's cry, Sing in his brain.

Touched by his hand, the wayside weed Becomes a flower; the lowliest reed

Beside the stream

Is clothed with beauty; gorse and grass And heather, where his footsteps pass, The brighter seem.

He sings of love, whose flame illumes
The darkness of lone cottage rooms;
He feels the force,

The treacherous undertow and stress
Of wayward passions, and no less
The keen remorse.

At moments, wrestling with his fate,
His voice is harsh, but not with hate;
The brush-wood, hung

Above the tavern door, lets fall
Its bitter leaf, its drop of gall
Upon his tongue.

But still the music of his song
Rises o'er all, elate and strong;

Its inaster-chords

Are Manhood, Freedom, Brotherhood, Its discords but an interlude

Between the words.

And then to die so young and leave Unfinished what he might achieve !

Yet better sure

Is this, than wandering up and down, An old man in a country town, Infirm and poor.

For now he haunts his native land

As an immortal youth; his hand

Guides every plough;

He sits beside each ingle-nook,
His voice is in each rushing brook,
Each rustling bough.

His presence haunts this room to-night,
A form of mingled mist and light
From that far coast.

Welcome beneath this roof of mine!
Welcome! this vacant chair is thine,
Dear guest and ghost!

1879.

ΙΟ

20

30

40

1 Compare the poems on Burns by Whittier, Lowell (At the Burns Centennial,' and Incident in a Railroad Car'), Holmes, Wordsworth, etc.

50

1880.