TO A WATERFOWL

Whither, 'midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue

Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,

As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean-side?

There is a Power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast, –
The desert and illimitable air,
Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned,

At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end;

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart

Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,

In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.

THE BATTLE-FIELD

Once this soft turf, this rivulet's sands,
Were trampled by a hurrying crowd,
And fiery hearts and armèd hands
Encountered in the battle-cloud.

Ah! never shall the land forget

How gushed the life-blood of her brave -
Gushed, warm with hope and courage yet,
Upon the soil they fought to save.

Now all is calm, and fresh, and still;
Alone the chirp of flitting bird,
And talk of children on the hill,

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
Who minglest in the harder strife
For truths which men receive not now,
Thy warfare only ends with life.

A friendless warfare! lingering long
Through weary day and weary year;
A wild and many-weaponed throng
Hang on thy front, and flank, and rear.

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,

The foul and hissing bolt of scorn; For with thy side shall dwell, at last, The victory of endurance born.

Truth crushed to earth shall rise again
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies among his worshipers.

Yea, though thou lie upon the dust,
When they who helped thee flew in fear,
Die full of hope and manly trust,

Like those who fell in battle here!

Another hand thy sword shall wield,
Another hand the standard wave,
Till from the trumpet's mouth is pealed
The blast of triumph o'er thy grave.

"There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified, As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is ignified, Save when by reflection 'tis kindled o' nights

With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights.
He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard of your nation
(There's no doubt that he stands in supreme iceolation),
Your topmost Parnassus he may set his heel on,
But no warm applauses come, peal following peal on, -
He's too smooth and too polished to hang any zeal on :
Unqualified merits, I'll grant, if you choose, he has 'em,
But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm;
If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul,

Like being stirred up with the very North Pole.

"He is very nice reading in summer, but inter

Nos, we don't want extra freezing in winter;
Take him up in the depth of July, my advice is,

When you feel an Egyptian devotion to ices.

But, deduct all you can, there's enough that's right good in him,

He has a true soul for field, river, and wood in him;

And his heart, in the midst of brick walls, or where'er it is,

Glows, softens, and thrills with the tenderest charities -
To

you mortals that delve in this trade-ridden planet? No, to old Berkshire's hills, with their limestone and granite." -From the "Fable for Critics" (Lowell).

Henry
Wadsworth

Our first poet to consecrate his life to art and culture and to justify that consecration by a genius and character that called out love as well as admiration, was born at Portland, Maine, from a New England Longfellow, family of the best type. He was graduated 1807-1882. from Bowdoin in 1825, the youngest member of the class in which, by one of those singular chances that frequently associate the rare spirits of an age in some fortuitous bond of circumstance, was Nathaniel Hawthorne. His home was in every way favorable to the development of a love for books, but our country at that time offered no career to the merely literary scholar. Fortune befriended him, however (or else the authorities of his alma mater were gifted with the second sight), for he was offered the chair of Modern Languages at a very early age, and spent three years in preliminary study in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany, assimilating the refining impulses and serenely passing by the temptations of a foreign residence in early youth. Emulating Irving, he, too, wrote his "sketch book," "Outre Mer." After five years at Bowdoin he was called to Harvard. His professorship there he retained till 1854, when he resigned to be succeeded by Lowell. With the exception of the tragic death of his second wife in 1861 (her dress having caught fire from a candle), his life was peaceful and uneventful except as marked by the appearance of his volumes of poems. His success was the quiet, natural outcome of worth and a refined, delicate talent.

His literary development was equally sound and normal. A true American and a quiet, constant scholar, he assimilated culture from nature and from books, and rendered with equal grace the legends of medieval Europe and the traditions of his own New England. Beginning with