with his beloved parishioners in the hay-harvest of the brief arctic summer, combine with the vigorous diction and robust thought of their predecessors the warm and genial humanity of a religion of love and the graces and amenities of a high civilization.

But we have wandered somewhat aside from our purpose, which was simply to introduce the following poem, which, in the boldness of its tone and vigor of language, reminds us of the Sword Chant, the Wooing Song, and other rhymed sagas of Motherwell.

THE NORSEMAN'S RIDE.

BY BAYARD TAYLOR.

The frosty fires of northern starlight
Gleamed on the glittering snow,
And through the forest's frozen branches
The shrieking winds did blow;

A floor of blue and icy marble

Kept Ocean's pulses still,

When, in the depths of dreary midnight,
Opened the burial hill.

Then, while the low and creeping shudder
Thrilled upward through the ground,
The Norseman came, as armed for battle,
In silence from his mound,

He who was mourned in solemn sorrow
By many a swordsman bold,
And harps that wailed along the ocean,

Struck by the scalds of old.

Sudden a swift and silver shadow

Came from out the gloom, –
up

A charger that, with hoof impatient,

Stamped noiseless by the tomb. "Ha! Surtur,* let me hear thy tramping, My fiery Northern steed,

That, sounding through the stormy forest, Bade the bold Viking heed!"

He mounted; like a northlight streaking
The sky with flaming bars,

They, on the winds so wildly shrieking,
Shot up before the stars.

"Is this thy mane, my fearless Surtur,
That streams against my breast?
Is this thy neck, that curve of moonlight
Which Helva's hand caressed?

"No misty breathing strains thy nostril;
Thine eye shines blue and cold;
Yet mounting up our airy pathway

I see thy hoofs of gold.

Not lighter o'er the springing rainbow
Walhalla's gods repair

Than we in sweeping journey over

The bending bridge of air.

"Far, far around star-gleams are sparkling

Amid the twilight space;

And Earth, that lay so cold and darkling,

Has veiled her dusky face.

Are those the Nornes that beckon onward
As if to Odin's board,

Where by the hands of warriors nightly
The sparkling mead is poured?

* The name of the Scandinavian god of fire.

""T is Skuld: * her star-eye speaks the glory

That wraps the mighty soul,
When on its hinge of music opens

The gateway of the pole ;

When Odin's warder leads the hero

To banquets never o'er,

And Freya's † glances fill the bosom

With sweetness evermore.

"On! on! the northern lights are streaming
In brightness like the morn,

And pealing far amid the vastness

I hear the gyallarhorn. ‡

The heart of starry space is throbbing

With songs of minstrels old;
And now on high Walhalla's portal
Gleam Surtur's hoofs of gold."

*The Norne of the future.

† Freya, the Northern goddess of love.

The horn blown by the watchers on the rainbow, the bridge over which the gods pass in Northern mythology.

7*

THE BOY CAPTIVES.

AN INCIDENT OF THE INDIAN WAR OF 1695.

HE township of Haverhill, even as late as

THE

the close of the seventeenth century, was a frontier settlement, occupying an advanced position in the great wilderness, which, unbroken by the clearing of a white man, extended from the Merrimac River to the French villages on the St. François. A tract of twelve miles on the river and three or four northwardly was occupied by scattered settlers, while in the centre of the town a compact village had grown up. In the immediate vicinity there were but few Indians, and these generally peaceful and inoffensive. On the breaking out of the Narragansett war, the inhabitants had erected fortifications and taken other measures for defence; but, with the possible exception of one man who was found slain in the woods in 1676, none of the inhabitants were molested; and it was not until about the year 1689 that the safety of the settlement was seriously threatened. Three persons were killed in that year. In 1690 six garrisons were established in different parts of the town, with a small company of soldiers attached to each. Two of these houses are still standing.

They were built of brick, two stories high, with a single outside door, so small and narrow that but one person could enter at a time; the windows few, and only about two and a half feet long by eighteen inches wide, with thick diamond glass secured with lead, and crossed inside with bars of iron. The basement had but two rooms, and the chamber was entered by a ladder instead of stairs; so that the inmates, if driven thither, could cut off communication with the rooms below. Many private houses were strengthened and fortified. We remember one familiar to our boyhood, a venerable old building of wood, with brick between the weather-boards and ceiling, with a massive balustrade over the door, constructed of oak timber and plank, with holes through the latter for firing upon assailants. The door opened upon a stone-paved hall, or entry, leading into the huge single room of the basement, which was lighted by two small windows, the ceiling black with the smoke of a century and a half; a huge fireplace, calculated for eight-feet wood, occupying one entire side; while, overhead, suspended from the timbers, or on shelves fastened to them, were household stores, farming utensils, fishing-rods, guns, bunches of herbs gathered perhaps a century ago, strings of dried apples and pumpkins, links of mottled sausages, spareribs, and flitches of bacon; the firelight of an evening dimly revealing the checked woollen coverlet of the bed in one far-off corner, while in another