Slowly the clamour and the clash subside; Earth's restlessness her patient hopes subdue; Mild oceans shoreward heave a pulse-like tide; The skies are veined with blue.

And life works through the growing quietness,
To bring some darling mystery into form:
Beauty her fairest Possible would dress
In colours pure and warm.

Within the depths of palpitating seas
A tender tint,-anon a line of grace
Some lovely thought from its dull atom frees,
The coming joy to trace :-

A pencilled moss on tablets of the sand,

Such as shall veil the unbudded maiden-blush Of beauty yet to gladden the green land;A breathing, through the hush,

Of some sealed perfume longing to burst out,
And give its prisoned rapture to the air;-
A brooding hope, a promise through a doubt,
Is whispered everywhere.

And, every dawn a shade more clear, the skies

A flush as from the heart of heaven disclose: Through earth and sea and air a message flies, Prophetic of the Rose.

At last a morning comes, of sunshine still,
When not a dewdrop trembles on the grass,
When all winds sleep, and every pool and rill
Is like a burnished glass

Where a long looked-for guest might lean to gaze;
When Day on Earth rests royally,—a crown
Of molten glory, flashing diamond rays,

From heaven let lightly down.

In golden silence, breathless, all things stand;
What answer waits this questioning repose?
A sudden gush of light and odours bland,
And lo-the Rose! the Rose!

The birds break into canticles around;
The winds lift Jubilate to the skies;
For, twin-born with the rose on Eden-ground,
Love blooms in human eyes.

Life's marvellous queen-flower blossoms only so,
In dust of low ideals rooted fast.
Ever the Beautiful is moulded slow
From truth in errors past.

What fiery fields of Chaos must be won,
What battling Titans rear themselves a tomb,
What births and resurrections greet the sun,
Before the Rose can bloom!

And of some wonder-blossom yet we dream
Whereof the time that is infolds the seed;
Some flower of light, to which the Rose shall seem
A fair and fragile weed.

RE-ENLISTED.

MAY 1864.

O DID you see him in the street, dressed up in armyblue,

When drums and trumpets into town their storm of music threw,—

A louder tune than all the winds could muster in the air, The Rebel winds, that tried so hard our flag in strips to

tear?

You didn't mind him? Oh you looked beyond him. then, perhaps,

To see the mounted officers rigged out with trooper-caps, And shiny clothes, and sashes, and epaulets and all;— It wasn't for such things as these he heard his country

call.

She asked for men; and up he spoke, my handsome,

hearty Sam,

"I'll die for the dear old Union, if she'll take me as I

am."

And, if a better man than he there's mother that can

show

From Maine to Minnesota, then let the nation know.

You would not pick him from the rest by eagles or by

stars,

By straps upon his coat-sleeve, or gold or silver bars, Nor a corporal's strip of worsted; but there's something in his face,

And something in his even step, a-marching in his place,

That couldn't be improved by all the badges in the land: A patriot, and a good, strong man; are generals much more grand?

We rest our pride on that big heart wrapped up in armyblue,

The girl he loves, Mehitabel, and I, who love him too.

He's never shirked a battle yet, though frightful risks

he's run,

Since treason flooded Baltimore, the spring of Sixty-one; Through blood and storm he's held out firm, nor fretted

once, my Sam,

At swamps of Chickahominy, or fields of Antietam.

Though many a time, he's told us, when he saw them lying dead,

The boys that came from Newburyport, and Lynn, and Marblehead,

Stretched out upon the trampled turf, and wept on by the sky,

It seemed to him the Commonwealth had drained her life-blood dry.

"But then," he said, "the more's the need the country has of me:

To live and fight the war all through, what glory it will

be!

The Rebel balls don't hit me; and, mother, if they

should,

You'll know I've fallen in my place, where I have always stood."

He's taken out his furlough, and short enough it seemed:
I often tell Mehitabel he'll think he only dreamed
Of walking with her nights so bright you couldn't see a
star,

And hearing the swift tide come in across the harbour bar.

The Stars that shine above the Stripes, they light him southward now;

The tide of war has swept him back; he's made a solemn vow

To build himself no home-nest till his country's work is done;

God bless the vow, and speed the work, my patriot, my

son!

And yet it is a pretty place where his new house might

be;

An orchard-road that leads your eye straight out upon

the sea.

The boy not work his father's farm? it seems almost a

shame;

But any selfish plan for him he'd never let me name.

He's re-enlisted for the war, for victory or for death,A soldier's grave, perhaps! the thought has half-way stopped my breath,

And driven a cloud across the sun ;-my boy, it will not

be!

The war will soon be over; home again you'll come to me!

He's re-enlisted: and I smiled to see him going, too! There's nothing that becomes him half so well as army

blue.

Only a private in the ranks! but sure I am indeed, If all the privates were like him, they'd scarcely captains need.

And I and Massachusetts share the honour of his

birth,

The grand old State ! to me the best in all the peopled earth!

I cannot hold a musket, but I have a son who can ; And I'm proud for Freedom's sake to be the mother of a man!

PSYCHE AT SCHOOL.

YOUNG Psyche came to school, Down here in Being's lower vestibule, Where many voices unto her did call,

"Welcome! be studious! and in Mammon's hall Shalt thou cup-bearer be to Mammon-king." Thought Psyche, "No such thing!"

A volume Pleasure brought,

Of glowing pictures in earth-colours wrought.
Temptation's alphabet in ambush lay

Among the leaves; but Psyche turned away,
And said, "Those tints are mixed with poisonous paint;
It makes me sick and faint."

Then one approached, called Love,

Whose fingers o'er illumined print did move.

Psyche looked on and sighed: "The page is vexed;

Your notes and your translations mar the text.

The angels write Love's idioms on the heart;
They are not learned by art."

Pride took an ancient book,

To teach the high-bred air, the scornful look.
Psyche returned her gaze with meck surprise.