Strange to me now are the forms I meet
When I visit the dear old town;

But the native air is pure and sweet,

And the trees that o'ershadow each well-known street,

As they balance up and down,

Are singing the beautiful song,

Are sighing and whispering still:

"A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

And Deering's Woods are fresh and fair,

And with joy that is almost pain

My heart goes back to wander there,

And among the dreams of the days that were,

I find my lost youth again.

And the strange and beautiful song,
The groves are repeating it still:

"A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

THE GOLDEN MILE-STONE.

LEAFLESS are the trees; their purple branches
Spread themselves abroad, like reefs of coral,

Rising silent

In the Red Sea of the Winter sunset.
From the hundred chimneys of the village,
Like the Afreet in the Arabian story,

Smoky columns

Tower aloft into the air of amber.

At the window winks the flickering fire-light;
Here and there the lamps of evening glimmer,

Social watch-fires

Answering one another through the darkness.

On the hearth the lighted logs are glowing,
And like Ariel in the cloven pine-tree

For its freedom

Groans and sighs the air imprisoned in them.

By the fireside there are old men seated,
Seeing ruined cities in the ashes,

Asking sadly

Of the Past what it can ne'er restore them.

By the fireside there are youthful dreamers,
Building castles fair, with stately stairways,

Asking blindly

Of the Future what it cannot give them.

By the fireside tragedies are acted

In whose scenes appear two actors only,

Wife and husband,

And above them God the sole spectator.

By the fireside there are peace and comfort, Wives and children, with fair, thoughtful faces,

Waiting, watching

For a well-known footstep in the passage.

Each man's chimney is his Golden Mile-stone,
Is the central point, from which he measures

Every distance

Through the gateways of the world around him.

In his farthest wanderings still he sees it;
Hears the talking flame, the answering night-wind,

As he heard them

When he sat with those who were, but are not.

Happy he whom neither wealth nor fashion,
Nor the march of the encroaching city,

Drives an exile

From the hearth of his ancestral homestead.

We may build more splendid habitations,

Fill our rooms with paintings and with sculptures,

But we cannot

Buy with gold the old associations!

SANDALPHON.

HAVE you read in the Talmud of old,
In the Legends the Rabbins have told

Of the limitless realms of the air,-
Have you read it, -the marvellous story
Of Sandalphon, the Angel of Glory,
Sandalphon, the Angel of Prayer?

How, erect, at the outermost gates
Of the City Celestial he waits,

With his feet on the ladder of light,
That, crowded with angels unnumbered,
By Jacob was seen, as he slumbered
Alone in the desert at night?

The Angels of Wind and of Fire
Chaunt only one hymn, and expire
With the song's irresistible stress;
Expire in their rapture and wonder,
As harp-strings are broken asunder
By music they throb to express.

But serene in the rapturous throng,
Unmoved by the rush of the song,
With eyes unimpassioned and slow,
Among the dead angels, the deathless
Sandalphon stands listening breathless
To sounds that ascend from below;-

From the spirits on earth that adore,
From the souls that entreat and implore

In the fervor and passion of prayer;
From the hearts that are broken with losses,
And weary with dragging the crosses

Too heavy for mortals to bear.

And he gathers the prayers as he stands,
And they change into flowers in his hands,
Into garlands of purple and red;
And beneath the great arch of the portal,
Through the streets of the City Immortal
Is wafted the fragrance they shed.

It is but a legend, I know, -
A fable, a phantom, a show,

Of the ancient Rabbinical lore;
Yet the old mediæval tradition,
The beautiful, strange superstition,

But haunts me and holds me the more.

When I look from my window at night,
And the welkin above is all white,

All throbbing and panting with stars,
Among them majestic is standing
Sandalphon the angel, expanding
His pinions in nebulous bars.

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And the legend, I feel, is a part
Of the hunger and thirst of the heart,

The frenzy and fire of the brain, That grasps at the fruitage forbidden, The golden pomegranates of Eden, To quiet its fever and pain.