Though winter howleth at the gate, In our hearts 't is summer still!

For we full many summer joys

And greenwood sports have shared, When, free and ever-roving boys,

The rocks, the streams, we dared; And, as I looked upon thy face, Back, back o'er years of ill, My heart flies to that happy place, Where it is summer still.

Yes, though like sere leaves on the ground,

Our early hopes are strown,

And cherished flowers lie dead around,

And singing birds are flown, The verdure is not faded quite,

Not mute all tones that thrill;
And seeing, hearing thee to-night,
In my heart 't is summer still.

Fill up ! The olden times come back
With light and life once more;
We scan the Future's sunny track
From Youth's enchanted shore;

The lost return: through fieids of bloom
We wander at our will;

Gone is the winter's angry gloom,
In our hearts 't is summer still.

we.

She grew to the eye, against the clouded sky,

And eagerly her points and gear we guessed. As we made her out, at last,

She was maimed in spar and mast

And she hugged the easy breeze for rest.

We could see the old wind fail
At the nearing of our gale;

We could see them lay their course with the wind:

Still we neared and neared her fast,
Hurled on by our fierce blast,

With the seas tumbling headlong behind. She had come out of some storm, and, in many a busy swarm,

Her crew were refitting, as they might,
The wreck of upper spars

That had left their ugly scars,

As if the ship had come out of a fight.
We scauned her well, as we drifted by,

A strange old ship, with her poop built high,

And with quarter-galleries wide,

And a huge beaked prow, as no ships are builded now,

And carvings all strange, beside.

A Byzantine bark, and a ship of name and mark

Long years and generations ago;

Ere any mast or yard of ours was growing hard

With the seasoning of long Norwegian

snow.

She was the brave old Orient,

The old imperial Orient,

Brought down from times afar,

Down her old black side poured the water in a tide,

As they toiled to get the better of a leak. We had got a signal set in the shrouds, And our men through the storm looked on in crowds:

But for wind, we were near enough to speak.

It seemed her sea and sky were in times long, long gone by,

That we read in winter-evens about;
As if to other stars

She had reared her old-world spars,

And her hull had kept an old-time ocean

All that stormy night through, our ship was lying-to

Whenever we could keep her to the wind; But late in the next day we gained a quiet bay,

For the tempest had left us far behind.
So before the sunny town

Went our anchors splashing down;
Our sails we hung all out to the sun;
While airs from off the steep
Came playing at bo-peep

With our canvas, hour by hour, in their fun. We leaned on boom or rail with many a lazy tale

Of the work of the storm that had died;
And watched, with idle eyes,
Our floats, like summer flies,
Riding lazily about the ship's side.
Suddenly they cried, from the other deck,
That the Orient was gone to wreck!
That her hull lay high on a broken shore,
And the brave old ship would float no more.

But we heard a sadder tale, ere the night

came on,

And a truer tale, of the ship that was gone.
They had seen from the height,
As she came from yester-night,
While the storm had not gone by, and the
sea was running high,

A ship driving heavily to land;

A strange great ship (so she seemed to be While she tumbled and rolled on the far

off sea,

New were red lip, true eyes, fresh dew;
All dells, all shores, had not been rabbled;
Nor yet the rhyming lovers' crew
Tree-bark and casement-pane had scrab-
bled.

Feelings sprang fresh, to them, and thought; Fresh things were hope, trust, faith, endeavor;

All things were new, wherein men wrought, And so they had the lead, forever.

Not even where to set their lever.

Then utterance, like thought, was young,
And, when these yearning two were mated,
What shapes of airy life were flung
Before the world as yet unsated!
Life was in haud; life was in tongue;
Life in whatever they created.

Must then the world to us be stale?
Must we be only after-comers?
Must wilted green and sunshine pale
Make mean all our dear springs and sum-

mers?

To those free lords of song and tale
Must we be only tricked-out mummers?

Oh, no! was ever life-blood cold?
Was wit e'er dull, when mirth was in it?
Or when will blushing love be old?
Or thrill of bobolink or linnet?
Are all our blossoms touched with mould?
Lurks not fresh bloom where we may win
it?

Yes! Life and strength forever can;
Life springs afresh through endless ages;
Nor on our true work falls a ban,
That it must halt, at shortened stages:
Throw man into it! man draws man
In canvas, stone, or written pages.

In your unnumbered vales, where God thought best.

Your vines and flowers learned long since to forgive,

And o'er their graves a broidered mantle

weave:

Be you as kind as they are, and the word Shall reach the Northland with each sum

mer bird,

And thoughts as sweet as summer shall

awake

Responsive to your kindness, and shall make
Our peace the peace of brothers once again,
And banish utterly the days of pain.

And ye, O Northmen! be ye not outdone
In generous thought and deed.
We all do need forgiveness, every one;

And they that give shall find it in their
need.

Spare of your flowers to deck the stranger's grave,

Who died for a lost cause:

A soul more daring, resolute, and brave,
Ne'er won a world's applause.

A brave man's hatred pauses at the tomb. For him some Southern home was robed in gloom,

Some wife or mother looked with longing

WITH WORDSWORTH AT RYDAL

THE grass hung wet on Rydal banks, The golden day with pearls adorning, When side by side with him we walked To meet midway the summer morning.

The west wind took a softer breath, The sun himself seemed brighter shining,

As through the porch the minstrel stepped, His eye sweet Nature's look enshrin

ing.