They are coming, my lads and my lasses,
The door-yard is full of their noise,
Their feet wet with dew from fresh grasses,
And the girls just as glad as the boys.
They are brimming with innocent laughter,
They are blushing like blossoms of spring;
Will the fruit of their distant hereafter
Be as sweet as the blossoming?

In reverent silence they're sitting,
Grave Bertie and frolicsome Lee;
We are reading the verses so fitting,

"Let the little ones come unto me."
Our heads on our hands we are bowing,
We are speaking the time-hallowed prayer,
And the Father in heaven is knowing
Whether the spirit is there.

We are singing the airs of the May-time,
The children are singing, and I

Am listening to songs of the play-time,
And the songs of the by and by.
Their voices are ringing with pleasure,

Their hands and their feet beating time,
And my heart is made glad with their measure,
As my soul to their joy makes a rhyme.

We are opening our books and our papers,
We are ready to read or recite;

The boys have forgotten the capers

That troubled me so yester-night.

I am listening, and looking, and listening,
And spinning my thread, as I look,
And the tear in my eyelid is glistening,
And hiding the words of my book.

Ah! the smile to my eyelid is creeping,

And driving the tears to their bed;

And deep in my heart I am keeping

The thoughts that would come to my head.

And unto myself I am saying,

As my children so funnily spell,

I would that life's school were beginning,

And I could commence it well.

But since not a bit I can alter,

Of the web that I once have spun,

I would guide the fingers that falter,
Because they have just begun;
And I hope that the Master Workman,
When my broken threads he sees,
Will mend them, if they're twisted in,
With the better threads of these.

The sunshiny day is beginning,

And the school-room is full of its light; At my desk I am sitting and spinning, But not as I spun yester-night.

Through the door come the scent of the dawning,
And the oriole's song to the sun,

But I'm spinning a new thread this morning,
Like the one that the children have spun.

THE SONG OF THE VALLEY.

Sweet valley of my birth!

Thy green hills heavenward rise;

Where clouds come whispering to the earth
The secrets of the skies.

The silver Sandy winds

Around thy mountain's feet,

The brooks and rills together binds,

And makes the meadows sweet.

Mount Abram cools thy head;

Old Blue makes warm thy breast;

A hundred hills unturreted

Keep watch from east to west.

Within thy clasping arms,

Close clinging to thy side,

White villages and fertile farms
Safely and warmly hide.

Over thy nightly sleep

The same, soft starlight plays
That loving watch was wont to keep

In unforgotten days.

Pressed to thy beating heart

A happy village clings,

Just where Mount Day's dark shadows start,

Sheltered beneath its wings.

That village holds a nest

Where tuneful memory sings
The song I love to hear the best
Of all earth's pleasant things.

Hush! I can hear its trill;

It fills the valley fair,

From north to south, from stream to hill,
Around and everywhere.

Sweet valley of my birth!

The skies thy hilltops meet;

And thought sent daily o'er the earth

At nightfall seeks thy feet.

Eliza Leland Adams Crosby.

Mrs. Eliza L. A. Crosby is a native of Bucksport, but has lived many years in Bangor. She has written, at various times, very acceptably for several publications.

LET US RUN WITH PATIENCE.

The heart is fixed and fixed the eye,
And I am girded for the race.
The Lord is strong-and I rely

On His assisting grace.

Race for the swift! it must be run,
A prize laid up! it must be won.

And I have tarried longer, now,

Pleased with the scenes of time,
Than fitteth those who hope to go
To heaven, that holy clime;
Who hope to gather fruit that grows
Where the immortal river flows.

The atmosphere of earth-O how
It hath bedimmed the eye,

And quenched the spirit's fervid glow,

And stayed the purpose high.

And how these feet have gone astray

That should have walked the narrow way.

But now, no more-for I have caught,
O God, a glimpse of Thee,

And, all unworthy though the thought

Of Thy perfection be,

Yet, 'tis of God, and earth no more
Can have the heart it held before.

Race for the swift! I must away
With footstep firm and free.
Ye pleasures that invite my stay
And cares are naught to me,
For, lo! it gleameth on my eye,
The glory of that upper sky.

"A prize laid up," said he who fought
That holy fight of old;

Laid up in heaven for me, yet not

For me alone that crown of gold,
But all who wait till Thou appear
Saviour, the diadem shall wear.

Patiently wait! so help Thou me,
Thou High and Holy One,
That, dim although the vision be,
The race I still may run;

This eye thus lifted to the skies,

This heart, thus burning for the prize.

Llewellyn Indrew Wadsworth.

Llewellyn A. Wadsworth was born in Hiram, Me., Nov. 13, 1828, on a farm some four miles from any village or educational advantages, other than the common school of some three months in a year. This, with some three terms of High School at Keazar Falls, comprised his privileges. He remained on the farm most of the time till his thirtieth year, teaching some in the district schools, and serving eight years as Supervisor of Schools, and S. S. Committee. He was married Aug. 12, 1868, to Miss Annette Clemons, who, with one son, comprises his family. His father, Col. Charles Wadsworth, was a grandson of Gen. Peleg Wadsworth, of Revolutionary fame, hence a cousin to the poet, HW. Longfellow. He is also a descendant of five of the Pilgrims, who landed from the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock. His mother, Mrs. Sarah H. Wadsworth, was a lady of tender affections and mild and gentle nature. He has been engaged some years in writing a history of his native town. He has lived for sixteen years on a highland farm overlooking the Saco Valley and Lovell's Pond, and affording a grand view of the White Mountain region. He has contributed prose or poems to some thirty papers of Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, and served two years as associate editor of the Oxford County Record. He was Representative from Hiram in the Legislature of 1879, and has been prominently named for the Senate. He has served as Justice of the Peace and Trial Justice some seventeen years, Notary Public thirteen years. He is a member of the Odd Fellows, the Grange, the Free Masons, and the Congregational Church. His life has been one of affliction, hence the pathos that permeates his writings, and the spirit of humanity that results in self-sacrificing efforts for the oppressed, the stricken, and the suffering in his vicinity; believing that beyond the shadow of the Great Mystery these deeds are treasured, and a voice will one day be heard softer than the wind-harp's Æolian cadence, and sweeter than the angel's song, saying: "Inasmuch as ye did these things to these my homeless, friendless and forsaken ones, ye did them unto Me."

THE TRESS THAT IS FADED AND GRAY.

To-night, as I turn to the treasures of yore,

Collected with many a care,

My gaze turns to one, and returns o'er and o'er, 'Tis a lock of my fond mother's hair.

This boon that I cherish is faded and gray,

And long, long ago on the page,

My dear mother penciled her name where it lay,
When her fingers were trembling with age.

I have names of the poet, the soldier, the sage,
And treasures from far o'er the sea,

But the name of my mother, so tremulous with age,
Is the one that is dearest to me.

How oft, O how oft, my heart fondly yearns

For the scenes of my boyhood's play,

And often in sadness it tenderly turns
To the tress that is faded and gray.

As sadly I turn from the time-worn page

To the throng that is festive and gay,

There's a tear on the name that is tremulous with age, And the tress that is faded and gray.

COMING HOME.

Mother, I'm coming home,

I'm weary of my wandering here alone;
The days allotted for my feet to roam,

Have almost flown,

I'm coming home.

Out in the falling snow,

Or in the pitiless and chilling rain,
Lonely and wearily I onward go,

For worldly gain,-

Weary and slow.

Last night I dreamed of home,

And stood beside the crystal mountain stream
And gazed upon its music-making foam,—

Stood in my dream,
Where once I roamed.

The northern breeze sweeps by,

It comes from where the May-flower blooms,
And through the pine-trees towering high

With bending plumes,

It softly sighs.