SCYTHE SONG

M OWERS, weary and brown, and blithe,

What is the word methinks ye know,

Endless over-word that the Scythe

Sings to the blades of the grass below? Scythes that swing in the grass and clover, Something, still, they say as they pass; What is the word that, over and over,

Sings the Scythe to the flowers and grass?

Hush, ah, hush, the Scythes are saying,
Hush, and heed not, and fall asleep;
Hush, they say to the grasses swaying,
Hush, they sing to the clover deep!
Hush, 'tis the lullaby Time is singing-
Hush, and heed, for all things pass.

Hush, ah, hush! and the Scythes are swinging
Over the clover, over the grass!

ANDREW LANG.

AN INTERVIEW WITH MILES

I

STANDISH

SAT one evening in my room,

In that sweet hour of twilight

When blended thoughts, half light, half gloom,
Throng through the spirit's skylight;
The flames by fits curled round the bars,
Or up the chimney crinkled,

While embers dropped like falling stars,
And in the ashes tinkled.

I sat and mused; the fire burned low,
And, o'er my senses stealing,
Crept something of the ruddy glow
That bloomed on wall and ceiling;

My pictures (they are very few,

The heads of ancient wise men)

Smoothed down their knotted fronts and grew As rosy as excisemen.

My antique high-backed Spanish chair

Felt thrills through wood and leather, That had been strangers since whilere 'Mid Andalusian heather,

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MILES STANDISH

The oak that built its sturdy frame

His happy arms stretched over

The ox whose fortunate hide became
The bottom's polished cover.

It came out in that famous bark,
That brought our sires intrepid,
Capacious as another ark

For furniture decrepit;

For, as that saved of bird and beast
A pair for propagation,

So has the seed of these increased
And furnished half the nation.

Kings sit, they say, in slippery seats;
But those slant precipices

Of ice the northern voyager meets
Less slippery are than this is;
To cling therein would pass the wit
Of royal man or woman,
And whosoe'er can stay in it
Is more or less than human.

I offer to all bores this perch,
Dear well-intentioned people

With heads as void as week-day church,
Tongues longer than the steeple;
To folks with missions, whose gaunt eyes
See golden ages rising,-

Salt of the earth! in what queer Guys

Thou'rt fond of crystallizing!

MILES STANDISH

My wonder, then, was not unmixed
With merciful suggestion,

When, as my roving eyes grew fixed
Upon the chair in question,
I saw its trembling arms enclose
A figure grim and rusty,

Whose doublet plain and plainer hose
Were something worn and dusty.

Now even such men as Nature forms
Merely to fill the street with,

Once turned to ghosts by hungry worms,
Are serious things to meet with;
Your penitent spirits are no jokes,
And though I'm not averse to
A quiet shade, even they are folks
One cares not to speak first to.

Who knows, thought I, but he has come,
By Charon kindly ferried,
To tell me of a mighty sum

Behind my wainscot buried?

There is a buccaneerish air

About that garb outlandish

Just then the ghost drew up his chair
And said, "My name is Standish.

"I come from Plymouth, deadly bored
With toasts, and songs and speeches,
As long and flat as my old sword,
As threadbare as my breeches:

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154

MILES STANDISH

They understand us Pilgrims! they,

Smooth men with rosy faces,

Strength's knots and gnarls all pared away,
And varnish in their places!

"We had some toughness in our grain,
The eye to rightly see us is

Not just the one that lights the brain
Of drawing-room Tyrtæuses:
They talk about their Pilgrim blood,
Their birthright high and holy!
A mountain stream that ends in mud
Methinks is melancholy.

"He had stiff knees, the Puritan,
That were not good at bending;
The homespun dignity of man

He thought was worth defending;
He did not with his pinchbeck ore,
His country's shame forgotten,
Gild Freedom's coffin o'er and o'er,
When all within was rotten.

"These loud ancestral boasts of yours,
How can they else than vex us?
Where were your dinner orators

When slavery grasped at Texas?
Dumb on his knees was every one
That now is bold as Cæsar;
Mere pegs to hang an office on

Such stalwart men as these are."