TO A WATERFOWL

WHITHER, 'midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,

Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,

Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, Or where the rocking billows rise and sink On the chafed ocean's side?

There is a power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coastThe desert and illimitable air

Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned,

At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, Yet stoop not weary, to the welcome land,

Though the dark night is near.

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TO A WATERFOWL

And soon that toil shall end;

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given,

And shall not soon depart.

He who from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

THE YANKEE GIRL

SHE sings at her wheel at that low cottage door, Which the long evening shadow is stretching before, With a music as sweet as the music which seems Breathed softly and faint in the ear of our dreams!

How brilliant and mirthful the light of her eye,
Like a star glancing out from the blue of the sky!
And lightly and freely her dark tresses play
O'er a brow and a bosom as lovely as they!

Who comes in his pride to that low cottage door,—
The haughty and rich to the humble and poor?
'Tis the great Southern planter,-the master who waves
His whip of dominion o'er hundreds of slaves.

"Nay, Ellen, for shame! Let those Yankee fools spin, Who would pass for our slaves with a change of their

skin;

Let them toil as they will at the loom or the wheel,
Too stupid for shame, and too vulgar to feel!

"But thou art too lovely and precious a gem
To be bound by their burdens and sullied by them,-
For shame, Ellen, shame,-cast thy bondage aside,
And away to the South, as my blessing and pride.

188

THE YANKEE GIRL

"Oh, come where no winter thy footsteps can wrong, But where flowers are blossoming all the year long, Where the shade of the palm tree is over my home,

And the lemon and orange are white in their bloom!

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Oh; come to my home, where my servants shall all Depart at thy bidding and come at thy call;

They shall heed thee as mistress with trembling and awe, And each wish of thy heart shall be felt as a law."

Oh, could ye have seen her, that pride of our girlsArise and cast back the dark wealth of her curls, With a scorn in her eye which the gazer could feel, And a glance like the sunshine that flashes on steel!

"Go back, haughty Southron! thy treasures of gold
Are dim with the blood of the hearts thou hast sold;
Thy home may be lovely, but around it I hear
The crack of the whip and the footsteps of fear!

"And the sky of thy South may be brighter than ours, And greener thy landscapes, and fairer thy flowers; But dearer the blast round our mountains which raves, Than the sweet summer zephyr which breathes over slaves!

"Full low at thy bidding thy negroes may kneel,
With the iron of bondage on spirit and heel;
Yet know that the Yankee girl sooner would be
In fetters with them, than in freedom with thee!"
JOHN G. WHITTIER.

THE PAGEANT

OUR revels now are ended: These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted, into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

SHAKESPEARE.