arpened impulse springs; the
page shall reflect the working of that woman's face, daughter of the
people; and when exulting posterity shall draw new patriotism from it,
and declare that it is proud, pathetic, resolved, sublime, they shall
not yet call it by its Christian name, for that will be concealed with
moss upon her forgotten head-stone.

* * * * *

AN ORDER FOR A PICTURE.

O good painter, tell me true,
Has your hand the cunning to draw
Shapes of things that you never saw?
Ay? Well, here is an order for you.

Woods and cornfields, a little brown,--
The picture must not be over-bright,--
Yet all in the golden and gracious light
Of a cloud, when the summer sun is down.

Alway and alway, night and morn,
Woods upon woods, with fields of corn
Lying between them, not quite sere,
And not in the full, thick, leafy bloom,
When the wind can hardly find breathing-room
Under their tassels,--cattle near,
Biting shorter the short green grass,
And a hedge of sumach and sassafras,
With bluebirds twittering all around,--
(Ah, good painter, you can't paint sound!)--
These, and the house where I was born,
Low and little, and black and old,
With children, many as it can hold,
All at the windows, open wide,--
Heads and shoulders clear outside,
And fair young faces all ablush:
Perhaps you may have seen, some day,
Roses crowding the self-same way,
Out of a wilding, way-side bush.

Listen closer. When you have done
With woods and cornfields and grazing herds,
A lady, the loveliest ever the sun
Looked down upon, you must paint for me:
Oh, if I only could make you see
The clear blue eyes, the tender smile,
The sovereign sweetness, the gentle grace,
The woman's soul, and the angel's face
That are beaming on me all the while!
I need not speak these foolish words:
Yet one word tells you all I would say,--
She is my mother: you will agree
That all the rest may be thrown away.

Two little urchins at her knee
You must paint, Sir: one like me,--
The other with a clearer brow,
And the light of his adventurous eyes
Flashing with boldest enterprise:
At ten years old he went to sea,--
God knoweth if he be living now,--
He sailed in the good ship "Commodore,"--
Nobody ever crossed her track
To bring us news, and she never came back