alth, and pride of office
With their glitter and their shouting,
May not pass through death's dark valley,
May not thrill the ear that resteth
Mid the silence of the grave-yard;
But the deed that wrought in pity
Mid the outcast and benighted,
In the hovel or the prison,
On the land or on the ocean,
Shunning still the applause of mortals,
Comes it not to His remembrance
Who shall say amid the terrors
Of the last Great Day of Judgment,
"Inasmuch as ye have done it
Unto one, the least, the lowest.
It was done to Me, your Saviour."

CANTO THIRD.

I'll change my measure, and so end my lay,
Too long already.
I can't manage well
The metre of that master of the lyre,
Who Hiawatha, and our forest tribes
Deftly described. Hexameters, I hate,
And henceforth do eschew their company,
For what is written irksomely, will be
Read in like manner.
What did I say last
In my late canto? Something, I believe
Of gratitude.
Now this same gratitude
Is a fine word to play on. Many a niche
It fills in letters, and in billet-doux,--
Its adjective a graceful prefix makes
To a well-written signature. It gleams
A happy mirage in a sunny brain;
But as a principle, is oft, I fear,
Inoperative. Some satirist hath said
That _gratitude is only a keen sense
Of future favors_.
As regards myself,
Tis my misfortune, and perhaps, my fault,
Yet I'm constrain'd to say, that where my gifts
And efforts have been greatest, the return
Has been in contrast. So that I have shrunk
To grant myself the pleasure of great love
Lest its reward might be indifference,
Or smooth deceit. Others no doubt have been
More fortunate. I trust 'tis often so:
But this is my experience, on the scale
Of three times twenty years, and somewhat more.

* * * * *

In that calm happiness which Virtue gives,
Blent with the daily zeal of doing good,
Mother and daughter dwelt.
Once, as they came
From their kind visit to a child of need,
Cheered by her blessings,--at their home they found
Miranda and her son. With rapid speech,
And strong emotion that resisted tears
Her tale she told. Forsaken were they both,
By faithless sire and husband. He had gone
To parts unknown, with an abandon'd one
He long had follow'd. Brokenly she spake
Of taunts and wrongs long suffer'd and conceal'd
With woman's pride. Then bitterly she pour'd
Her curses on his