se,
The faint sound died where it arose;
And they who passed from door to door;
Their soft feet on the polished floor
Met their soft shadows,--nothing more.

Then once again the groups were drawn
Through corridors, or down the lawn,
Which bloomed in beauty like a dawn.
Where countless fountains leapt alway,
Veiling their silver heights in spray,
The choral people held their way.

There, midst the brightest, brightly shone
Dear forms he loved in years agone,--
The earliest loved,--the earliest flown.
He heard a mother's sainted tongue,
A sister's voice, who vanished young,
While one still dearer sweetly sung!

No further might the scene unfold;
The gazer's voice could not withhold;
The very rapture made him bold:
He cried aloud, with clasped hands,
"O happy fields! O happy bands!
Who reap the never-failing lands.

"Oh master of these broad estates,
Behold, before your very gates
A worn and wanting laborer waits!
Let me but toil amid your grain,
Or be a gleaner on the plain,
So I may leave these fields of pain!

"A gleaner, I will follow far,
With never look or word to mar,
Behind the Harvest's yellow car;
All day my hand shall constant be,
And every happy eve shall see
The precious burden borne to thee!"

At morn some reapers neared the place,
Strong men, whose feet recoiled apace;
Then gathering round the upturned face,
They saw the lines of pain and care,
Yet read in the expression there
The look as of an answered prayer.

A poem like the preceding abounds in beautiful word pictures, which
add to the charm of the imaginary incident which is related.

Here is the first: It is a country road in the harvest season. On
one side, stretching away into the dim distance, lie fields already
reaped; upon the other, a bank, covered with briery vines, rises
steeply into the darkness. The evening star lies close to the
horizon, and in the sky the cold crescent moon hangs like an empty
sickle. In the grass under the bank, with night dews thickly
gathered upon him, lies a poor and weary reaper. His torn clothes,
old and ill-kept, his tanned face, slender figure, and more than
all else the rusty sickle in his hand, show that he has been long
without work, and has suffered in poverty.

Th