we share,
Surer fortune, did we dare!

IV.

In our mills of common thought
By the pattern all is wrought:
In our school of life, the man
Drills to suit the public plan,
And through labor, love and play,
Shifts the Burden of the Day.

V.

Power of all is right of none!
Right hath each beneath the sun
To the breadth and liberal space
Of the independent race,--
To the chariot and the steed,
To the will, desire, and deed!

VI.

Ah, the gods of wood and stone
Can a single saint dethrone,
But the people who shall aid
'Gainst the puppets they have made?
First they teach and then obey:
'Tis the Burden of the Day.

VII.

Thunder shall we never hear
In this ordered atmosphere?
Never this monotony feel
Shattered by a trumpet's peal?
Never airs that burst and blow
From eternal summits, know?

VIII.

Though no man resent his wrong,
Still is free the poet's song:
Still, a stag, his thought may leap
O'er the herded swine and sheep,
And in pastures far away
Lose the burden of the Day!

* * * * *

=_John Townsend Trowbridge,[91] 1827-._=

From the Atlantic Monthly.

=_415._= "DOROTHY IN THE GARRET."

In the low-raftered garret, stooping
Carefully over the creaking boards,
Old Maid Dorothy goes a-groping
Among its dusty and cobwebbed hoards;
Seeking some bundle of patches, hid
Far under the eaves, or bunch of sage,
Or satchel hung on its nail, amid
The heir-looms of a by-gone age.

There is the ancient family chest,
There the ancestral cards and hatchel;
Dorothy, sighing, sinks down to rest,
Forgetful of patches, sage, and satchel.
Ghosts of faces peer from the gloom
Of the chimney, where, with swifts and reel,
And the long-disused, dismantled loom,
Stands the old-fashioned spinning wheel.

She sees it back in the clean-swept kitchen,
A part of her girlhood's little world;
Her mother is there by the window, stitching;
Spindle buzzes, and reel is whirled
With many a click; on her little stool
She sits, a child by the open door,
Watching, and dabbling her feet in the pool
Of sunshine spilled on the gilded floor.

Her sisters are spinning all day long;
To her wakening sense, the first sweet warning
Of daylight come, is the cheerful song
To the hum