-child's face;
But softly came one
And it leaves not its place.
Here Time shall replight
His faith with the dawn,
And his ages, gaunt grey,
Ever cycling, behold
Their youth never flown
In a world never old,
Though they pass and repass with their trailing decay.

"We stay," said the shadows, and hung
On the brush of the master; "we are thine own."
Fearless he flung
The magical chains around them, and said,
"Ye too shall be light, and to life bring the sun!"
And man delayed
By the captive pain's revealing glow
Feeleth earth's breathing woe,
And his vow is made;
"Ye shall pass, ye shadows, yea;
And life, as the sun, be free;
The God in me saith!"
And the shadows go;
For joy is the breath
Of eternity,
And sorrow the sigh of a day.

IN THE BLUE RIDGE

The mountain night is shining, Jim of Tellico,
Shining so it hurts the heart to see
The gleam upon the laurel leaf, the locust shaking snow
To the rippling Nantahala that is laughing up to me,
Hurts till the cry comes and the big tears are free.
O, why should my heart cry to you that will not hear,
Yonder where the ridges lie so still above the town?
But the pain that's calling seems to bring you near,
As the tears in my eyes bring the stars a-swimming down.

Mother sits and cries, with my baby on her knee;
Father curses deep, a-breathing hard your name;
But never do I hear and never do I see,
I with my head low, working out my shame,
Eyes burning dry and my heart like a flame;
For I hate you then--I hate you, Jim of Tellico,
And grip my needle tighter, every stitch a sin,
The hate growing bigger till the thing I sew
Seems a shroud I'm glad a-making just to lay you in.

But the slow sun passes with its day-long stare,
Like a bold eye at the window when the blind
Is missing and you mustn't know the eye is there,--
Just shut your heart up close and hide the thing you mind;
And comes the blessed twilight calling of its kind,
When all the little creatures with soft voices stir,
Little hiding things that cry so tremblingly,
Till I lay my needle by,--O, how the sweet woods whirr!
And fly down to the river that is laughing up to me.

Then the hate goes out o' me with the moonlight creeping in,
And the water cr