weight and size, this heart and eyes,
Are touch'd, are turn'd to finest air.

The clouds are broken in the sky,
And thro' the mountain-walls
A rolling organ-harmony
Swells up, and shakes and falls.
Then move the trees, the copses nod,
Wings flutter, voices hover clear:
"O just and faithful knight of God!
Ride on! the prize is near."
So pass I hostel, hall, and grange;
By bridge and ford, by park and pale,
All-arm'd I ride, whate'er betide,
Until I find the holy Grail.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

A NAME IN THE SAND.

"A Name in the Sand," by Hannah Flagg Gould (1789-1865), is a poem to
correct our ready overestimate of our own importance.

Alone I walked the ocean strand;
A pearly shell was in my hand:
I stooped and wrote upon the sand
My name--the year--the day.
As onward from the spot I passed,
One lingering look behind I cast;
A wave came rolling high and fast,
And washed my lines away.

And so, methought, 'twill shortly be
With every mark on earth from me:
A wave of dark oblivion's sea
Will sweep across the place
Where I have trod the sandy shore
Of time, and been, to be no more,
Of me--my day--the name I bore,
To leave nor track nor trace.

And yet, with Him who counts the sands
And holds the waters in His hands,
I know a lasting record stands
Inscribed against my name,
Of all this mortal part has wrought,
Of all this thinking soul has thought,
And from these fleeting moments caught
For glory or for shame.

HANNAH FLAGG GOULD.

[Illustration]

PART VI.

"Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,--
The last of life, for which the first was made."

THE VOICE OF SPRING.

"The Voice of Spring," by Felicia Hemans (1749-1835), becomes
attractive as years go on. The line in this poem that captivated my
youthful fancy was:

"The larch has hung all his tassels forth,"

The delight with which trees hang out their new little tassels every
year is one of the charms of "the pine family." John Burroughs sent us
down a tiny hemlock, that grew in our window-box at school for five
years, and every spring it was a new joy on account of the fine, tender
tassels. Mrs. Hemans had a vivid imagination backed up by an abunda