own life should teach it to you; that
in that Book wherein God has not scorned to write the history of America
we find the quiet surety that the To-Morrow of the world is near at
hand.

For me, I have no prophetic insight, as I said before: the homely things
of every day wear their old faces. This moment, the evening air thrills
with a purple of which no painter has caught the tint, no poet the
meaning; not a face passes me in the street on which some human voice
has not the charm to call out love or power: the Helper yet waits
amongst us; surely, this Old Year you despise holds beauty, work,
content yet unmastered. Child-souls, you tell me, like that of Lois, may
find it enough to hold no past and no future, to accept the work of each
moment, and think it no wrong to drink every drop of its beauty and joy:
we who are wiser laugh at them. It may be: yet I say unto you, their
angels only do always behold the face of my Father in the New Year.

* * * * *

MOUNTAIN PICTURES.

I.

FRANCONIA FROM THE PEMIGEWASSET.

Once more, O Mountains of the North, unveil
Your brows, and lay your cloudy mantles by!
And once more, ere the eyes that seek ye fail,
Uplift against the blue walls of the sky
Your mighty shapes, and let the sunshine weave
Its golden net-work in your belting woods,
Smile down in rainbows from your falling floods,
And on your kingly brows at morn and eve
Set crowns of fire! So shall my soul receive
Haply the secret of your calm and strength,
Your unforgotten beauty interfuse
My common life, your glorious shapes and hues
And sun-dropped splendors at my bidding come,
Loom vast through dreams, and stretch in billowy length
From the sea-level of my lowland home!

They rise before me! Last night's thunder-gust
Roared not in vain: for, where its lightnings thrust
Their tongues of fire, the great peaks seem so near,
Burned clean of mist, so starkly bold and clear,
I almost pause the wind in the pines to hear,
The loose rock's fall, the steps of browsing deer.
The clouds that shattered on yon slide-worn walls
And splintered on the rocks their spears of rain
Have set in play a thousand waterfalls,
Making the dusk and silence of the woods
Glad with the laughter of the chasing floods
And luminous with blown spray and silver gleams,
While, in the vales below, the dry-lipped streams
Sing to the