ON REVISITING STATEN ISLAND.

Again ye fields, again ye woods and farms
Slowly approach and fold me to your arms.
The scent of June buds wraps me once again,
The breath of grasses sighs along the plain.
Ye elms and oaks that comforted of yore,
I hear your welcome as I heard before.

The night-blue sky is etched with dusky boughs
And at your feet the white and huddled cows
Are breathing deeply still. Is all a dream,
Or does the hillside with a welcome gleam?
Know ye, O lofty trees, your worshiper ?
Know ye a wanderer, ready to aver
Yon branch leans downward to his eager face,
Yon bush seems following on his happy trace?
The cedars gossip softly, one by one,
Leaning their heads in secret; on and on

The whisper spreads, from new-born larch to fir,

Thence to the chestnut tender yet of bur,

And now the fragrant blackberry on the moor

Says the same word the white beech mutters o'er;

A spice-birch on the fringes of the wood.

Has lain in wait, has heard and understood;
The piny phalanx nods, and up, away,

Tree-tops have sped the name to Prince's Bay!

A 2ang.

ALME MATRES.

(ST. ANDREWS, 1862. OXFORD, 1865.)

St. Andrews by the Northern Sea,
A haunted town it is to me!
A little city, worn and gray,

The gray North Ocean girds it round, And o'er the rocks, and up the bay,

The long sea-rollers surge and sound. And still the thin and biting spray

Drives down the melancholy street,

And still endure, and still decay,

Towers that the salt winds vainly beat.

Ghost-like and shadowy they stand
Clear mirrored in the wet sea-sand.

O, ruined chapel, long ago

We loitered idly where the tall Fresh-budded mountain-ashes blow Within thy desecrated wall:

The tough roots broke the tomb below, The April birds sang clamorous,

We did not dream, we could not know

How soon the Fates would sunder us!

O, broken minster, looking forth
Beyond the bay, above the town,
O, winter of the kindly North,

O, college of the scarlet gown,
And shining sands beside the sea,

And stretch of links beyond the sand,
Once more I watch you, and to me
It is as if I touched his hand!

And therefore art thou yet more dear,

O, little city, gray and sere,

Though shrunken from thine ancient pride And lonely by thy lonely sea,

Than these fair halls on Isis' side,

Where Youth an hour came back to me!

A land of waters green and clear,
Of willows and of poplars tall,
And, in the spring-time of the year,
The white may breaking over all,
And Pleasure quick to come at call;

And summer rides by marsh and wold,
And Autumn with her crimson pall

About the towers of Magdalen* rolled; And strange enchantments from the past,

And memories of the friends of old,

And strong Tradition, binding fast

The "flying terms " with bands of gold,—

All these hath Oxford: all are dear,

But dearer far the little town,

The drifting surf, the wintry year,
The college of the scarlet gown,
St. Andrews by the Northern Sea,
That is a haunted town to me!

* Pronounced "Maudlin."

TWILIGHT ON TWEED.

Three crests against the saffron sky,
Beyond the purple plain,
The dear remembered melody

Of Tweed once more again.

Wan water from the border hills,
Dear voice from the old years,
Thy distant music lulls and stills,
And moves to quiet tears.

Like a loved ghost thy fabled flood
Fleets through the dusky land;
Where Scott, come home to die, has stood,
My feet returning stand.

A mist of memory broods and floats,

The border waters flow;

The air is full of ballad notes,

Borne out of long ago.

Old songs that sung themselves to me,
Sweet through a boy's day-dream,
While trout below the blossom'd tree
Flashed in the golden stream.

*

Twilight, and Tweed, and Eildon Hill,
Fair and thrice fair you be;

You tell me that the voice is still

That should have welcomed me.

HOMER.

Homer, thy song men liken to the sea,
With all the notes of music in its tone,

With tides that wash the dim dominion

Of Hades, and light waves that laugh in glee
Around the isle enchanted; nay, to me

Thy verse seems as the River of source unknown

That glasses Egypt's temples overthrown
In his sky-nurtured stream eternally.

No wiser we than men of heretofore

To find thy sacred fountains guarded fast; Enough, thy flood makes green our human shore,

As Nilus Egypt, rolling down his vast

His fertile flood, that murmurs evermore

Of God's dethroned, and empires in the past.

ROMANCE.

My love dwelt in a Northern land.
A dim tower in a forest green

Was his, and far away the sand

And gray wash of the waves was seen
The woven forest-boughs between:

And through the Northern summer night
The sunset slowly died away,
And herds of strange deer, silver-white,
Came gleaming through the forests gray,
And fled like ghosts before the day.