ient mill, still do I picture o'er
Thy cobwebbed stairs and loft and grain-strewn floor;
Thy door,--like some brown, honest hand of toil,
And honorable with labor of the soil,--
Forever open; through which, on his back
The prosperous farmer bears his bursting sack.
And while the miller measures out his toll,
Again I hear, above the cogs' loud roll,--
That makes stout joist and rafter groan and sway,--
The harmless gossip of the passing day:
Good country talk, that tells how so-and-so
Has died or married; how curculio
And codling-moth have ruined half the fruit,
And blight plays mischief with the grapes to boot;
Or what the news from town; next county fair;
How well the crops are looking everywhere:
Now this, now that, on which their interests fix,
Prospects for rain or frost, and politics.
While, all around, the sweet smell of the meal
Filters, warm-pouring from the grinding wheel
Into the bin; beside which, mealy white,
The miller looms, dim in the dusty light.

Again I see the miller's home, between
The crinkling creek and hills of beechen green:
Again the miller greets me, gaunt and brown,
Who oft o'erawed me with his gray-browed frown
And rugged mien: again he tries to reach
My youthful mind with fervid scriptural speech.--
For he, of all the country-side confessed,
The most religious was and happiest;
A Methodist, and one whom faith still led,
No books except the Bible had he read--
At least so seemed it to my younger head.--
All things in earth and heav'n he'd prove by this,
Be it a fact or mere hypothesis;
For to his simple wisdom, reverent,
"_The Bible says_" was all of argument.--
God keep his soul! his bones were long since laid
Among the sunken gravestones in the shade
Of those black-lichened rocks, that wall around
The family burying-ground with cedars crowned;
Where bristling teasel and the brier combine
With clambering wood-rose and the wild-grape vine
To hide the stone whereon his name and dates
Neglect, with mossy hand, obliterates.

_Anthem
of Dawn_

I

Then up the orient heights to the zenith, that balanced the crescent,--
Up and far up and over,--the heaven grew erubescent,
Vibrant with rose and with ruby from the hands of the harpist Dawn,
Smiting symphonic fire on the firmament's barbiton:
And the East was a priest who adored with offerings of gold and of gems,
And a wonderful carpet unrolled for the inaccessible hems
Of the glistening robes of her limbs; that, lily and