--a human wreck.
With all his sense and scholarship,
How could he face his fading wife?
The devil never lifted whip
With thongs like those that scourged his life.

But He in whom the dying thief
Upon the Cross did place his trust,
Forgets the sin and feels the grief,
And lifts the sufferer from the dust.
And now, because I have a dream,
The man and woman found the light;
A glory burns upon the stream,
With gold and green the woods are bright.

But still I hate that haggard street,
Its filthy courts, its alleys wild;
In dreams of it I always meet
The phantom of a wailing child.
The name of it begets distress--
Ah, song, be silent! show no more
The lady in the perished dress,
The scholar on the tap-room floor.

Heath from the Highlands

Here, where the great hills fall away
To bays of silver sea,
I hold within my hand to-day
A wild thing, strange to me.

Behind me is the deep green dell
Where lives familiar light;
The leaves and flowers I know so well
Are gleaming in my sight.

And yonder is the mountain glen,
Where sings in trees unstirred
By breath of breeze or axe of men
The shining satin-bird.

The old weird cry of plover comes
Across the marshy ways,
And here the hermit hornet hums,
And here the wild bee strays.

No novel life or light I see,
On hill, in dale beneath:
All things around are known to me
Except this bit of heath.

This touching growth hath made me dream--
It sends my soul afar
To where the Scottish mountains gleam
Against the Northern star.

It droops--this plant--like one who grieves;
But, while my fancy glows,
There is that glory on its leaves
Which never robed the rose.

For near its wind-blown native spot
Were born, by crags uphurled,
The ringing songs of Walter Scott
That shook the whole wide world.

There haply by the sounding streams,
And where the fountains break,
He saw the darling of his dreams,
The Lady of the Lake.

And on the peaks where never leaf
Of lowland beauty grew,
Perhaps he met Clan Alpine's chief,
The rugged Roderick Dhu.

Not far, perchance, this heather throve
(Above fair banks of ferns),
From that green place of stream and grove
That knew the voice of Burns.

Against the radiant river ways
Still w