e seemed to say.

What hast thou done here, child, that thy poor dust
Should lie embosomed in such loveliness?
Why should the gracious trees stand guard o'er thee?
Hast thou aspired, like them, through all thy life,
And rest and healing with thy shadow cast?
Have deeds of thine brightened the world like flowers,
And sweetened it with holiest charities?

* * * * *

=_Edmund Clarence Stedman,[98] 1833-._=

From "The Blameless Prince and other Poems."

=_423._= THE MOUNTAINS.

Two thousand feet in air it stands
Betwixt the bright and shaded lands,
Above the regions it divides
And borders with its furrowed sides.
The seaward valley laughs with light
Till the round sun o'erhangs this height;
But then, the shadow of the crest
No more the plains that lengthen west
Enshrouds, yet slowly, surely creeps
Eastward, until the coolness steeps
A darkling league of tilth and wold,
And chills the flocks that seek their fold.

Not like those ancient summits lone,
Mont Blanc on his eternal throne,--
The city-gemmed Peruvian, peak,--
The sunset portals landsmen seek,
Whose train, to reach the Golden Land,
Crawls slow and pathless through the sand,--
Or that whose ice-lit beacon guides
The mariner on tropic tides,
And flames across the Gulf afar,
A torch by day, by night a star,--
Not thus to cleave the outer skies.
Does my serener mountain rise.
Nor aye forget its gentle birth
Upon the dewey, pastoral earth.

But ever, in the noonday light,
Are scenes whereof I love the sight,--
Broad pictures of the lower world
Beneath my gladdened eyes unfurled.
Irradiate distances reveal
Fair nature wed to human weal;
The rolling valley made a plain;
Its chequered squares of grass and grain;
The silvery rye, the golden wheat,
The flowery elders where they meet,--
Ay, even the springing corn I see,
And garden haunts of bird and bee;
And where, in daisied meadows, shines
The wandering river through its vines,
Move, specks at random, which I know
Are herds a-grazing to and fro.

[Footnote 98: Was born in Connecticut but has long resided in New York,
where he has combined an active business life with literary pursuits--a
favorite contributor to that magazines.]

* * * * *

=_John James Piatt,[99] 1835-._=

From "Landmarks and other Poems."

=_424._= LONG AGO.