ithin her, and her spirit grew
Faint for undying waters.
Then she came
To the pure fount of God--and is athirst
No more--save when the "fever of the world"
Falleth upon her, she will go, sometimes,
Out in the starlight quietness, and breathe
A holy aspiration after heaven!
SKETCH OF A SCHOOLFELLOW.
He sat by me in school. His face is now
Vividly in my mind, as if he went
From me but yesterday--its pleasant smile
And the rich, joyous laughter of his eye,
And the free play of his unhaughty lip,
So redolent of his heart! He was not fair,
Nor singular, nor over-fond of books,
And never melancholy when alone.
He was the heartiest in the ring, the last
Home from the summer's wanderings, and the first
Over the threshold when the school was done.
All of us loved him. We shall speak his name
In the far years to come, and think of him
When we have lost life's simplest passages,
And pray for him--forgetting he is dead--
Life was in him so passing beautiful!
His childhood had been wasted in the close
And airless city. He had never thought
That the blue sky was ample, or the stars
Many in heaven, or the chainless wind
Of a medicinal freshness. He had learn'd
Perilous tricks of manhood, and his hand
Was ready, and his confidence in himself
Bold as a quarreller's. Then he came away
To the unshelter'd hills, and brought an eye
New as a babe's to nature, and an ear
As ignorant of its music. He was sad.
The broad hill sides seem'd desolate, and the woods
Gloomy and dim, and the perpetual sound
Of wind and waters and unquiet leaves
Like the monotony of a dirge. He pined
For the familiar things until his heart
Sicken'd for home!--and so he stole away
To the most silent places, and lay down
To weep upon the mosses of the slopes,
And follow'd listlessly the silver streams,
Till he found out the unsunn'd shadowings,
And the green openings to the sky, and grew
Fond of them all insensibly. He found
Sweet company in the brooks, and loved to sit
And bathe his fingers wantonly, and feel
The wind upon his forehead; and the leaves
Took a beguiling whisper to his ear,
And the bird-voices music, and the blast
Swept like an instrument the sounding trees.
His heart went back to
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