HENRY AUGUSTIN BEERS.

[Professor of English Literature, Yale College. Born at Buffalo, N. Y., 2d July 1847. Graduated at Yale College, 1869. Author of the following books:-A Century of American Literature ("Leisure Hour Series," Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1878); Odds and Ends: Verses Humorous, Occasional and Miscellaneous (Houghton, Miffin & Co., Boston, 1878); Life of N. P. Willis ("American Men of Letters Series," Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, 1885); Selections from the Prose Writings of N. P. Willis (edited, with Introduction), Chas. Scribner's Sons, New York, 1885); The Thankless Muse, verse (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, 1885); An Outline Sketch of English Literature (Phillips & Hunt, New York, 1886); An Outline Sketch of American Literature (Phillips & Hunt, New York, 1887). Professor Beers has also written numerous uncollected articles scattered through the principal Magazines, etc. The poems quoted come from The Thankless Muse, printed by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, and are reprinted by kind permission of that firm.]

BEAVER POND MEADOW.

THOU art my Dismal Swamp, my Everglades :
Thou my Campagna, where the bison wades
Through shallow, steaming pools, and the sick air
Decays. Thou my Serbonian Bog art, where
O'er leagues of mud, black vomit of the Nile,
Crawls in the sun the myriad crocodile.
Or thou my Cambridge or my Lincoln fen
Shalt be a lonely land where stilted men
Stalking across the surface waters go,
Casting long shadows, and the creaking, slow
Canal-barge, laden with its marshy hay,
Disturbs the stagnant ditches twice a day.
Thou hast thy crocodiles: on rotten logs
Afloat, the turtles swarm and bask: the frogs,
When come the pale, cold twilights of the spring,
Like distant sleigh-bells through the meadows ring.
The schoolboy comes on holidays to take
The musk-rat in its hole, or kill the snake,
Or fish for bull-heads in the pond at night.
The hog-snout's swollen corpse, with belly white,

I find upon the footway through the sedge,
Trodden by tramps along the water's edge.

Not thine the breath of the salt marsh below,
Where, when the tide is out, the mowers go
Shearing the oozy plain, that reeks with brine
More tonic than the incense of the pine.
Thou art the sink of all uncleanliness,

A drain for slaughter-pens, a wilderness
Of trenches, pockets, quagmires, bogs, where rank
The poison sumach grows, and in the tank
The water standeth ever black and deep,
Greened o'er with scum; foul pottages, that steep
And brew in that dark broth, at night distil
Malarious fogs, bringing the fever chill.
Yet grislier horrors thy recesses hold:
The murdered pedlar's body, five days old,
Among the yellow-lily-pads, was found

In yonder pond: the new-born babe lay drowned
And throttled on the bottom of this moat,
Near where the negro hermit keeps his boat;
Whose wigwam stands beside the swamp ; whose meals
It furnishes, fat pouts and mud-spawned eels.
Even so thou hast a kind of beauty, wild,

Unwholesome-thou the suburb's outcast child,
Behind whose grimy skin and matted hair
Warm nature works and makes her creature fair.
Summer has wrought a blue and silver border
Of iris flags and flowers in triple order
Of the white arrowhead round Beaver Fond,
And o'er the milkweeds in the swamp beyond
Tangled the dodder's amber-coloured threads.
In every fosse the bladderwort's bright heads
Like orange helmets on the surface show.
Richer surprises still thou hast: I know
The ways that to thy penetralia lead,

Where in black bogs the sundew's sticky bead
Ensnares young insects, and that rosy lass,
Sweet Arethusa, blushes in the grass.

Once on a Sunday, when the bells were still,
Following the path under the sandy hill,
Through the old orchard and across the plank
That bridges the dead stream, past many a rank
Of cat-tails, midway in the swamp I found
A small green mead of dry but spongy ground,
Entrenched about on every side with sluices
Full to the brim of thick lethean juices,

The filterings of the marsh.

With line and hook,

Two little French boys from the trenches took
Frogs for their Sunday meal, and gathered messes
Of pungent salad from the water-cresses.
A little isle of foreign soil it seemed,

And listening to their outland talk, I dreamed
That yonder spire above the elm-tops calm
Rose from the village chestnuts of La Balme.

Yes, many a pretty secret hast thou shown
To me, O Beaver Pond, walking alone

On summer afternoons, while yet the swallow
Skimmed o'er each flaggy plash and gravelly shallow;
Or when September turned the swamps to gold.
And purple. But the year is growing old;
The golden-rod is rusted, and the red

That streaked October's frosty cheek is dead;
Only the sumach's garnet pompons make
Procession through the melancholy brake.
Lo! even now the autumnal wind blows cool
Over the rippled waters of thy pool,
And red autumnal sunset colours brood
Where I alone and all too late intrude.

THE RISING OF THE CURTAIN.

WE sit before the curtain, and we heed the pleasant bustle; The ushers hastening up the aisles, the fans' and programmes' rustle;

The boy that cries librettos, and the soft, incessant sound Of talking and low laughter that buzzes all around.

How very old the drop-scene looks! A thousand times.

before

I've seen that blue paint dashing on that red distemper shore;

The castle and the guazzo sky, the very ilex-tree,— They have been there a thousand years-a thousand more shall be.

All our lives we have been waiting for that weary daub to rise;

We have peeped behind its edges, as if we were God's spies;"

We have listened for the signal; yet still, as in our youth, The coloured screen of matter hangs between us and the truth.

When in my careless childhood I dwelt beside a wood,
I tired of the clearing where my father's cabin stood;
And of the wild young forest paths that coaxed me to
explore,

Then dwindled down, or led me back to where I stood before.

But through the woods before our door a waggon track went by,

Above whose utmost western edge there hung an open sky; And there it seemed to make a plunge, or break off

suddenly,

As though beneath that open sky it met the open sea.

Oh, often have I fancied, in the sunset's dreamy glow, That mine eyes had caught the welter of the ocean waves below;

And the wind among the pine-tops, with its low and ceaseless roar,

Was but an echo from the surf on that imagined shore.

Alas! as I grew older, I found that road led down
To no more fair horizon than the squalid factory_town;
So all life's purple distances, when nearer them I came,
Have played me still the same old cheat,—the same, the
same, the same!

And when, O King, the heaven departeth as a scroll, Wilt thou once more the promise break thou madest to my soul?

Shall I see thy feasting presence thronged with baron, knight, and page?

Or will the curtain rise upon a dark and empty stage?

For lo, quick undulations across the canvas run;
The foot-lights brighten suddenly, the orchestra has done;
And through the expectant silence rings loud the
prompter's bell;

The curtain shakes,—it rises. Farewell, dull world, farewell!

HUGH LATIMER.

His lips amid the flame outsent
A music strong and sweet,
Like some unearthly instrument,
That's played upon by heat.

As spice-wood tough, laid on the coal,
Sets all its perfume free,

The incense of his hardy soul,

Rose up exceedingly.

To open that great flower, too cold

Were sun and vernal rain;

But fire has forced it to unfold,
Nor will it shut again.