THE LAST LANDLORD

You who dread the cares and labors
Of the tenant's annual quest,
You who long for peace and rest,
And the quietest of neighbors,
You may find them, if you will,
In the city on the hill.

One indulgent landlord leases
All the pleasant dwellings there;
He has tenants everywhere,-
Every day the throng increases;
None may tell their number, yet
He has mansions still to let.

Never presses he for payment;
Gentlest of all landlords he;
And his numerous tenantry
Never lack for food or raiment.
Sculptured portal, grassy roof,
All alike are trouble-proof.

Of the quiet town's frequenters,
Never one is ill at ease;

There are neither locks nor keys, Yet no robber breaks or enters;

Not a dweller bolts his door,
Fearing for his treasure-store.

Never sound of strife or clamor
Troubles those who dwell therein;
Never toil's distracting din,
Stroke of axe, nor blow of hammer;
Crimson clover sheds its sweets
Even in the widest streets.

Never tenant old or younger

Suffers illness or decline; There no suffering children pine; There comes never want nor hunger; Woe and need no longer reign; Poverty forgets its pain.

Turmoil and unrest and hurry

Stay forevermore outside; By the hearts which there abide Wrong, privation, doubt, and worry Are forgotten quite, or seem Only like a long-past dream.

DOWN THE BAYOU

THE Cypress swamp around me wraps its spell,

With hushing sounds in moss-hung branches there,

Like congregations rustling down to prayer,
While Solitude, like some unsounded bell,
Hangs full of secrets that it cannot tell,
And leafy litanies on the humid air
Intone themselves, and on the tree-trunks
bare

The scarlet lichen writes her rubrics well. The cypress-knees take on them marvellous shapes

Of pygmy nuns, gnomes, goblins, witches, fays,

The vigorous vine the withered gum-tree drapes,

Across the oozy ground the rabbit plays, The moccasin to jungle depths escapes, And through the gloom the wild deer shyly gaze.

RESERVE

THE sea tells something, but it tells not all That rests within its bosom broad and deep; The psalming winds that o'er the oceau sweep

From compass point to compass point may call,

Nor half their music unto earth let fall;
In far, ethereal spheres night knows to keep
Fair stars whose rays to mortals never creep,
And day uncounted secrets holds in thrall.
He that is strong is stronger if he wear
Something of self beyond all human clasp, —
An inner self, behind unlifted folds

Of life, which men can touch not nor lay bare:

Thus great in what he gives the world to grasp,

Is greater still in that which he withholds.

She braves; the knowledge in her patient eyes

Of all that love bestows and love denies,
As writ in every woman's horoscope!
She lives, her heart-beats given to others'
needs,

Her hands, to lift for others on the way
The burdens which their weariness forsook.
She dies, an uncrowned doer of great deeds.
Remembered? Yes, as is for one brief
day

The rose one leaves in some forgotten book.

EMBRYO

I FEEL a poem in my heart to-night, A still thing growing,

As if the darkness to the outer light
A song were owing:

A something strangely vague, and sweet, and sad,

Fair, fragile, slender;
Not tearful, yet not daring to be glad,
And oh, so tender!

It may not reach the outer world at all,
Despite its growing;

Upon a poem-bud such cold winds fall
To blight its blowing.
But, oh, whatever may the thing betide,
Free life or fetter,

My heart, just to have held it till it died,
Will be the better !

A GEORGIA VOLUNTEER

FAR up the lonely mountain-side

My wandering footsteps led;

The moss lay thick beneath my feet,
The pine sighed overhead.
The trace of a dismantled fort
Lay in the forest nave,
And in the shadow near my path
I saw a soldier's grave.

The bramble wrestled with the weed
Upon the lowly mound;-
The simple head-board, rudely writ,
Had rotted to the ground;
I raised it with a reverent hand,
From dust its words to clear,
But time had blotted all but these
"A Georgia Volunteer ! "