1856. Sleep, soldiers! still in honored rest The loving are the daring. TH THE QUAKER WIDOW. HEE finds me in the garden, Hannah,-come in! "Tis kind of thee To wait until the Friends were gone, who came to comfort me. The still and quiet company a peace may give, indeed, But blessed is the single heart that comes to us at need. Come, sit thee down! Here is the bench where Benjamin would sit I think he loved the spring: not that he cared for flowers: most men He was but seventy-five; I did not think to lay him yet We've lived together fifty years: it seems but one long day, I mind (for I can tell thee now) how hard it was to know Then she was still: they sat awhile: at last she spoke again, "The Lord incline thee to the right!" and "Thou shalt have him, Jane!" My father said. I cried. Indeed, 'twas not the least of shocks, For Benjamin was Hicksite, and father Orthodox. I thought of this ten years ago, when daughter Ruth we lost: Her husband's of the world, and yet I could not see her crossed. She wears, thee knows, the gayest gowns, she hears a hireling priest— Perhaps she'll wear a plainer dress when she's as old as I,- 1860. My wedding-gown was ashen silk, too simple for my taste; How strange it seemed to sit with him upon the women's side! I used to blush when he came near, but then I showed no sign; As home we rode, I saw no fields look half so green as ours; I see, as plain as thee sits there, the wedding-dinner spread: It is not right to wish for death; the Lord disposes best. Eusebius never cared to farm,-'twas not his call, in truth, But Ruth is still a Friend at heart; she keeps the simple tongue, I once heard Jesse Kersey say, a spirit clothed with grace, Thee mustn't be too hard on Ruth: she's anxious I should go, PEACH-BLOSSOM. IGHTLY the hoar-frost freezes NIG The young grass of the field, The buds of the oak unsealed: A breath, and the sweet buds ope! A day, and the orchards bare, With a scarf the Spring at the door Or a stranded cloud of the morn! What spirit of Persia cometh And saith to the buds, "Unclose!" Ere ever the first bee hummeth, Or woodland wild flower blows? What prescient soul in the sod Garlands each barren rod With fringes of bloom that speak Of the baby's tender breast, And the boy's pure lip unpressed, And the pink of the maiden's cheek? Prophesies as of old, While the apple's blood is cold, Remembering the snow. Afar, through the mellow hazes Where the dreams of June are stayed, The hills, in their vanishing mazes, On the fields of Delaware! That here alone are ours, Pain, Doubt, and Death are over! Who thinks, to-day, of toil? The gardens of wine and oil. In the orchards, and still delays? What fool, to-day, would rather The fruit these boughs foretell? Light shed and sweetness blown, 1877. I THE GROTTOES OF CAPRI. [By-Ways of Europe. 1869.] HAVE purposely left the Blue Grotto to the last, as for me it was subordinate in interest to almost all else that I saw. Still it was part of the inevitable programme. One calm day we had spent in the trip to Anacapri, and another, at this season, was not to be immediately expected. Nevertheless, when we arose on the second morning afterwards, the palm-leaves hung silent, the olives twinkled without motion, and the southern sea glimmered with the veiled light of a calm. Vesuvius had but a single peaceful plume of smoke, the snows of the Apulian Mountains gleamed rosily behind his cone, and the fair headland of Sorrento shone in those soft, elusive, aerial grays which must be the despair of a painter. It was a day for the Blue Grotto, and so we descended to the marina. On the strand, girls with disordered hair and beautiful teeth offered shells and coral. We found mariners readily, and, after a little hesitation, pushed off in a large boat, leaving a little one to follow. The tra montana had left a faint swell behind it, but four oars carried us at a lively speed along the shore. We passed the ruins of the baths of Tiberius (the Palazzo a' Mare), and then slid into the purple shadows of the cliffs, which rose in a sheer wall five hundred feet above the water. Two men sat on a rock, fishing with poles; and the boats further off the shore were sinking their nets, the ends of which were buoyed up with gourds. Pulling along in the shadows, in less than half an hour we saw the tower of Damecuta shining aloft, above a slope of olives which descended steeply to the sea. Here, under a rough, round bastion of masonry, was the entrance to the Blue Grotto. man. We were now transshipped to the little shell of a boat which had followed us. The swell rolled rather heavily into the mouth of the cave, and the adventure seemed a little perilous, had the boatmen been less experienced. We lay flat in the bottom; the oars were taken in, and we had just reached the entrance, when a high wave, rolling up, threatened to dash us against the iron portals. "Look out!" cried the old The young sailor held the boat back with his hands, while the wave rolled under us into the darkness beyond; then, seizing the moment, we shot in after it, and were safe under the expanding roof. At first, all was tolerably dark: I only saw that the water near the entrance was intensely and luminously blue. Gradually, as the eye grew accustomed to the obscurity, the irregular vault of the roof became visible, tinted by a faint reflection from the water. The effect increased the longer we remained; but the rock nowhere repeated the dazzling sapphire of the sea. It was rather a blue-gray, very beautiful, but far from presenting the effect given in the pictures sold at Naples. The silvery, starry radiance of foam or bubbles on the shining blue ground was the loveliest phenomenon of the grotto. To dip one's hand in the sea, and scatter the water, was to create sprays of wonderful, phosphorescent blossoms, jewels of the Sirens, flashing and vanishing garlands of the Undines. A chamber, and the commencement of a gallery leading somewhere,probably to the twelfth palace of Tiberius, on the headland of Damecuta, -were to be distinguished near the rear of the cavern. But rather than explore further mysteries, we watched our chance and shot out, after a full-throated wave, into the flood of white daylight. Keeping on our course around the island, we passed the point of Damecuta,-making a chord to the arc of the shore,-to the first battery, beyond which the Anacapri territory opened fairly to view. From the northern to the northwestern cape the coast sinks, like the side of an amphitheatre, in a succession of curving terraces, gray with the abundant olive. Two deep, winding ravines, like the wadies of Arabia, have been worn by the rainfall of thousands of years, until they have split the shore-wall down to the sea. |