"Give me," she said, "the silver candlesticks On either side of the great crucifix.

God well may spare them on his errands sped,1 Or he can give you golden ones instead.”

Then spake Tritemius: "Even as thy word,
Woman, so be it! (Our most gracious Lord,
Who loveth mercy more than sacrifice,
Pardon me if a human soul I prize

Above the gifts upon his altar piled!)
Take what thou askest, and redeem thy child."

But his hand trembled as the holy alms 2
He placed within the beggar's eager palms;
And as she vanished down the linden shade,3
He bowed his head, and for forgiveness prayed.

So the day passed; and when the twilight came
He woke to find the chapel all aflame,
And, dumb with grateful wonder, to behold
Upon the altar candlesticks of gold!

IN the old days (a custom laid aside

With breeches and cocked hats) the people sent
Their wisest men to make the public laws.5

1 sped, sent quickly forth.

2 holy alms. Explain.

8 the linden shade: that is, the walk shaded by linden trees.

4 breeches: breeches.

that is, knee

5 In the old days. laws. Explain this quiet piece of satire.

And so, from a brown homestead, where the Sound1
Drinks the small tribute of the Mianas,

Waved over by the woods of Rippowams,
And hallowed by pure lives and tranquil deaths,
Stamford sent up to the councils of the State
Wisdom and grace in Abraham Davenport.

"Twas on a May-day of the far old year
Seventeen hundred eighty,2 that there fell
Over the bloom and sweet life of the spring,
Over the fresh earth and the heaven of noon,
A horror of great darkness, like the night
In day of which the Norland sagas tell,—
The Twilight of the Gods. The low-hung sky

1 Sound: that is, Long Island | changed, rejoiced in the sunshine, Sound.

and looked calmly over the night. 2 'Twas... eighty. The exact But at last, during one sunrise, a date was the 12th of May, 1780. wolf came, and began to howl at "On that day," say the historians, the sun. The sun did not seem to a remarkable darkness overspread heed him, but walked majestically all New England. In some sec- up the sky to her midday point; tions persons could not read com- then the wolf began to run after mon printed matter in the open her, and chased her down the sky air; barn-yard fowls went to roost, again to the low west. There the and cattle sought their accustomed sun opened her bright eye wide evening resorts; houses were lighted and turned round at bay; but the with candles, and nearly all out-of-wolf came close up to her, and doors work was suspended. The opened his mouth, and swallowed cause of the darkness has never her up. The earth shuddered, and been ascertained." the moon rose. Another wolf was 3 Norland sagas . Gods. By waiting for the moon, with wide Northern sagas are meant the prose jaws open; and while yet pale and poetic lore of the Northmen and young he too was devoured. (Norsemen), and in one of these The earth shuddered again; it occurs the following legend re- was covered with cold and darkspecting the Twilight of the Gods: ness. Confusion rioted in the "Odin watched the seasons as they darkness."

Was black with ominous clouds, save where its rim Was fringed with a dull glow, like that which climbs The crater's sides from the red hell below.

Birds ceased to sing, and all the barn-yard fowls Roosted; the cattle at the pasture bars

Lowed, and looked homeward; bats on leathern wings
Flitted abroad; the sounds of labor died;

Men prayed, and women wept; all ears grew sharp
To hear the doom-blast of the trumpet shatter
The black sky, that the dreadful face of Christ
Might look from the rent clouds, not as he looked
A loving guest at Bethany,' but stern

As Justice and inexorable Law.

Meanwhile in the old State House, dim as ghosts, Sat the lawgivers of Connecticut,

Trembling beneath their legislative robes.

3

"It is the Lord's Great Day! Let us adjourn,"4
Some said; and then, as if with one accord,
All eyes were turned to Abraham Davenport.
He rose, slow cleaving with his steady voice
The intolerable hush. "This well may be
The Day of Judgment which the world awaits;
But, be it so or not, I only know

My present duty, and my Lord's command
To occupy till he come. So at the post

1 guest at Bethany. What is jour, day), to postpone till another the reference?

2 State House. At Hartford.

day.

5 occupy, etc. In what part of

3 Lord's Great Day. Explain the New Testament does there the expression.

occur the injunction, "Occupy till

4 adjourn (ad, to, and French I come"?

Where he hath sent me in his providence,
I choose, for one, to meet him face to face, —
No faithless servant frightened from my task,
But ready when the Lord of the harvest calls;
And therefore, with all reverence, I would say,
Let God do his work, we will see to ours.
Bring in the candles." And they brought them in.

Then by the flaring lights the Speaker read, Albeit with husky voice and shaking hands, An act to amend an act to regulate

The shad and alewive1 fisheries.

Whereupon

Wisely and well spake Abraham Davenport,

Straight to the question, with no figures of speech

Save the ten Arab signs,2 yet not without

The shrewd dry humor natural to the man ;
His awe-struck colleagues listening all the while,
Between the pauses of his argument,

To hear the thunder of the wrath of God
Break from the hollow trumpet of the cloud.

3

And there he stands in memory to this day,
Erect, self-poised, a rugged face, half seen
Against the background of unnatural dark,
A witness to the ages as they pass,
That simple duty hath no place for fear.

1 alewive (a corruption of the 8 And there he stands, etc. A Indian name aloof), a species of very striking picture. What is the herring, moral that the poet draws? Of 2 the ten Arab signs. Give the what is Abraham Davenport signification witness"?

a

5. MAUD MULLER.

MAUD MULLER, on a summer's day,
Raked the meadow sweet with hay.

Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
Of simple beauty and rustic health.

Singing she wrought, and her merry glee
The mock-bird echoed from his tree.

But when she glanced to the far-off town,
White from its hill-slope looking down,

The sweet song died, and a vague unrest
And a nameless longing filled her breast, --
A wish, that she hardly dared to own,
For something better than she had known.

The Judge rode slowly down the lane,
Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane.

He drew his bridle in the shade
Of the apple-trees to greet the maid,

And ask a draught from the spring that flowed
Through the meadow, across the road.

She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up,
And filled for him her small tin cup,

And blushed as she gave it, looking down
On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.