Out in the fields one summer night
We were together, half afraid

Of the corn-leaves' rustling, and of the shade
Of the high hills, stretching so still and far,-
Loitering till after the low little light

Of the candle shone through the open door,
And over the haystack's pointed top,

All of a tremble and ready to drop,

The first half-hour, the great yellow star,
That we, with staring, ignorant eyes,
Had often and often watched to see
Propped and held in its place in the skies

By the fork of a tall red mulberry-tree,

Which close in the edge of our flaxtree grew,—
Dead at the top,-just one branch full
Of leaves, notched round, and lined with wool,
From which it tenderly shook the dew

Over our heads, when we came to play
In its hand-breath of shadow, day after day.
Afraid to go home, sir; for one of us bore
A nest full of speckled and thin-shelled eggs,-
The other, a bird, held fast by the legs,
Not so big as a straw of wheat:

The berries we gave her she wouldn't eat,
But cried and cried, till we held her bill,

So slim and shining, to keep her still.

For Memorizing

Listen closer.

When you have done

With woods and cornfields and grazing herds, A lady, the loveliest ever the sun

Looked down upon you must paint for me:

Oh, if I could only make you see

The clear blue eyes, the tender smile,

The sovereign sweetness, the gentle grace,
The woman soul, and the angel's face
That are beaming on me all the while,
I need not speak these foolish words:

Yet one word tells you all I would say,-
She is my mother: you will agree

That all the rest may be thrown away.

Two little urchins at her knee

You must paint, sir: one like me,

The other with a clearer brow

And the light of his adventurous eyes
Flashing with boldest enterprise:

At ten years old he went to sea,

God knoweth if he be living now,

He sailed in the good ship Commodore,
Nobody ever crossed her track

To bring us news, and she never came back.
Ah, it is twenty long years and more
Since that old ship went out of the bay

With my great-hearted brother on her deck:
I watched him till he shrank to a speck,
And his face was toward me all the way.

For Memorizing

AN ORDER FOR A PICTURE.

Oh, good painter, tell me true,

Has your hand the cunning to draw
Shapes of things that you never saw?
Aye? Well, here is an order for you.
Woods and corn fields, a

little brown,-
The picture must not be overbright,-

Yet all in the golden and gracious light
Of a cloud, when the summer sun is down.

Away and alway, night and morn,
Woods upon woods, with fields of corn

Lying between them, not quite sere,
And not in the full, thick, leafy bloom,
When the wind can hardly find breathing-room
Under the tassels,-cattle near,
Biting shorter the short green grass,
And a hedge of sumach and sassafras,

With bluebirds twittering all around,

(Ah, good painter, you can't paint sound!)— These, and the house where I was born,

Low and little, and black and old,

With children, many as it can hold,
All at the windows open wide,—
Heads and shoulders clear outside,
And fair young faces all ablush:

Perhaps you have seen, some day,

Roses crowding the self-same way,
Out of a wilding, wayside bush.

For Memorizing

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

And our hearts though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating

Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,

In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act-act in the living present!

Heart within, and God o'erhead.

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

-Longfellow.

For Memorizing

The path that has once been trod
Is never so rough to the feet;
And the lesson we once have learned
Is never so hard to repeat.
Though sorrowful tears must fall,

And the heart to its depths be driven
With storm and tempest, we need them all

To render us meet for Heaven.

-Josephine Pollard.

A PSALM OF LIFE.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Finds us farther than today.