So, to where the still lake glasses The misty mountain masses Rising dim and distant northward, And, with faint-drawn shadow pictures, Low shores, and dead pine spectres, Blends the skyward and the earthward, On she glided, overladen, With merry man and maiden Sending back their song and laughter,-- While, perchance, a phantom crew, In a ghostly birch canoe, Paddled dumb and swiftly after! And the bear on Ossipee Climbed the topmost crag to see The strange thing drifting under; And, through the haze of August, Passaconaway and Paugus Looked down in sleepy wonder. All the pines that o'er her hung In mimic sea-tones sung The song familiar to her; And the maples leaned to screen her, And the meadow-grass seemed greener, And the breeze more soft to woo her. The lone stream mystery-haunted, To her the freedom granted To scan its every feature, Till new and old were blended, And round them both extended The loving arms of Nature. Of these hills the little vessel Henceforth is part and parcel; And on Bearcamp shall her log Be kept, as if by George's Or Grand Menan, the surges Tossed her skipper through the fog. And I, who, half in sadness, Recall the morning gladness Of life, at evening time, By chance, onlooking idly, Apart from all so widely, Have set her voyage to rhyme. Dies now the gay persistence Of song and laugh, in distance; Alone with me remaining The stream, the quiet meadow, The hills in shine and shadow, The sombre pines complaining. And, musing here, I dream Of voyagers on a stream From whence is no returning, Under sealed orders going, Looking forward little knowing, Looking back with idle yearning. And I pray that every venture The port of peace may enter, That, safe from snag and fall And siren-haunted islet, And rock, the Unseen Pilot May guide us one and all. 1880. MY TRUST. A picture memory brings to me I look across the years and see Myself beside my mother's knee. I feel her gentle hand restrain My selfish moods, and know again A child's blind sense of wrong and pain. But wiser now, a man gray grown, My childhood's needs are better known, My mother's chastening love I own. Gray grown, but in our Father's sight A child still groping for the light To read His works and ways aright. I wait, in His good time to see That as my mother dealt with me So with His children dealeth He. I bow myself beneath His hand That pain itself was wisely planned I feel, and partly understand. The joy that comes in sorrow's guise, The sweet pains of self-sacrifice, I would not have them otherwise.