The farm boy, as careless he follows the harrow O’er lowlands which quicken and ripen the maize, Reads oft in some token of stone,--axe or arrow, The wars and the loves of unchronicled days. Then steals on the air with thy murmuring numbers A moan of lament for a race and its lore,-- A sigh for yon chieftain forgotten, who slumbers Beneath the lone mound on thy emerald shore. IMMORTAL BIRDSONG. What though mine ear hath never heard The wing’d voice of the sky? Nor listened to the love-lorn bird Whose plaints in darkness die? The poets improvise for me Lark-notes that never fail, And make more sweet than sound can be The song of nightingale. From rapt Alastor’s lyric leaves Joy’s flying carol springs! On darkling pinion sorrow grieves When Adonais sings. I list the lavrock warbling clear In birks of bonny Doon; The bulbul’s swooning voice I hear, Beneath the Persian moon. I hear across the centuries What Philomela sung, In Attic groves, to Sophocles, When Poesie was young. HINCHMAN’S MILL. Lonely by Miami stream, Gray in twilight’s fading beam, Spectral, desolate and still, Smitten by the storms of years, Ah! how changed to me appears Yonder long-deserted mill. While the ruin I behold, Mossy roof and gable old, Shadowy mid obscuring trees, Memory’s vision, quick and true, Time’s long vista gazing through, Unseen pictures dimly sees. Sees upon the garner floor Wheat and maize in golden store,-- Powdery whiteness everywhere,-- Sees a miller short and stout Whistling cheerfully about, Making merry with his care. Pleased, he listens to the whirr Of the swift-revolving burr, Deeming brief each busy hour; Like a stream of finest snow, Sifting to the bin below, Fall the tiny flakes of flour. Once my childish feet were led Down some furtive way of dread, Through yon broken floor to peer, Where the fearful waters drift In a current dark and swift, Flying from the angry weir. Once, with timid step and soft, Stealthily I climbed aloft, Up and up the highest stair;-- Iron cogs were rumbling round, Every vague and awful sound Mocked and mumbled at me there. Wonder if those wheels remain, And would frighten me again? Wonder if the miller’s dead? Wonder if his ghost at night Haunts the stairs, a phantom white? Walks the loft with hollow tread? Spectral, desolate and still, Stands the solitary mill, Close beside the gliding stream: Darkness overtakes the sun, Suddenly the day is done, And of Time and Death I dream. VICTOR.