Strolling into the syphilitic wards, where, in the awful contemplation of their daily, piecemeal decay, the silent victims were stretched all day upon their cots; among the idiotic and the crazed; into the apartments of the aged poor, seeing, let us hope, blessed visions of life beyond these shambles; and drinking in, as we walked, the solemn but needful lesson of our own possibilities and the mutations of our nature, we stood at last among the graves of the almshouse dead--those who have escaped the dissecting-knife. Scattered about, with little stones and mounds here and there, under the occasional sullen green of cedars, a dead-cart and a spade sticking up as symbols, and the neglected river, deserted as the Styx, plashing against the low banks, we felt the sobering melancholy of the spot and made the prayer of "Give me neither poverty nor riches!" 1871. OLD ST. MARY'S. This is the river. Like Southampton water It enters broadly in the woody lands, As if to break a continent asunder, And sudden ceasing, lo! the city stands: St. Mary's--stretching forth its yellow hands Of beach, beneath the bluff where it commands In vision only; for the fields are green Above the pilgrims. Pleasant is the place; No ruin mars its immemorial face. As young as in virginity renewed, Its widow's sorrows gone without a trace, And tempting man to woo its solitude. The river loves it, and embraces still Its comely form with two small arms of bay, Whereon, of old, the Calvert's pinnace lay, The Dove--dear bird!--the olive in its bill, That to the Ark returned from every gale And found a haven by this sheltering hill.[4] Lo! all composed, the soft horizons lie Afloat upon the blueness of the coves, And sometimes in the mirage does the sky Seem to continue the dependent groves, And draw in the canoe that careless roves Among the stars repeated round the bow. Far off the larger sails go down the world, For nothing worldly sees St. Mary's now; The ancient windmills all their sails have furled, The standards of the Lords of Baltimore, And they, the Lords, have passed to their repose; And nothing sounds upon the pebbly shore Except thy hidden bell, Saint Inigo's. [Footnote 4: The Catholic settlers of Maryland had a ship called The Ark, and a pinnace called The Dove.] There in a wood the Jesuits' chapel stands Amongst the gravestones, in secluded calm. But, Sabbath days, the censer's healing balm, The Crucified with His extended hands, And music of the masses, draw the fold Back to His worship, as in days of old.