I sometimes dream their pleasant smiles
Still on me sweetly fall,

Their tones of love I faintly hear
My name in sadness call.
I know that they are happy,
With their angel-plumage on,
But my heart is very desolate,
To think that they are gone.

-Park Benjamin.

STANZAS FROM "THE FOURTH IN OREGON."

The grass is green on Bunker Hill,
The waters sweet in Brandywine;
The sword sleeps in the scabbard still,
The farmer keeps his flock and vine;
Then who would mar the scene today
With vaunt of battle-field or fray?

Aye, wise and great was Washington,
And brave the men of Bunker Hill;
Most brave and worthy every one,
In work and faith and fearless will
And brave endeavor for the right,
Until yon stars burst through their night.

Aye, wise and good was Washington.
Yet when he laid his sword aside,
The bravest deed yet done was done.
And when in stately strength and pride
He took the plow and turned the mold
He wrote God's autograph in gold.

He wrought the fabled fleece of gold
In priceless victories of peace,
With plowshare set in mother mold;
Then gathering the golden fleece
About his manly, martial breast,
This farmer laid him down to rest.

-Miller.

(Permission of the author, Whitaker & Ray-Wiggin Co., Publishers.)

THE DAFFODILS.

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beside the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay;
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee;-
A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company;

I gazed, and gazed, but little thought
What wealth that show to me had brought.

For oft when on my couch I lie,
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

-Wordsworth.

CALIFORNIA POPPY.

The golden poppy is God's gold,

The gold that lifts, nor weighs us down,
The gold that knows no miser's hold,
The gold that banks not in the town,
But singing, laughing, freely spills
Its hoard far up the happy hills;
Far up, far down, at every turn,-

What beggar has not gold to burn!

-Miller.

(Permission of the author, Whitaker & Ray-Wiggin Co., Publishers.)

IS IT WORTH WHILE?

Is it worth while that we jostle a brother
Bearing his load on the rough road of life?
Is it worth while that we jeer at each other
In blackness of heart?-that we war to the knife?
God pity us all in our pitiful strife.

God pity us all as we jostle each other;

God pity us all for the triumphs we feel

When a fellow goes down; poor, heart-broken brother, Pierced to the heart; words are keener than steel, And mightier far for woe or for weal.

Were it not well in this brief little journey,
On over the isthmus, down into the tide,
That we give him a fish instead of a serpent,
Ere folding the hands to be and abide
For ever and aye in dust at his side?

Look at the roses saluting each other;

Look at the herds all at peace on the plainMan, and man only, makes war on his brother, And dotes in his heart on his peril and painShamed by the brutes that go down on the plain.

Why should we envy a moment of pleasure

Some poor fellow-mortal has wrung from it all? Oh! could you look into life's broken measureLook at the dregs-at the wormwood and gallLook at his heart hung with crape like a pall

Look at the skeletons down by his hearthstone-
Look at his cares in their merciless sway,-
I know you would go and say tenderly, lowly,
Brother, my brother, for aye and a day,-
Lo! Lethe is washing the blackness away.
-Miller.

(Permission of the author, Whitaker & Ray-Wiggin Co., Publishers.)

THE WORLD'S WANDERERS.
Tell me, thou star, whose wings of light
Speed thee in thy fiery flight,

In what cavern of the night
Will thy pinions close now?

Tell me, moon, thou pale and gray
Pilgrim of heaven's homeless way,
In what depth of night or day
Seekest thou repose now?

Weary wind, who wanderest
Like the world's rejected guest,
Hast thou still some secret nest

On the tree or billow?

-Shelley.

LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG SPEECH.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting-place of those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate-we cannot consecrate-we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work that they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.

THE PRIMROSE OF THE ROCK.

The flowers, still faithful to the stems,
Their fellowship renew;

The stems are faithful to the root,
That worketh out of view;

And to the rock the root adheres,
In every fibre true.

Close clings to earth the living rock,
Though threatening still to fall;
The earth is constant to her sphere,
And God upholds them all;

So blooms this lonely plant, nor dreads

Her annual funeral.

-Wordsworth.

SONG OF THE OUT O' DOORS.

Come with me, O you world-weary, to the haunts of thrush

and veery,

To the cedar's dim cathedral and the palace of the pine;

Let the soul within you capture something of the wildwood rapture,

Something of the epic passion of that harmony divine!

Down the pathway let us follow through the hemlocks to the hollow,

To the woven, vine-wound thickets in the twilight vague and old,

While the streamlet winding after is a trail of silver laughter,
And the boughs above hint softly of the melodies they hold.
Through the forest, never caring what the way our feet are
faring,

We shall hear the wild birds' revel in the labyrinth of Tune,
And on mossy carpets tarry in His temples cool and airy,
Hung with silence and the splendid, amber tapestry of noon.
Leave the hard heart of the city, with its poverty of pity,
Leave the folly and the fashion wearing out the faith of men,
Breathe the breath of life blown over upland meadows white
with clover,

And with childhood's clearer vision see the face of God again!
-Herbert Bashford.

(From "At the Shrine of Ray-Wiggin Co.

Song." Copyright by Whitaker &
Permission of author.)