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JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

[Born in Boston in 1819; Professor of Modern Languages in Harvard College. A writer of critical and other prose works, as well as of poetry. His serious poems have secured a large, and deserved a not inconsiderable, measure of admiration; but his humorous Biglow Papers, written in Yankee dialect, seem more likely to live with a genuine life than anything else from his pen].

SUMMER STORM.

UNTREMULOUS in the river clear,

Towards the sky's image, hangs the imaged bridge;
So still the air that I can hear
The slender clarion of the unseen midge.

Out of the stillness, with a gathering creep,
Like rising wind in leaves, which now decreases,
Now lulls, now swells, and all the while increases,
The huddling trample of a drove of sheep
Tilts the loose planks, and then as gradually ceases
In dust on the other side; life's emblem deep,
A confused noise between two silences,
Finding at last in dust precarious peace.
On the wide marsh the purple-blossomed grasses
Soak up the sunshine; sleeps the brimming tide,
Save when the wedge-shaped wake in silence passes
Of some slow water-rat, whose sinuous glide

Wavers the long green sedge's shade from side to side;

But up the west, like a rock-shivered surge,

Climbs a great cloud edged with sun-whitened spray; Huge whirls of foam boil toppling o'er its verge, And falling still it seems, and yet it climbs alway.

Suddenly all the sky is hid

As with the shutting of a lid.
One by one great drops are falling
Doubtful and slow;

Down the pane they are crookedly crawling,
And the wind breathes low.

Slowly the circles widen on the river,

Widen and mingle, one and all;

Here and there the slenderer flowers shiver,
Struck by an icy rain-drop's fall.

Now on the hills I hear the thunder mutter,
The wind is gathering in the west;
The upturned leaves first whiten and flutter,
Then droop to a fitful rest;

Up from the stream with sluggish flap
Struggles the gull and floats away;
Nearer and nearer rolls the thunder-clap,—
We shall not see the sun go down to-day,
Now leaps the wind on the sleepy marsh,
And tramples the grass with terrified feet;
The startled river turns leaden and harsh.

You can hear the quick heart of the tempest beat.

Look! look! that livid flash!

And instantly follows the rattling thunder,
As if some cloud-crag, split asunder,

Fell, splintering with a ruinous crash,

On the Earth, which crouches in silence under;
And now a solid grey wall of rain

Shuts off the landscape, mile by mile.

For a breath's space I see the blue wood again, And, ere the next heart-beat, the wind-hurled pile, That seemed but now a league aloof,

Bursts crackling o'er the sun-parched roof. Against the windows the storm comes dashing, Through tattered foliage the hail tears crashing, The blue lightning flashes,

The rapid hail clashes,

The white waves are tumbling,
And, in one baffled roar,
Like the toothless sea mumbling
A rock-bristled shore,
The thunder is rumbling

And crashing and crumbling,

Will silence return never more?

Hush! Still as death,

The tempest holds his breath,

As from a sudden will;

The rain stops short, but from the eaves

You see it drop, and hear it from the leaves. All is so bodingly still;

Again, now, now, again

Plashes the rain in heavy gouts,

The crinkled lightning

Seems ever brightening,
And loud and long

Again the thunder shouts

His battle-song,-
One quivering flash,

One wildering crash,

Followed by silence dead and dull,
As if the cloud, let go,

Leapt bodily below

To whelm the earth in one mad overthrow,
And then a total lull.

Gone, gone, so soon!

No more my half-crazed fancy there
Can shape a giant in the air,
No more I see his streaming hair,
The writhing portent of his form ;-
The pale and quiet Moon

Makes her calm forehead bare,
And the last fragments of the storm,
Like shattered rigging from a fight at sea,
Silent and few, are drifting over me.

A PRAYER.

GOD! do not let my loved-one die,
But rather wait until the time
That I am grown in purity

Enough to enter thy pure clime
Then take me, I will gladly go,
So that my love remain below!

Y

Oh let her stay! She is by birth

What I through death must learn to be.

We need her more on our poor earth

Than Thou canst need in heaven with Thee:

She hath her wings already; I

Must burst this earth-shell ere I fly.

Then, God, take me! We shall be near,
More near than ever, each to each:
Her angel ears will find more clear
My heavenly than my earthly speech;
And still, as I draw nigh to Thee,
Her soul and mine shall closer be.

THE HERITAGE.

THE rich man's son inherits lands,
And piles of brick, and stone, and gold,

And he inherits soft white hands,

And tender flesh that fears the cold,
Nor dares to wear a garment old;

A heritage, it seems to me,
One scarce would wish to hold in fee.

The rich man's son inherits cares;

The bank may break, the factory burn,
A breath may burst his bubble shares,
And soft white hands could hardly earn
A living that would serve his turn;
A heritage, it seems to me,
One scarce would wish to hold in fee.

The rich man's son inherits wants,
His stomach craves for dainty fare;
With sated heart, he hears the pants
Of toiling hinds with brown arms bare,
And wearies in his easy chair;

A heritage, it seems to me,

One scarce would wish to hold in fee.

What doth the poor man's son inherit?
Stout muscles and a sinewy heart,
A hardy frame, a hardier spirit ;
King of two hands, he does his part
In every useful toil and art;
A heritage, it seems to me,
A king might wish to hold in fee.

What doth the poor man's son inherit?
Wishes o'erjoyed with humble things,
A rank adjudged by 'toil-won merit,
Content that from employment springs,
A heart that in his labour sings;

A heritage, it seems to me,
A king might wish to hold in fee.

What doth the poor man's son inherit?
A patience learned of being poor,
Courage, if sorrow come, to bear it,
A fellow-feeling that is sure

To make the outcast bless his door;

A heritage, it seems to me,
A king might wish to hold in fee.

O rich man's son! there is a toil
That with all others level stands ;
Large charity doth never soil,

But only whiten, soft white hands,This is the best crop from thy lands; A heritage, it seems to be,

Worth being rich to hold in fee.

O poor man's son! scorn not thy state;
There is worse weariness than thine,

In merely being rich and great;
Toil only gives the soul to shine,

And makes rest fragrant and benign;

A heritage, it seems to me,
Worth being poor to hold in fee.

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