“Well, well! but tell me what may be
  Within that precious load,
Which thou dost bear with such fine care
  Along the dusty road?

“Belike it is some present rare
  From friend in parting hour;
Perhaps, as prudent maidens wont,
  Thou tak’st with thee thy dower”

She drooped her head, and with her hand
  She gave a mournful wave: 
“Oh, do not jest, dear sir!—­it is
  Turf from my mother’s grave!”

I spoke no word:  we sat and wept
  By the road-side together;
No purer dew on that bright day
  Was dropped upon the heather.

JOHN STUART BLACKIE.

THE OLD SEXTON.

Nigh to a grave that was newly made,
Leaned a sexton old on his earth-worn spade;
His work was done, and he paused to wait
The funeral train at the open gate. 
A relic of bygone days was he,
And his locks were white as the foamy sea;
And these words came from his lips so thin: 
“I gather them in:  I gather them in.

“I gather them in! for man and boy,
Year after year of grief and joy,
I ’ve builded the houses that lie around,
In every nook of this burial ground;
Mother and daughter, father and son,
Come to my solitude, one by one: 
But come they strangers or come they kin—­
I gather them in, I gather them in.

“Many are with me, but still I’m alone,
I’m king of the dead—­and I make my throne
On a monument slab of marble cold;
And my sceptre of rule is the spade I hold: 
Come they from cottage or come they from hall,
Mankind are my subjects, all, all, all! 
Let them loiter in pleasure or toilfully spin—­
I gather them in, I gather them in.

“I gather them in, and their-final rest
Is here, down here, in earth’s dark breast!”
And the sexton ceased, for the funeral train
Wound mutely o’er that solemn plain! 
And I said to my heart, when time is told,
A mightier voice than that sexton’s old
Will sound o’er the last trump’s dreadful din—­
“I gather them in, I gather them in.”

PARK BENJAMIN.

THE FIRST SNOW-FALL.

The snow had begun in the gloaming,
  And busily all the night
Had been heaping field and highway
  With a silence deep and white. 
Every pine and fir and hemlock
  Wore ermine too dear for an earl,
And the poorest twig on the elm-tree
  Was ridged inch deep with pearl.

From sheds new-roofed with Carrara
  Came Chanticleer’s muffled crow. 
The stiff rails were softened to swan’s-down,
  And still fluttered down the snow.

I stood and watched by the window
  The noiseless work of the sky,
And the sudden flurries of snow-birds,
  Like brown leaves whirling by.

I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn
  Where a little headstone stood;
How the flakes were folding it gently,
  As did robins the babes in the wood.