Gone are the living, but the dead remain,

And not neglected; for a hand unseen,

Scattering its bounty, like a summer

rain,

Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green.

What burst of

How came they here?
Christian hate,
What persecution, merciless and
blind,

Drove o'er the sea- that desert desolate

These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind?

They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure,

Ghetto and Judenstrass, in mirk and mire ;

For in the background figures vague and vast

Of patriarchs and of prophets rose sublime,

And all the great traditions of the Past They saw reflected in the coming time.

And thus forever with reverted lock The mystic volume of the world thes read,

Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book,

Till life became a Legend of the Dead. But ah! what once has been shall be nd more !

The groaning earth in travail and in pain Brings forth its races, but does not re

store,

And the dead nations never rise again

OLIVER BASSELIN

THE ROPEWALK.

IN that building, long and low,
With its windows all a-row,

Like the port-holes of a hulk,
Human spiders spin and spin,
Backward down their threads so thin
Dropping, each a hempen bulk.
At the end, an open door;
Squares of sunshine on the floor

Light the long and dusky lane;
And the whirring of a wheel,
Dull and drowsy, makes me feel

All its spokes are in my brain.
As the spinners to the end
Downward go and reascend,

Gleam the long threads in the sun; While within this brain of mine Cobwebs brighter and more fine

By the busy wheel are spun. Two fair maidens in a swing, Like white doves upon the wing,

First before my vision pass; Laughing, as their gentle hands Closely clasp the twisted strands,

At their shadow on the grass. Then a booth of mountebanks, With its smell of tan and planks, And a girl poised high in air On a cord, in spangled dress, With a faded loveliness,

And a weary look of care,

229

Then a homestead among farms,
And a woman with bare arms

Drawing water from a well;
As the bucket mounts apace,
With it mounts her own fair face,

As at some magician's spell.
Then an old man in a tower,
Ringing loud the noontide hour,
While the rope coils round and round
Like a serpent at his feet,
And again, in swift retreat,

Nearly lifts him from the ground.
Then within a prison-yard,
Faces fixed, and stern, and hard,
Laughter and indecent mirth;
Ah! it is the gallows-tree!
Breath of Christian charity,

Blow, and sweep it from the earth! Then a school-boy, with his kite Gleaming in a sky of light,

And an eager, upward look; Steeds pursued through lane and field; Fowlers with their snares concealed; And an angler by a brook.

Ships rejoicing in the breeze,
Wrecks that float o'er unknown seas,
Anchors dragged through faithless
sand;
Sea-fog drifting overhead,
And, with lessening line and lead,
Sailors feeling for the land.
All these scenes do I behold,
These, and many left untold,

In that building long and low; While the wheel goes round and round, With a drowsy, dreamy sound,

And the spinners backward go.

THE GOLDEN MILE-STONE. LEAFLESS are the trees; their purple branches

Spread themselves abroad, like reefs of coral, Rising silent

In the Red Sea of the winter sunset. From the hundred chimneys of the village,

Like the Afreet in the Arabian story,
Smoky columns

Tower aloft into the air of amber.