MAUD MULLER, on a summer's day,
                    Raked the meadow sweet with hay.

                    Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
                    Of simple beauty and rustic health.

                    Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee
                    The mock-bird echoed from his tree.

                    But when she glanced to the far-off town,
                    White from its hill-slope looking down,

                    The sweet song died, and a vague unrest
                    And a nameless longing filled her breast,

                    A wish, that she hardly dared to own,
                    For something better than she had known.

                    The Judge rode slowly down the lane,
                    Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane.

                    He drew his bridle in the shade
                    Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid,

                    And ask a draught from the spring that flowed
                    Through the meadow across the road.

                    She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up,
                    And filled for him her small tin cup,

                    And blushed as she gave it, looking down
                    On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.

                    "Thanks!" said the Judge; "a sweeter draught
                    From a fairer hand was never quaffed."

                    He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees,
                    Of the singing birds and the humming bees;

                    Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether
                    The cloud in the west would bring foul weather.

                    And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown,
                    And her graceful ankles bare and brown;

                    And listened, while a pleased surprise
                    Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.

                    At last, like one who for delay
                    Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away.

                    Maud Muller looked and sighed: "Ah me!
                    That I the Judge's bride might be!

                    "He would dress me up in silks so fine,
                    And praise and toast me at his wine.

                    "My father should wear a broadcloth coat;
                    My brother should sail a painted boat.

                    "I'd dress my mother so grand and gay,
                    And the baby should have a new toy each day.

                    "And I'd feed the hungry and clothe the poor
                    And all should bless me who left our door."

                    The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill,
                    And saw Maud Muller standing still.

                    "A form more fair, a face more sweet
                    Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet.

                    "And her modest answer and graceful air
                    Show her wise and good as she is fair.

                    "Would she were mine, and I to-day,
                    Like her, a harvester of hay

                    "No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs,
                    Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,

                    "But low of cattle and song of birds,
                    And health and quiet and loving words."

                    But he thought of his sisters, proud and cold,
                    And his mother, vain of her rank and gold.

                    So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,
                    And Maud was left in the field alone.

                    But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,
                    When he hummed in court an old love-tune;

                    And the young girl mused beside the well,
                    Till the rain on the unraked clover,

                    He wedded a wife of richest dower,
                    Who lived for fashion, as he for power.

                    Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow,
                    He watched a picture come and go;

                    And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes
                    Looked out in their innocent surprise.

                    Oft, when the wine in his glass was red,
                    He longed for the wayside well instead;

                    And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms
                    To dream of meadows and clover-blooms.

                    And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain,
                    "Ah, that I were free again!

                    "Free as when I rode that day,
                    Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay."

                    She wedded a man unlearned and poor,
                    And many children played round her door.

                    But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain,
                    Left their traces on heart and brain.

                    And oft, when the summer sun shone hot
                    On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot,

                    And she heard the little spring brook fall
                    Over the roadside, through the wall;

                    In the shade of the apple-tree again
                    She saw a rider draw his rein.

                    And gazing down with timid grace
                    She felt his pleased eyes read her face.

                    Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls
                    Stretched away into stately halls;

                    The weary wheel to a spinnet turned,
                    The tallow candle an astral burned,

                    And for him who sat by the chimney lug,
                    Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug,

                    A manly form at her side she saw,
                    And joy was duty and love was law.

                    Then she took up her burden of life again,
                    Saying only, "it might have been."

                    Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
                    For rich repiner and household drudge!

                    God pity them both! and pity us all,
                    Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.

                    For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
                    The saddest are these: "It might have been!"

                    Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies
                    Deeply buried from human eyes;

                    And, in the hereafter, angels may
                    Roll the stone from its grave away!

               No more these simple flowers belong
                 To Scottish maid and lover;
               Sown in the common soil of song,
                 They bloom the wide world over.

               In smiles and tears, in sun and showers,
                 The minstrel and the heather,
               The deathless singer and the flowers
                 He sang of five together.

               Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns!
                 The moorland flower and peasant!
               How, at their mention, memory turns
                 Her pages old and pleasant!

               The gray sky wears again its gold
                 And purple of adorning,
               And manhood's noonday shadows hold
                 The dews of boyhood's morning.

               The dews that washed the dust and soil
                 From off the wings of pleasure,
               The sky, that flecked the ground of toil
                 With golden threads of leisure.

               I call to mind the summer day,
                 The early harvest mowing,
               The sky with sun and clouds at play,
                 And flowers with breezes blowing.

               I hear the blackbird in the corn,
                 The locust in the haying;
               And, like the fabled hunter's horn,
                 Old tunes my heart is playing.

               How oft that day, with fond delay,
                 I sought the maple's shadow,
               And sang with Burns the hours away,
                 Forgetful of the meadow!

               Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead
                 I heard the squirrels leaping;
               The good dog listened while I read,
                 And wagged his tail in keeping.

               I watched him while in sportive mood
                 I read "The Two Dogs" story,
               And half believed he understood
                 The poet's allegory.

               Sweet day, sweet songs!—The golden hours
                 Grew brighter for that singing,
               From brook and bird and meadow flowers
                 A dearer welcome bringing.

               New light on home-seen Nature beamed,
                 New glory over Woman;
               And daily life and duty seemed
                 No longer poor and common.

               I woke to find the simple truth
                 Of fact and feeling better
               Than all the dreams that held my youth
                 A still repining debtor:

               That Nature gives her handmaid, Art,
                 The themes of sweet discoursing;
               The tender idyls of the heart
                 In every tongue rehearsing.

               Why dream of lands of gold and pearl,
                 Of loving knight and lady,
               When farmer boy and barefoot girl
                 Were wandering there already?

               I saw through all familiar things
                 The romance underlying;
               The joys and griefs that plume the wings
                 Of Fancy skyward flying.

               I saw the same blithe day return,
                 The same sweet fall of even,
               That rose on wooded Craigie-burn,
                 And sank on crystal Devon.

               I matched with Scotland's heathery hills
                 The sweet-brier and the clover;
               With Ayr and Doon, my native rills,
                 Their wood-hymns chanting over.

               O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen,
                 I saw the Man uprising;
               No longer common or unclean
                 The child of God's baptizing!

               With clearer eyes I saw the worth
                 Of life among the lowly;
               The Bible at his Cotter's hearth
                 Had made my own more holy.

               And if at times an evil strain,
                 To lawless love appealing,
               Broke in upon the sweet refrain
                 Of pure and healthful feeling,

               It died upon the eye and ear,
                 No inward answer gaining;
               No heart had I to see or hear
                 The discord and the staining.

               Let those who never erred forget
                 His worth, in vain bewailings;
               Sweet Soul of Song!—I own my debt
                 Uncancelled by his failings!

               Lament who will the ribald line
                 Which tells his lapse from duty,
               How kissed the maddening lips of wine
                 Or wanton ones of beauty;

               But think, while falls that shade between
                 The erring one and Heaven,
               That he who loved like Magdalen,
                 Like her may be forgiven.

               Not his the song whose thunderous chime
                 Eternal echoes render,—
               The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme,
                 And Milton's starry splendor!

               But who his human heart has laid
                 To Nature's bosom nearer?
               Who sweetened toil like him, or paid
                 To love a tribute dearer?

               Through all his tuneful art, how strong
                 The human feeling gushes!
               The very moonlight of his song
                 Is warm with smiles and blushes!

               Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time,
                 So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry;
               Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme,
                 But spare his Highland Mary

                    "O Fox a knight like Bayard,
                     Without reproach or fear;
                    My light glove on his casque of steel,
                     My love-knot on his spear!

                    "O for the white plume floating
                     Sad Zutphen's field above,
                    The lion heart in battle,
                     The woman's heart in love!

                    "O that man once more were manly,
                     Woman's pride, and not her scorn
                    That once more the pale young mother
                     Dared to boast 'a man is born'!

                    "But, now life's slumberous current
                     No sun-bowed cascade wakes;
                    No tall, heroic manhood
                     The level dulness breaks.

                    "O for a knight like Bayard,
                     Without reproach or fear!
                    My light glove on his casque of steel
                     My love-knot on his spear!"

                    Then I said, my own heart throbbing
                     To the time her proud pulse beat,
                    "Life hath its regal natures yet,—
                     True, tender, brave, and sweet!

                    "Smile not, fair unbeliever!
                     One man, at least, I know,
                    Who might wear the crest of Bayard
                     Or Sydney's plume of snow.

                    "Once, when over purple mountains
                     Died away the Grecian sun,
                    And the far Cyllenian ranges
                     Paled and darkened, one by one,—

                    "Fell the Turk, a bolt of thunder,
                     Cleaving all the quiet sky,
                    And against his sharp steel lightnings
                     Stood the Suliote but to die.

                    "Woe for the weak and halting!
                     The crescent blazed behind
                    A curving line of sabres
                     Like fire before the wind!

                    "Last to fly, and first to rally,
                     Rode he of whom I speak,
                    When, groaning in his bridle path,
                     Sank down like a wounded Greek.

                    "With the rich Albanian costume
                     Wet with many a ghastly stain,
                    Gazing on earth and sky as one
                     Who might not gaze again!

                    "He looked forward to the mountains,
                     Back on foes that never spare,
                    Then flung him from his saddle,
                     And place the stranger there.

                    "'Allah! hu!'  Through flashing sabres,
                     Through a stormy hail of lead,
                    The good Thessalian charger
                     Up the slopes of olives sped.

                    "Hot spurred the turbaned riders;
                     He almost felt their breath,
                    Where a mountain stream rolled darkly down
                     Between the hills and death.

                    "One brave and manful struggle,—
                     He gained the solid land,
                    And the cover of the mountains,
                     And the carbines of his band!"

                    "It was very great and noble,"
                     Said the moist-eyed listener then,
                    "But one brave deed makes no hero;
                     Tell me what he since hath been!"

                    "Still a brave and generous manhood,
                     Still and honor without stain,
                    In the prison of the Kaiser,
                     By the barricades of Seine.

                    "But dream not helm and harness
                     The sign of valor true;
                    Peace bath higher tests of manhood
                     Than battle ever knew.

                    "Wouldst know him now?  Behold him,
                     The Cadmus of the blind,
                    Giving the dumb lip language,
                     The idiot clay a mind.

                    "Walking his round of duty
                     Serenely day by day,
                    With the strong man's hand of labor
                     And childhood's heart of play.

                    "True as the knights of story,
                     Sir Lancelot and his peers,
                    Brave in his calm endurance
                     As they in tilt of spears.

                    "As waves in stillest waters,
                     As stars in noonday skies,
                    All that wakes to noble action
                     In his noon of calmness lies.

                    "Wherever outraged Nature
                     Asks word or action brave,
                    Wherever struggles labor,
                     Wherever groans a slave,—

                    "Wherever rise the peoples,
                     Wherever sinks a throne,
                    The throbbing heart of Freedom finds
                     An answer in his own.

                    "Knight of a better era,
                     Without reproach or fear!
                    Said I not well that Bayards
                     And Sidneys still are here?

               O friends! with whom my feet have trod
                  The quiet aisles of prayer,
               Glad witness to your zeal for God
                  And love of man I bear.

               I trace your lines of argument;
                  Your logic linked and strong
               I weigh as one who dreads dissent,
                  And fears a doubt as wrong.

               But still my human hands are weak
                  To hold your iron creeds;
               Against the words ye bid me speak
                  My heart within me pleads.

               Who fathoms the Eternal Thought?
                  Who talks of scheme and plan?
               The Lord is God!  He needeth not
                  The poor device of man.

               I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground
                  Ye tread with boldness shod:
               I dare not fix with mete and bound
                  The love and power of God.

               Ye praise His justice; even such
                  His pitying love I deem
               Ye seek a king; I fain would touch
                  The robe that hath no seam.

               Ye see the curse which overbroods
                  A world of pain and loss;
               I hear our Lord's beatitudes
                  And prayer upon the cross.

               The wrong that pains my soul below
                  I dare not throne above:
               I know not of His hate,—I know
                  His goodness and His love.

               I dimly guess from blessings known
                  Of greater out of sight,
               And, with the chastened Psalmist, own
                  His judgments too are right.

               I long for household voices gone,
                  For vanished smiles I long,
               But God bath led my dear ones on,
                  And He can do no wrong.

               I know not what the future hath
                  Of marvel or surprise,
               Assured alone that life and death
                  His mercy underlies.

               And if my heart and flesh are weak
                  To bear an untried pain,
               The bruised reed He will not break,
                  But strengthen and sustain.

               No offering of my own I have,
                  Nor works my faith to prove;
               I can but give the gifts He gave,
                  And plead His love for love.

               And so beside the Silent Sea
                  I wait the muffled oar;
               No harm from Him can come to me
                  On ocean or on shore.

               I know not where His islands lift
                  Their fronded palms in air;
               I only know I cannot drift
                  Beyond His love and care.

               O brothers! if my faith is vain,
                  If hopes like these betray,
               Pray for me that my feet may gain
                  The sure and safer way.

               And Thou, O Lord! by whom are seen
                  Thy creatures as they be,
               Forgive me if too close I lean
                  My human heart on Thee!

               Pipes of the misty moorlands
                 Voice of the glens and hills;
               The droning of the torrents,
                 The treble of the rills!
               Not the braes of broom and heather,
                 Nor the mountains dark with rain,
               Nor maiden bower, nor border tower,
                 Have heard your sweetest strain!

               Dear to the Lowland reaper,
                 And plaided mountaineer,—
               To the cottage and the castle
                 The Scottish pipes are dear;—
               Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch
                 O'er mountain, loch, and glade;
               But the sweetest of all music
                 The Pipes at Lucknow played.

               Day by day the Indian tiger
                 Louder yelled, and nearer crept;
               Round and round the jungle-serpent
                 Near and nearer circles swept.
               "Pray for rescue, wives and mothers,—
                 Pray to-day!" the soldier said;
               "To-morrow, death's between us
                 And the wrong and shame we dread."

               O, they listened, looked, and waited,
                 Till their hope became despair;
               And the sobs of low bewailing
                 Filled the pauses of their prayer.
               Then up spake a Scottish maiden,
                 With her ear unto the ground
               "Dinna ye hear it?—dinna ye hear it?
                 The pipes o' Havelock sound!"

               Hushed the wounded man his groaning;
                 Hushed the wife her little ones;
               Alone they heard the drum-roll
                 And the roar of Sepoy guns.
               But to sounds of home and childhood
                 The Highland ear was true;
               As her mother's cradle-crooning
                 The mountain pipes she knew.

               Like the march of soundless music
                 Through the vision of the seer,
               More of feeling than of hearing,
                 Of the heart than of the ear,
               She knew the droning pibroch,
                 She knew the Campbell's call
               "Hark! hear ye no' MacGregor's,—
                 The grandest o' them all!"

               O, they listened, dumb and breathless,
                 And they caught the sound at last;
               Faint and far beyond the Goomtee
                 Rose and fell the piper's blast!
               Then a burst of wild thanksgiving
                 Mingled woman's voice and man's
               "God be praised!—the March of Havelock!
                 The piping of the clans!"

               Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance,
                 Sharp and shrill as swords at strife,
               Came the wild MacGregor's clan-call,
                 Stinging all the air to life.
               But when the far-off dust-cloud
                 To plaided legions grew,
               Full tenderly and blithesomely
                 The pipes of rescue blew!

               Round the silver domes of Lucknow,
                 Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine,
               Breathed the air to Britons dearest,
                 The air of Auld Lang Syne.
               O'er the cruel roll of war-drums
                 Rose that sweet and homelike strain;
               And the tartan clove the turban,
                 As the Goomtee cleaves the plain.

               Dear to the corn-land reaper
                 And plaided mountaineer,—
               To the cottage and the castle
                 The piper's song is dear.
               Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch
                 O'er mountain, glen, and glade,
               But the sweetest of all music
                 The Pipes at Lucknow played!

                    The beaver cut his timber
                      With patient teeth that day,
                    The minks were fish-wards, and the crows
                      Surveyors of high way,—

                    When Keezar sat on the hillside
                      Upon his cobbler's form,
                    With a pan of coals on either hand
                      To keep his waxed-ends warm.

                    And there, in the golden weather,
                      He stitched and hammered and sung;
                    In the brook he moistened his leather,
                      In the pewter mug his tongue.

                    Well knew the tough old Teuton
                      Who brewed the stoutest ale,
                    And he paid the good-wife's reckoning
                      In the coin of song and tale.

                    The songs they still are singing
                      Who dress the hills of vine,
                    The tales that haunt the Brocken
                      And whisper down the Rhine.

                    Woodsy and wild and lonesome,
                      The swift stream wound away,
                    Through birches and scarlet maples
                      Flashing in foam and spray,—

                    Down on the sharp-horned ledges
                      Plunging in steep cascade,
                    Tossing its white-maned waters
                      Against the hemlock's shade.

                    Woodsy and wild and lonesome,
                      East and west and north and south;
                    Only the village of fishers
                      Down at the river's mouth;

                    Only here and there a clearing,
                      With its farm-house rude and new,
                    And tree-stumps, swart as Indians,
                      Where the scanty harvest grew.

                    No shout of home-bound reapers,
                      No vintage-song he heard,
                    And on the green no dancing feet
                      The merry violin stirred.

                    "Why should folk be glum," said Keezar,
                      "When Nature herself is glad,
                    And the painted woods are laughing
                      At the faces so sour and sad?"

                    Small heed had the careless cobbler
                      What sorrow of heart was theirs
                    Who travailed in pain with the births of God
                      And planted a state with prayers,—

                    Hunting of witches and warlocks,
                      Smiting the heathen horde,—
                    One hand on the mason's trowel
                      And one on the soldier's sword!

                    But give him his ale and cider,
                      Give him his pipe and song,
                    Little he cared for Church or State,
                      Or the balance of right and wrong.

                    "'Tis work, work, work," he muttered—
                      "And for rest a snuffle of psalms!"
                    He smote on his leathern apron
                      With his brown and waxen palms.

                    "O for the purple harvests
                      Of the days when I was young!
                    For the merry grape-stained maidens,
                      And the pleasant songs they sung

                    "O for the breath of vineyards,
                      Of apples and nuts and wine!
                    For an oar to row and a breeze to blow
                      Down the grand old river Rhine!"

                    A tear in his blue eye glistened
                      And dropped on his beard so gray.
                    "Old, old am I," said Keezar,
                      "And the Rhine flows far away!"

                    But a cunning man was the cobbler;
                      He could call the birds from the trees,
                    Charm the black snake out of the ledges,
                      And bring back the swarming bees.

                    All the virtues of herbs and metals,
                      All the lore of the woods, he knew,
                    And the arts of the Old World mingled
                      With the marvels of the New.

                    Well he knew the tricks of magic,
                      And the lapstone on his knee
                    Had the gift of the Mormon's goggles
                      Or the stone of Doctor Dee.

                    For the mighty master Agrippa
                      Wrought it with spell and rhyme
                    From a fragment of mystic moonstone
                      In the tower of Nettesheim.

                    To a cobbler Minnesinger
                      The marvellous stone gave he,
                    And he gave it, in turn, to Keezar,
                      Who brought it over the sea.

                    He held up that mystic lapstone,
                      He held it up like a lens,
                    And he counted the long years coming,
                      By twenties and by tens.

                    "One hundred years," quoth Keezar.
                      "And fifty have I told
                    Now open the new before me,
                      And shut me out the old!"

                    Like a cloud of mist, the blackness
                      Rolled from the magic stone,
                    And a marvellous picture mingled
                      The unknown and the known.

                    Still ran the stream to the river,
                      And river and ocean joined;
                    And there were the bluffs and the blue sea-line.
                      And cold north hills behind.

                    But the mighty forest was broken
                      By many a steepled town,
                    By many a white-walled farm-house,
                      And many a garner brown.

                    Turning a score of mill-wheels,
                      The stream no more ran free;
                    White sails on the winding river,
                      White sails on the far-off sea.

                    Below in the noisy village
                      The flags were floating gay,
                    And shone on a thousand faces
                      The light of a holiday.

                    Swiftly the rival ploughmen
                      Turned the brown earth from their shares;
                    Here were the farmer's treasures,
                      There were the craftsman's wares.

                    Golden the good-wife's butter,
                      Ruby her currant-wine;
                    Grand were the strutting turkeys,
                      Fat were the beeves and swine.

                    Yellow and red were the apples,
                      And the ripe pears russet-brown,
                    And the peaches had stolen blushes
                      From the girls who shook them down.

                    And with blooms of hill and wildwood,
                      That shame the toil of art,
                    Mingled the gorgeous blossoms
                      Of the garden's tropic heart.

                    "What is it I see?" said Keezar:
                      "Am I here or am I there?
                    Is it a fete at Bingen?
                      Do I look on Frankfort fair?

                    "But where are the clowns and puppets,
                      And imps with horns and tail?
                    And where are the Rhenish flagons?
                      And where is the foaming ale?

                    "Strange things, I know, will happen,—
                      Strange things the Lord permits;
                    But that droughty folk should be dolly
                      Puzzles my poor old wits.

                    "Here are smiling manly faces,
                      And the maiden's step is gay;
                    Nor sad by thinking, nor mad by drinking,
                      Nor mopes, nor fools, are they.

                    "Here's pleasure without regretting,
                      And good without abuse,
                    The holiday and the bridal
                      Of beauty and of use.

                    "Here's a priest and there is a Quaker,
                      Do the cat and the dog agree?
                    Have they burned the stocks for oven-wood?
                      Have they cut down the gallows-tree?

                    "Would the old folk know their children?
                      Would they own the graceless town,
                    With never a ranter to worry
                      And never a witch to drown?"

                    Loud laughed the cobbler Keezar,
                      Laughed like a school-boy gay;
                    Tossing his arms above him,
                      The lapstone rolled away.

                    It rolled down the rugged hillside,
                      It spun like a wheel bewitched,
                    It plunged through the leaning willows,
                      And into the river pitched.

                    There, in the deep, dark water,
                      The magic stone lies still,
                    Under the leaning willows
                      In the shadow of the hill.

                    But oft the idle fisher
                      Sits on the shadowy bank,
                    And his dreams make marvellous pictures
                      Where the wizard's lapstone sank.

                    And still, in the summer twilights.
                      When the river seems to run
                    Out from the inner glory,
                      Warm with the melted sun,