Through long cathedral aisles.
For these the blossom-sprinkled turf

That floods the lonely graves,
When Spring rolls in her sea-green surf

In flowery-foaming waves.
Two paths lead upward from below,

And angels wait above,
Who count each burning life-drop's flow,

Each falling tear of Love.
Though from the Hero's bleeding breast

Her pulses Freedom drew,
Though the white lilies in her crest

Sprang from that scarlet dew, -
While Valor's haughty champions wait

Till all their scars are shown,
Love walks unchallenged through the gate,

To sit beside the Throne!
CHAPTER X.

[THE schoolmistress came down with a rose in her hair, - a fresh
June rose. She has been walking early; she has brought back two

others, - one on each cheek.
I told her so, in some such pretty phrase as I could muster for the

occasion. Those two blush-roses I just spoke of turned into a
couple of damasks. I suppose all this went through my mind, for

this was what I went on to say:-]
I love the damask rose best of all. The flowers our mothers and

sisters used to love and cherish, those which grow beneath our
eaves and by our doorstep, are the ones we always love best. If

the Houyhnhnms should ever catch me, and, finding me particularly
vicious and unmanageable, send a man-tamer to Rareyfy me, I'll tell

you what drugs he would have to take and how he would have to use
them. Imagine yourself reading a number of the Houyhnhnm Gazette,

giving an account of such an experiment.
"MAN-TAMING EXTRAORDINARY.

"THE soft-hoofed semi-quadruped recently captured was subjected to
the art of our distinguished man-tamer in presence of a numerous

assembly. The animal was led in by two stout ponies, closely
confined by straps to prevent his sudden and dangerous tricks of

shoulder-hitting and foot-striking. His countenance expressed the
utmost degree of ferocity and cunning.

"The operator took a handful of BUDDING LILAC-LEAVES, and crushing
them slightly between his hoofs, so as to bring out their peculiar

fragrance, fastened them to the end of a long pole and held them
towards the creature. Its expression changed in an instant, - it

drew in their fragranceeagerly, and attempted to seize them with
its soft split hoofs. Having thus quieted his suspicious subject,

the operator proceeded to tie a BLUE HYACINTH to the end of the
pole and held it out towards the wild animal. The effect was

magical. Its eyes filled as if with raindrops, and its lips
trembled as it pressed them to the flower. After this it was

perfectly quiet, and brought a measure of corn to the man-tamer,
without showing the least disposition to strike with the feet or

hit from the shoulder."
That will do for the Houyhnhnm Gazette. - Do you ever wonder why

poets talk so much about flowers? Did you ever hear of a poet who
did not talk about them? Don't you think a poem, which, for the

sake of being original, should leave them out, would be like those
verses where the letter A or E or some other is omitted? No, -

they will bloom over and over again in poems as in the summer
fields, to the end of time, always old and always new. Why should

we be more shy of repeating ourselves than the spring be tired of
blossoms or the night of stars? Look at Nature. She never wearies

of saying over her floral pater-noster. In the crevices of
Cyclopean walls, - in the dust where men lie, dust also, - on the

mounds that bury huge cities, the wreck of Nineveh and the Babel-
heap, - still that same sweet prayer and benediction. The Amen! of

Nature is always a flower.
Are you tired of my trivial personalities, - those splashes and

streaks of sentiment, sometimes perhaps of sentimentality, which
you may see when I show you my heart's corolla as if it were a

tulip? Pray, do not give yourself the trouble to fancy me an idiot
whose conceit it is to treat himself as an exceptional being. It

is because you are just like me that I talk and know that you will
listen. We are all splashed and streaked with sentiments, - not

with precisely the same tints, or in exactly the same patterns, but
by the same hand and from the same palette.

I don't believe any of you happen to have just the same passion for
the blue hyacinth which I have, - very certainly not for the

crushed lilac-leaf-buds; many of you do not know how sweet they
are. You love the smell of the sweet-fern and the bayberry-leaves,

I don't doubt; but I hardly think that the last bewitches you with
young memories as it does me. For the same reason I come back to

damask roses, after having raised a good many of the rarer
varieties. I like to go to operas and concerts, but there are

queer little old homely sounds that are better than music to me.
However, I suppose it's foolish to tell such things.

- It is pleasant to be foolish at the right time, - said the
divinity-student; - saying it, however, in one of the dead

languages, which I think are unpopular for summer-reading, and
therefore do not bear quotation as such.

Well, now, - said I, - suppose a good, clean, wholesome-looking
countryman's cart stops opposite my door. - Do I want any

huckleberries? - If I do not, there are those that do. Thereupon
my soft-voiced handmaid bears out a large tin pan, and then the

wholesome countryman, heaping the peck-measure, spreads his broad
hands around its lower arc to confine the wild and frisky berries,

and so they run nimbly along the narrowing channel until they
tumble rustling down in a black cascade and tinkle on the

resounding metal beneath. - I won't say that this rushing
huckleberry hail-storm has not more music for me than the "Anvil

Chorus."
- I wonder how my great trees are coming on this summer.

- Where are your great trees, Sir? - said the divinity-student.
Oh, all round about New England. I call all trees mine that I have

put my wedding-ring on, and I have as many tree-wives as Brigham
Young has human ones.

- One set's as green as the other, - exclaimed a boarder, who has
never been identified.

They're all Bloomers, - said the young fellow called John.
[I should have rebuked this trifling with language, if our

landlady's daughter had not asked me just then what I meant by
putting my wedding-ring on a tree.]

Why, measuring it with my thirty-foot tape, my dear, - said I, - I
have worn a tape almost out on the rough barks of our old New

England elms and other big trees. - Don't you want to hear me talk
trees a little now? That is one of my specialities.

[So they all agreed that they should like to hear me talk about
trees.]

I want you to understand, in the first place, that I have a most
intense, passionate fondness for trees in general, and have had

several romantic attachments to certain trees in particular. Now,
if you expect me to hold forth in a "scientific" way about my tree-

loves, - to talk, for instance, of the Ulmus Americana, and
describe the ciliated edges of its samara, and all that, - you are

an anserine individual, and I must refer you to a dull friend who
will discourse to you of such matters. What should you think of a

lover who should describe the idol of his heart in the language of
science, thus: Class, Mammalia; Order, Primates; Genus, Homo;

Species, Europeus; Variety, Brown; Individual, Ann Eliza; Dental
Formula

2-2 1-1 2-2 3-3
i---c---p---m---

2-2 1-1 2-2 3-3'
and so on?