"THE ANGEL LINGERS STILL, AND MURMURS LOW, DAUGHTER OF EARTH-HOW FAIR!" Sees evil warring with the human heart, And Eden's doom fulfilled. XII. When in the evening cool the Lord appears, Their fate pronounced, sees their repentant tears, And death's dread shadow hanging o'er their days. And now on him the rays Of the Eternal Vision fall; the word "Since death by thee is come unto the earth, He stood within their empty bower alone. A little bird was warbling cheerily; And the branch shriveled in his hand; with breast Panting in sudden pain, the bird fell dead. The rose which Eve's fair hand at night had pressed. Beneath his touch it withered; bud and leaf And this henceforth shall be my destiny: The shadow of the grave forever follow thee!" To blight all things of mortal breath; XIII. In Eden it was early dawn- All earthly loveliness to sear; Unheeding human prayers and tears. "Israfil!" The angel looked, and bowed his face THE SHADOW OF THE GRAVE FOREVER FOLLOW THER!' Then spake He: "Israfil, The Father to the Son a boon hath given. Seen by believing eyes linked hand in hand with Thus spake Immanuel, and, ascending, passed Whose dazzling height reveals the Father's And Israfil arose serene and calm, Immanuel, the First-Born, Stood smiling on him in the early dawn. "Israfil, behold!" The Son takes in His hand the withered rose: Its petals seem like magic to unfold; A new celestial bloom, A heavenly perfume, And, with one last look upon Eden's bower, Let thy sickle return to the harvest that gleams Through the awakened blossom breathes and For my lyre is still. The Saviour, smiling, lays it on His breast. Then rapturously sings, And soars away toward the beaming heaven. The song that I heard in the land of dreams Bear earth's harvest-the loved and lost. I have seen thy icy fingers laid AT THE GATEWAY OF THE CATSKILLS. HE situation of Tshokan, or Asho kan, as the Indians BISHOP'S FALLS, ON THE ESOPUS. pronounced it, supplies me with a title at once pleasing and truthful. Here in the heart of Ulster County is a little hamlet of widely scattered houses, separated by fields of corn, rye, oats, and buckwheat, and half hidden in | man is his own artisan as well as cultivator. old orchards. The "Centre" is a mile eastward of the creek, and "West Shokan" is the name of the railroad station, where there is a brick hotel, two or three country stores, a lumber mill, a church with an ambitiously high steeple, a number of carriage sheds clustered about, and a few houses, which seem as though they would be glad to get away. The Ulster and Delaware Railroad, a local line north westward from Rondout, traverses the valley, and spoils the clearness of the air with clouds of sulphurous coal smoke. Leaving the staring group of rustics lounging at the station, I hurried up the track a mile or so to a farmer's house that I knew of. It was a large square house, standing with its side to the road, and built of stone, hidden under the accumulated layers of many seasons' whitewashings. In front was a generous porch, and behind, a newer frame extension for a kitchen. It stood not far back from the road, where was an immense horse-block, almost as hard to mount as the horse itself, and in the small front yard were a few flowers, fenced off from the vegetable garden on the left and the orchard on the right, beyond which were the great barns and sheds. Out in the road in front was the "shop," for in this isolated village every "Mon" (short for De la Montaigne) Dorrs was at work there as I came up-a short, somewhat bent man of sixty years, with a keen, cunning countenance and a perpetual smile. He was always good-natured and always busy, caring little for any thing off his farm, reading almost nothing, talking only' of the weather and the crops and the local politics; an old-fashioned Democrat and a good neighbor, he was a type of the best Shokan farmers, and his house a type of their homes. They seem to be utterly devoid of all ambition beyond shelter and food, and to take no more interest in the glittering world moving by than the average New Yorker does in a militia regiment marching down Broadway. In the shop were a carpenter's tool chest, a cooper's horse and shaving knives, a blacksmith's forge and anvil, and some harnessmaker's implements. It was not an exceptional shop. A young farmer's education is not considered complete here until he has a sufficient knowledge of every trade having application to his labor to provide himself with any needed commodity for his daily work. On the other hand, the women all learn and daily practice the spinning of wool and flax, and the weaving of carpet and coarse cloth on looms which their hus bands manufacture at home. In that sum-browned by exposure to the weather, emmer of "Centennial" experiences and uproar broidered with varicolored lichens, entanit was a treat to find a community within gled in thickets of briers, where lightly rests one hundred miles of the metropolis where a mantle of snow blossoms, or droop rich the customs of Revolutionary days had clusters of delicious berries, or glow sunscarcely worn off at the edges. burned masses of foliage, and tumble into The valley is several miles long and ir- careless piles exceeding picturesque the regularly broad, but with a level surface. year round. They are the favorite resorts The soil is coarse drift bowlder material, of sparrows and wrens, whose lithe bright and water-worn stones from an ounce to a forms dodge in and out of their hiding-places ton in weight are every where to be seen. with ceaseless activity, or choose some tallStone walls, consequently, almost entirely er bush near by as a pedestal for joyous take the place of fences, which become song. On every side rise hills to the height VOL. LIV.-No. 324.-53 |