Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: No word was spoken: There stood the Hurons On the dank greensward, With their swart faces Bowed in the twilight. What did they see there ? Only a Lily Kocfced on the azure Breast of the water. Then they turned sadly One to another, Tenderly murmuring,
Miantowona!
Soft as the dew falls Down through the midnight, Cleaving the starlight, Echo repeated,
Miantowona!
FRIAR JEROME’S BEAUTIFUL BOOK A. D. 1200. The Friar Jerome, for some slight sin, Done in his youth, was struck with woe.
When I am dead, quoth Friar Jerome,
Surely, I think my soul will go Shuddering through the darkened spheres, Down to eternal fires below ! I shall not dare from that dread place To lift mine eyes to Jesus’ face, Nor Mary’s, as she sits adored At the feet of Christ the Lord. Alas ! December’s all too brief For me to hope to wipe away The memory of my sinful May!
And Friar Jerome was full of grief That April evening, as he lay On the straw pallet in his cell. He scarcely heard the curfew-bell Calling the brotherhood to prayer; But he arose, for ‘t was his care Nightly to feed the hungry poor That crowded to the Convent door. His choicest duty it had been: But this one night it weighed him down.
What work for an immortal soul, To feed and clothe some lazy clown ? Is there no action worth my mood, No deed of daring, high and pure, That shall, when I am dead, endure% A well-spring of perpetual good ?
And straight he thought of those great tomes With clamps of gold ? the Convent’s boast ? How they endured, while kings and realms Passed into darkness and were lost; How they had stood from age to age, Clad in their yellow vellum-mail,1 'Gainst which the Paynim’s 2 godless rage, The Vandal’s 3 fire, could naught avail: 1 Vellum was a usual …
