290 Back to her bosom; fruitlessly they strove. The little maid was dead. In blank despair They stood, and gazed at her who never more Should look on them. "Why die we not with her?"

295

They said; "without her life is bitterness."

Now came the funeral day; the simple folk
Of all that pastoral region gathered round,
To share the sorrow of the cottagers.

They carved a way into the mound of snow
To the glen's side, and dug a little grave
300 In the smooth slope, and, following the bier,
In long procession from the silent door,
Chanted a sad and solemn melody.

"Lay her away to rest within the ground. Yea, lay her down whose pure and innocent life 305 Was spotless as these snows; for she was reared In love, and passed in love life's pleasant spring, And all that now our tenderest love can do Is to give burial to her lifeless limbs."

They paused. A thousand slender voices round, 310 Like echoes softly flung from rock and hill, Took up the strain, and all the hollow air Seemed mourning for the dead; for, on that day, The Little People of the Snow had come, From mountain peak, and cloud, and icy hall, 315 To Eva's burial. As the murmur died,

The funeral train renewed the solemn chant.

"Thou, Lord, hast taken her to be with Eve, Whose gentle name was given her. Even so, For so Thy wisdom saw that it was best 320 For her and us. We bring our bleeding hearts, And ask the touch of healing from Thy hand, As, with submissive tears, we render back The lovely and beloved to Him who gave."

They ceased. Again the plaintive murmur rose. 325 From shadowy skirts of low-hung cloud it came, And wide white fields, and fir-trees capped with

snow,

Shivering to the sad sounds. They sank away
To silence in the dim-seen distant woods.

The little grave was closed; the funeral train 330 Departed; winter wore away; the spring Steeped, with her quickening rains, the violet tufts,

By fond hands planted where the maiden slept.
But, after Eva's burial, never more

The Little People of the Snow were seen

335 By human eye, nor ever human ear

Heard from their lips articulate speech again;
For a decree went forth to cut them off,

Forever, from communion with mankind.

The winter clouds, along the mountain-side, 340 Rolled downward toward the vale, but no fair form

Leaned from their folds, and, in the icy glens,
And aged woods, under snow-loaded pines,
Where once they made their haunt, was empti.

ness.

But ever, when the wintry days drew near, 345 Around that little grave, in the long night, Frost-wreaths were laid, and tufts of silvery rime In shape like blades and blossoms of the field, As one would scatter flowers upon a bier.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

Οι

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

LIVER WENDELL HOLMES was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 29, 1809. The old house in which he was born, still standing near the colleges, has a historic interest as having been the headquarters of General Artemas Ward, and of the Committee of Safety in the days just before the Revolution. Upon the steps of the house stood President Langdon of Harvard College, tradition says, and prayed for the men who, halting there a few moments, marched forward under Colonel Prescott's lead to throw up intrenchments on Bunker Hill on the night of June 16, 1775. Dr. Holmes's father carried forward the traditions of the old house, for he was Rev. Dr. Abiel Holmes whose American Annals was the first careful record of American history, written after the Revolution.

Born and bred in the midst of historic associa tions, Holmes had from the first a lively interest in American history and politics, and though pos sessed of strong humorous gifts, has often turned song into patriotic channels, while the current of his literary life has been distinctly American.

his

He began to write poetry when in college at Cambridge, and some of his best known early pieces, like Evening by a Tailor, The Meeting of the Dryads, The Spectre Pig, were contributed to the Collegian, an undergraduate journal, while he was studying law the year after his graduation. At this same time he wrote the well-known poem Old Ironsides, a protest against the proposed breaking up of the frigate Constitution; the poem was printed in the Boston Daily Advertiser, and its indignation and fervor carried it through the country and raised such a popular feeling that the ship was saved from an ignominious destruction. Holmes shortly gave up the study of law, went abroad to study medicine and returned to take his degree at Harvard in 1836. At the same time he delivered a poem, Poetry, a Metrical Essay, before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard, and ever since his profession of medicine and his love of literature have received his united care and thought. In 1838 he was appointed Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Dartmouth College, but remained there only a year or two, when he returned to Boston, married and practised medicine. In 1847 he was made Parkman Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in the Medical School of Harvard College, a position which he still holds.

In 1857, when the Atlantic Monthly was established, Professor Lowell, who was asked to be editor, consented on condition that Dr. Holmes should be a regular contributor. Dr. Holmes at that time

was known as the author of a number of poems of grace, life, and wit, and he had published several professional papers and books, but his brilliancy as a talker gave him a strong local reputation, and Lowell shrewdly guessed that he would bring to the new magazine a singularly fresh and unusual power. He was right, for The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table beginning in the first number unquestionably insured the Atlantic its early success. The readers of the day had forgotten that Holmes, twenty-five years before, had begun a series with the same title in Buckingham's New England Magazine, a periodical of short life, so they did not at first understand why he should begin his first article, "I was just going to say, when I was interrupted." From that time Dr. Holmes was a frequent contributor to the magazine, and in it appeared successively, The Autocrat of the BreakfastTable, The Professor at the Breakfast-Table, Elsie Venner, The Professor's Story, The Guardian Angel, The Poet at the Breakfast-Table,· prose papers, and stories with occasional insertion of verse; here also have been printed the many poems which he has so freely and happily written for festivals and public occasions, including the frequent poems at the yearly meetings of his college class. The wit and humor which have made his poetry so well known would never have given him his high rank had they not been associated with an admirable art which makes every word necessary and felicitous, and a generous nature which is quick to seize upon what touches a common life.