We know the world is rich with streams
    Renowned in song and story,
  Whose music murmurs through our dreams
    Of human love and glory: 
  We know that Arno’s banks are fair,
    And Rhine has castled shadows,
  And, poet-tuned, the Doon and Ayr
    Go singing down their meadows.

  But while, unpictured and unsung
    By painter or by poet,
  Our river waits the tuneful tongue
    And cunning hand to show it,—­
  We only know the fond skies lean
    Above it, warm with blessing,
  And the sweet soul of our Undine
    Awakes to our caressing.

  No fickle Sun-God holds the flocks
    That graze its shores in keeping;
  No icy kiss of Dian mocks
    The youth beside it sleeping: 
  Our Christian river loveth most
    The beautiful and human;
  The heathen streams of Naiads boast,
    But ours of man and woman.

  The miner in his cabin hears
    The ripple we are hearing;
  It whispers soft to homesick ears
    Around the settler’s clearing: 
  In Sacramento’s vales of corn,
    Or Santee’s bloom of cotton,
  Our river by its valley-born
    Was never yet forgotten.

  The drum rolls loud,—­the bugle fills
    The summer air with clangor;
  The war-storm shakes the solid hills
    Beneath its tread of anger: 
  Young eyes that last year smiled in ours
    Now point the rifle’s barrel,
  And hands then stained with fruits and flowers
    Bear redder stains of quarrel.

  But blue skies smile, and flowers bloom on,
    And rivers still keep flowing,—­
  The dear God still his rain and sun
    On good and ill bestowing. 
  His pine-trees whisper, “Trust and wait!”
    His flowers are prophesying
  That all we dread of change or fate
    His love is underlying.

  And thou, O Mountain-born!—­no more
    We ask the Wise Allotter
  Than for the firmness of thy shore,
    The calmness of thy water,
  The cheerful lights that overlay
    Thy rugged slopes with beauty,
  To match our spirits to our day
    And make a joy of duty.

AGNES OF SORRENTO.

CHAPTER IX.

THE ARTIST MONK.

On the evening when Agnes and her grandmother returned from the Convent, as they were standing after supper looking over the garden parapet into the gorge, their attention was caught by a man in an ecclesiastical habit, slowly climbing the rocky pathway towards them.

“Isn’t that brother Antonio?” said Dame Elsie, leaning forward to observe more narrowly.  “Yes, to be sure it is!”

“Oh, how glad I am!” exclaimed Agnes, springing up with vivacity, and looking eagerly down the path by which the stranger was approaching.

A few moments more of clambering, and the stranger met the two women at the gate with a gesture of benediction.