“Was this well done?” they said.  He thought in eternity they would rise before him, sad, unanswered.  The earth, he fancied, lay whiter, colder,—­the heaven farther off; the war, which had become a daily business, stood suddenly before him in all its terrible meaning.  God, he thought, had met in judgment with His people.  Yet he uttered no cry of vengeance against the doomed city.  With the dead face before him, he bent his eyes to the ground, humble, uncertain,—­speaking out of the ignorance of his own weak, human soul.

“The day of the Lord is nigh,” he said; “it is at hand; and who can abide it?”

MOUNTAIN PICTURES.

II.

Monadnock from Wachuset.

  I would I were a painter, for the sake
    Of a sweet picture, and of her who led,
    A fitting guide, with light, but reverent tread,
  Into that mountain mystery!  First a lake
    Tinted with sunset; next the wavy lines
      Of far receding hills; and yet more far,
    Monadnock lifting from his night of pines
      His rosy forehead to the evening star. 
  Beside us, purple-zoned, Wachuset laid
  His head against the West, whose warm light made
      His aureole; and o’er him, sharp and clear,
  Like a shaft of lightning in mid launching stayed,
    A single level cloud-line, shone upon
    By the fierce glances of the sunken sun,
      Menaced the darkness with its golden spear!

  So twilight deepened round us.  Still and black
  The great woods climbed the mountain at our back;
  And on their skirts, where yet the lingering day
  On the shorn greenness of the clearing lay,
    The brown old farm-house like a bird’s nest hung. 
  With home-life sounds the desert air was stirred: 
  The bleat of sheep along the hill we heard,
  The bucket plashing in the cool, sweet well,
  The pasture-bars that clattered as they fell;
  Dogs barked, fowls fluttered, cattle lowed; the gate
  Of the barn-yard creaked beneath the merry weight
    Of sun-brown children, listening, while they swung,
      The welcome sound of supper-call to hear;
      And down the shadowy lane, in tinklings clear,
    The pastoral curfew of the cow-bell rung. 
  Thus soothed and pleased, our backward path we took,
    Praising the farmer’s home.  He only spake,
    Looking into the sunset o’er the lake,
      Like one to whom the far-off is most near: 
  “Yes, most folks think it has a pleasant look;
    I love it for my good old mother’s sake,
      Who lived and died here in the peace of God!”
    The lesson of his words we pondered o’er,
  As silently we turned the eastern flank
  Of the mountain, where its shadow deepest sank,
  Doubling the night along our rugged road: 
  We felt that man was more than his abode,—­