Fourth Reader

“They exist no longer as men and women,” said the elder traveller, in his grand and deep voice, while a roll of thunder seemed to echo it in the distance. “There was neither use nor beauty in such a life as theirs; therefore the lake that was of old has spread itself forth again to reflect the sky.

“As for you, good Philemon,” continued the elder traveller, – “and you, kind Baucis, – you, with your scanty means, have done well, my dear old friends. Request whatever favor you have most at heart, and it is granted.” Philemon and Baucis looked at one another, and then one uttered the desire of both their hearts.

“Let us live together while we live, and leave the world at the same instant when we die!”

“Be it so!” replied the stranger, with majestic kindness. “Now look towards your cottage.”

They did so. What was their surprise on beholding a tall edifice of white marble on the spot where their humble residence had stood.

“There is your home,” said the stranger, smiling on them both. “Show your kindness in yonder palace as freely as in the poor hovel to which you welcomed us last evening.”

The astonished old people fell on their knees to thank him; but, behold! neither he nor Quicksilver was there.

So Philemon and Baucis took up their residence in the marble palace, and spent their time in making everybody happy and comfortable who happened to pass that way. They lived in their palace a very great while, and grew older and older, and very old indeed. At length, however, there came a summer morning when Philemon and Baucis failed to make their appearance, as on other mornings. The guests searched everywhere, but all to no purpose. At last they espied in front of the door, two venerable trees, which no one had ever seen there before. One was an oak and the other a linden tree.

While the guests were marvelling how these trees could have come to be so tall in a single night, a breeze sprang up and set their boughs astir. Then there was a deep murmur in the air, as if the two trees were speaking.

“I am Philemon!” murmured the oak.

“I am Baucis!” murmured the linden tree.

And oh, what a hospitable shade did they fling around them! Whenever a wayfarer paused beneath it, he heard a whisper of the leaves above his head, and wondered how the sound could so much resemble words like these, —

“Welcome, welcome, dear traveller, welcome!”

    – Nathaniel Hawthorne.

THE UNNAMED LAKE

It sleeps among the thousand hills
Where no man ever trod,
And only Nature’s music fills
The silences of God.

Great mountains tower above its shore,
Green rushes fringe its brim,
And o’er its breast forevermore
The wanton breezes skim.

Dark clouds that intercept the sun
Go there in spring to weep,
And there, when autumn days are done,
White mists lie down to sleep.

Sunrise and sunset crown with gold
The peaks of ageless stone,
Where winds have thundered from of old
And storms have set their throne.

No echoes of the world afar
Disturb it night or day,
But sun and shadow, moon and star,
Pass and repass for aye.

’Twas in the gray of early dawn,
When first the lake we spied,
And fragments of a cloud were drawn
Half down the mountain side.

Along the shore a heron flew,
And from a speck on high,
That hovered in the deepening blue,
We heard the fish-hawk’s cry.

Among the cloud-capt solitudes,
No sound the silence broke,
Save when, in whispers down the woods,
The guardian mountains spoke.

Through tangled brush and dewy brake,
Returning whence we came,
We passed in silence, and the lake
We left without a name.

    – Frederick George Scott.

THE HUNTER OF THE PRAIRIES

Ay, this is freedom! these pure skies
Were never stained with village smoke:
The fragrant wind, that through them flies,
Is breathed from wastes by plough unbroke.
Here, with my rifle and my steed,
And her who left the world for me,
I plant me, where the red deer feed
In the green desert – and am free.

For here the fair savannas know
No barriers in the bloomy grass;
Wherever breeze of heaven may blow,
Or beam of heaven may glance, I pass.
In pastures, measureless as air,
The bison is my noble game;
The bounding elk, whose antlers tear
The branches, falls before my aim.

Mine are the river-fowl that scream
From the long strip of waving sedge;
The bear that marks my weapon’s gleam.