Oh, a wandering stream is the river Time,
As it runs through the realms of tears,
With a faultless rhythm and a musical rhyme,
And a broader sweep and a surge sublime,
And blends with the ocean of years.
How the winters are drifting like flakes of snow,
And the summers like buds between,
And the year in the sheaf--so they come and they go,
On the river's breast, with its ebb and flow,
As it glides in the shadow and sheen.
There's a magical Isle up the river Time,
Where the softest of airs are playing;
There's a cloudless sky and a tropical clime,
And a song as sweet as a vesper chime.
And the Junes with the roses are staying.
And the name of this isle is the Long Ago,
And we bury our treasures there:
There are brows of beauty and bosoms of snow--
They are heaps of dust, but we loved them so!
There are trinkets and tresses of hair.
There are fragments of song that nobody sings,
And a part of an infant's prayer;
There's a lute unswept, and a harp without strings,
There are broken vows, and pieces of rings,
And the garments that _she_ used to wear.
There are hands that are waved when the fairy shore
By the mirage is lifted in air;
And we sometimes hear, through the turbulent roar,
Sweet voices we heard in the days gone before,
When the wind down the river is fair.
Oh, remembered for aye be the blessed isle,
All the day of life till night--
When the evening comes with its beautiful smile,
And our eyes are closing to slumber awhile,
May that greenwood of soul be in sight!
* * * * *
Born at Lowville, New York, in 1819, Benjamin Franklin
Taylor died at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1887. During the Civil
War he was the Chicago _Journal_ war correspondent with the
Western armies.
Mr. Taylor wrote a number of books, among which are several
volumes of verse and a novel, "Theophilus Trent." He is best
remembered, however, as author of "The Isle of the Long
Ago," that singularly felicitous picture of the home of
sweet-sad memories.
Niagara, the June Bride's Paradise.
The Eloquent Language in Which the Great Cataract Was Described by Sir
Edwin Arnold, and John Galt's Romantic Account
of Its Discovery.
The compass of the honeymooner, like the compass of the
mariner, has four points, but on that of the honeymooner the
points are rather differently indicated. The East is
represented by the term "abroad," the South by Washington,
the West by almost anything lying between Pittsburgh and the
Pacific, and the North by Niagara.
The honeymooner who finds it less difficult to make money
than to kill time shapes his matrimonial course via
Pittsburgh or Paris. The good, patriotic, homespun sort of
chap, who finds it more easy to kill time than to make
money, and who may one day be the father of a President of
the United States, whirls his bride off to Washington or
Niagara. Washington is a little dull and rather warm after
Congress adjourns, so the June bride is most likely to pick
the last of the rice-grains out of her hair within earshot
of the great Northern cataract.
Two selections that have to do with the big waterfall are
given herewith. Of these, one has been called the finest
description of Niagara ever written. It is from the pen of
the late Sir Edwin Arnold, the author of "The Light of
Asia," and appeared originally in the London _Daily
Telegraph_.
The second selection is John Galt's account, partly
historical and partly imaginative, of the discovery of the
cataract. John Galt (1779-1839) was a native of Scotland. He
was the author of several novels that were popular in their
day. He traveled extensively, and wrote many articles on
historical and geographical subjects.