All listlessly we float Out seaward in the boat That beareth Love. Our sails of purest snow Bend to the blue below And to the blue above. Where shall we land? We drift upon a tide Shoreless on every side, Save where the eye Of Fancy sweeps far lands Shelved slopingly with sands Of gold and porphyry. Where shall we land? The fairy isles we see, Loom up so mistily— So vaguely fair, We do not care to break Fresh bubbles in our wake To bend our course for there. Where shall we land? The warm winds of the deep Have lulled our sails to sleep, And so we glide Careless of wave or wind, Or change of any kind, Or turn of any tide. Where shall we land? We droop our dreamy eyes Where our reflection lies Steeped in the sea, And, in an endless fit Of languor, smile on it And its sweet mimicry. Where shall we land? "Where shall we land?" God's grace! I know not any place So fair as this— Swung here between the blue Of sea and sky, with you To ask me, with a kiss, "Where shall we land?"
AN OLD SETTLER'S STORY
William Williams his name was—or so he said;—Bill Williams they called him, and them 'at knowed him best called him Bill Bills.
The first I seed o' Bills was about two weeks after he got here. The Settlement wasn't nothin' but a baby in them days, far I mind 'at old Ezry Sturgiss had jist got his saw and griss-mill a-goin', and Bills had come along and claimed to know all about millin', and got a job with him; and millers in them times was wanted worse'n congerss-men, and I reckon got better wages; far afore Ezry built, ther wasn't a dust o' meal er flour to be had short o' the White Water, better'n sixty mild from here, the way we had to fetch it. And they used to come to Ezry's far ther grindin' as far as that; and one feller I knowed to come from what used to be the old South Fork, over eighty mild from here, and in the wettest, rainyest weather; and mud! Law!
Well, this-here Bills was a-workin' far Ezry at the time—part the time a-grindin', and part the time a-lookin' after the sawin', and gittin' out timber and the like. Bills was a queer-lookin' feller, shore! About as tall a build man as Tom Carter—but of course you don't know nothin' o' Tom Carter. A great big hulk of a feller, Tom was; and as far back
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