As courtiers do, but gentleman withal,

Took out the note; held it as one who feared The fragile thing he held would slip and fall;

Read and re-read, pulling his tawny beard;

Kissed it, I think, and hid it in his breast; Laughed softly in a flattered happy way, Arranged the broidered baldrick on his chest, And sauntered past, singing a roundelay.

The shade crept forward through the dying glow;

There came no more nor dame nor cavalier; But for a little time the brass will show

A small gray spot-the record of a tear.

AN UNFINISHED SONG

Cantat Deo qui vivit Deo."

YES, he was well-nigh gone and near his

rest,

The year could not renew him; nor the cry Of building nightingales about the nest ;

Nor that soft freshness of the May-wind's sigh,

That fell before the garden scents, and died
Between the ampler leafage of the trees :
All these he knew not, lying open-eyed,

Deep in a dream that was not pain nor ease,

But death not yet. Outside a woman talkedHis wife she was-whose clicking needles

sped

To faded phrases of complaint that balked

My rising words of comfort. Overhead,

A cage that hung amid the jasmine stars

Trumbled a little, and a blossom dropped. Then notes came pouring through the wicker bars,

Climbed half a rapid arc of song, and stopped.

"Is it a thrush?" I asked. "A thrush," she said.

“That was Will's tune. Will taught him that before

He left the doorway settle for his bed,

Sick as you see, and couldn't teach him more.

"He'd bring his Bible here o' nights, would Will,

Following the light, and whiles when it was

dark

And days were warm, he'd sit there whistling

still,

Teaching the bird. He whistled like a lark."

"Jack! Jack!" A joyous flutter stirred the

cage,

Shaking the blossoms down. The bird began; The woman turned again to want and wage, And in the inner chamber sighed the man.

How clear the song was! Musing as I heard,
My fancies wandered from the droning wife
To sad comparison of man and bird,—
The broken song, the uncompleted life,

That seemed a broken song; and of the two, My thought a moment deemed the bird more

blest,

That, when the sun shone, sang the notes it

knew,

Without desire or knowledge of the rest.

Nay, happier man. For him futurity

Still hides a hope that this his earthly praise Finds heavenly end, for surely will not He, Solver of all, above his Flower of Days,

Teach him the song that no one living knows? Let the man die, with that half-chant of his,What Now discovers not Hereafter shows,

And God will surely teach him more than this.

Again the Bird. I turned, and passed along ;

But Time and Death, Eternity and Change, Talked with me ever, and the climbing song Rose in my hearing, beautiful and strange.

THE CRADLE

HOW steadfastly she'd worked at it !

How lovingly had drest

With all her would-be-mother's wit

That little rosy nest!

How longingly she'd hung on it!-
It sometimes seemed, she said,
There lay beneath its coverlet
A little sleeping head.

He came at last, the tiny guest,
Ere bleak December fled;
That rosy nest he never prest.
Her coffin was his bed.