But God's sun drank the mists and clouds, as dew;
Dim paths grew clear and soft, and safe to tread;
The woods found hidden voices overhead,
And I found love in eyes of April blue.—

Farewell! we've supp'd-Life's wine was keen and bright;

Old friends move by and gain the outer door— The wind blows buffets with a northern roarAnd past the shadow gleams the distant light. W. WILSEY MARTIN.

-For The Magazine of Poetry.

AFTER-LIFE.

My Soul desires to live:

To keep its reason and its health;

To add yet more unto its wealth,
And, grasp the gold the ages give;
To sit somewhere at ease

And as the True is borne thro' centuries,

To add new Truths unto its stock and store;
To watch, with clear, wide-open eyes,
The great, new wonder-worlds arise
Out of the sea of Time;

To mark old faiths sublime

Walk on the shining marge like giants hoarCo-heritors of Dawn

With changeless raiment on.

My soul desires to live

Since life, it feels, is best.

What boots the upward guest,
Or hope which says-Believe?-
Why gather the soul lore

From every plastic age and shore
If all is but a being and forgetting?
Within I have no fear

That I shall lose ought, anywhere,

Of my small stock of gain;

Rather I feel that, after one sharp pain,

My eyes shall see a day that hath no setting,

And straightway find again

Knowledge beyond their ken.

My soul desires to live;

To move in circles void of length;

To gain in action and in strength

And, here or there, receive

Supreme Light that flows

Into the little space it knows.

Therefore I feel, within my inmost being,

That this whereof I strive

Shall otherwhere survive,

And somewhere, in a meadowy place,

Find fuller radius and space,

And calm beyond my thinking or my seeing;
Else wherefore raise we sail
If shoreless voids prevail?

CHARLES J. O'MALLEY. -For The Magazine of Poetry.

THE RECALL.

RETURN, they cry, ere yet your day
Set, and the sky grow stern:
Return, strayed souls, while yet ye may
Return.

But heavens beyond us yearn;

Yea, heights of heaven above the sway Of stars that eyes discern.

The soul whose wings from shoreward stray Makes toward her viewless bourne Though trustless faith and unfaith say, Return.

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. -"Poems and Ballads, Third Series."

TRUTH.

"COME," said her voice, and from earth's devious.

ways

Her chosen answered to the entrancing call. One fought her fight, one bore her torch ablaze, And one, the bravest, broke opinion's thrall. SARAH D. HOBART,

-Chicago Inter-Ocean, April 23, 1889.

WHENCE-WHITHER.

OUT of the darkness-whence?

Into the darkness-whither?

O for the long suspense,

And the searching hither and thither. When the silver cord is loosed,

And the golden bowl is broken,

How is the light diffused

That has been, and leaves no token?

The sound of a tender strain,

The flash of a crystal riverThen into the never again,

Or into the long forever?

Is it life for the living, and naught But death 'neath the sable curtain? Whence is the truth, and what?

And where is it clear and certain?

HODGE THE CAT.

BURLY and big his books among

Good Samuel Johnson sat,

With frowning brows and wig askew,

His snuff-strewn waistcoat far from new;
So stearn and menacing his air

That neither" Black Sam" nor the maid

To knock or interrupt him dare-
Yet close beside him, unafraid,
Sat Hodge the cat.

"This participle," the Doctor wrote,
64 'The modern scholar cavils at,
But"-even as he penned the word,
A soft protesting note was heard.
The Doctor fumbled with his pen,

The dawning thought took wings and flew, The sound repeated came again—

His frame is gaunt, yet on and on he goes.
Few are the hours his weary limbs repose,

Few are the drops that wet his earthen cruse;
The path is long, the sharp flints cut and bruise,
And yet at heart a dreamful rest he knows.
His visions are of calm celestial days,

Of peaceful groves of palm beyond the skies; Forever shine before his ardent eyes

The fountained heavenly courts through golden haze :

He deems the more he bears on mortal ways
The greater his reward in Paradise.

CLINTON SCOLLARD. -Lippincott's Magazine, July, 1889.

LULLABY.

I WAS loung'n' amongst m' pillows,
Coax'n' sleep with many a sigh,

'N' some one 'n th' room above me
Was a-singin' a lullyby;

'N' I cud hear th' cradle a-rock'n'

Creakety, creakety, to 'n' fro,

'N' th' woman a-singin' "Hush-theeGo-t-sleep-t'—sleep-e-e—go."

Ther' wasn't a mite of a carpit

Awn th' floor o' thet room, yuh bet, 'N' th' reg'lar swing o' th' cradle,

W’y, I kin almos' hear 't yet;

'N' th' sleepy coo o' th' baby

Thet was bein' swung to 'n' fro,

T' th' wonderful music o' "Hush-theeGo--t'-sleep-t'-sleep-e-e-go."

Yuh wouldn't a thought thet a feller
Thet's got down 's low 's I

Would 'a felt kinder queer 'cause a woman

Was a-sing'n' a luliyby!

'N''t first I felt jest like swear'n',

Thet a hotel shud treat me so,

For I cudn't hear noth'n' but "Hush-theeGo-t-sleep-t'-sleep-e-e-go."

But 't seemed ter git soft'r 'n' low'r, 'N' kinder familyer too,

Wi' th' cradle a-goin' slow'r,

Jest like my cradle ust ter do, Till I cud almos' feel th' motion, Rock-a-bye-rock-a-bye-to 'n' fro, 'N' my mother a-sing'n, "Hush-theeGo-t-sleep-t-sleep-e-e-go."

Fur she sung 't t' "I love Jesus," Jest 's my mother ust ter do,

'N''t set my heart all ter ach'n',

'N' th' tears to com'n' too;

'N' I jest wisht I cud slouch back thar, 'N' my mother cud set thar 'n' sew, 'N' I cud hear her, jest oncet, sing'n' "Hush -thee

Go-t'-sleep-t'—sleep-e-e-go."

ELLA HIGGINSON.

-Harper's Weekly, June 1, 1889.

OMAR KHAYYAM.

AT Naishapur his ashes lie
O'ershadowed by the mosque's blue dome;
There folded in his tent of sky

The star of Persia sleeps at home.

The Rose her buried Nightingale
Remembers, faithful all these years;
Around his grave the winds exhale
The fragrant sorrow of her tears.
Sultans and slaves in caravans

Since Malik Shah have gone their way,
And ridges in the Kubberstans
Are their memorials to-day.

But from the dust in Omar's tomb
A Fakir has revived a Rose-
Perchance the old, ancestral bloom
Of that one by the mosque which blows.
And from its petals he has caught
The inspiration Omar knew,
Who from the stars his wisdom brought-
A Persian rose that drank the dew.

The Fakir now in dust lies low
With Omar of the Orient;
Fitzgerald, shall we call him? No;
'Twas Omar in the Occident!

FRANK DEMPSTER SHERMAN.

-Atlantic Monthly, May, 1889.

TWO SONGS.

I.

So sweet, so sweet, she sang, is love,
Lifting the cup to lips that laughed,
Drinking the deep enchantment off,
Fire, spice, and honey in the draught.
II.

So sad, so sad, she sighed, is love,
Bitter the lees, and black the art
That from the deep enchantment wrings
A spell to break a woman's heart!
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
-Harper's Magazine, June, 1889.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL ON HIS
SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY.

WHO is the poet? He whom Nature chose
In that sweet season when she made the rose.
Though with the changes of our colder clime
His birthday will come somewhat out of time,
Though all the shivering winter's frost and chill
The bloom and fragrance cling around it still.
He is the poet who can stoop to read
The secret hidden in a wayside weed;

Whom June's warm breath with childlike rapture fills

Whose spirit "dances with the daffodills";
Whom noble deeds with noble thoughts inspire
And lend his verse the true Promethean fire;
Who drinks the waters of enchanted streams
That wind and wander through the land of
dreams;

For whom the unreal is the real world,

Its fairer flowers with brighter dews impearled. He looks a mortal till he spreads his wingsHe seems an angel when he soars and sings! Behold the poet! Heaven his days prolong, Whom Elmwood's nursery cradled into song!

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

-From Poem in The Atlantic Monthly, April, 1889.

A WORD.

A WORD, and all a heart

With joy unspeakable is filled. A word, and there's no art

Can bid the throb of pain be stilled.

A word, and Love is decked

In rainbow-hopes that arch the sky. A word, and Faith is wrecked, And all a life is marred, for aye!

A word, and Honor dies;

Remorse wails out its deathless cry. A word, and Peace long fled

From some sad heart breathes its low sigh.

Words gentle, cheering, wise,

Kind, trustful, loving, true-speak such! What power in them lies

To help and heal, to bless and touch'

Words, angry, careless, vile,

False, bitter, black! O! evil weeds!

Ye fester rank, by wile

Of Satan die in fearful deeds!

HOW I CONSULTED THE ORACLE OF
THE GOLDFISHES.

I WATCH you in your crystal sphere,
And wonder if you see and hear

Those shapes and sounds that stir the wide
Conjecture of a world outside;

In your pent lives, as we in ours,
Have you surmises dim of powers,
Of presences obscurely shown,
Of lives a riddle to your own,

Just on the senses' outer verge,

Where sense-nerves into soul-nerves merge,
Where we conspire our own deceit
Confederate in deft Fancy's feat,
And the fooled brain befools the eyes
With pageants woven of its own lies?
But are they lies? Why more than those
Phantoms that startle your repose,
Half seen, half heard, then flit away,
And leave you your prose-bounded day?

The things ye see as shadows I
Know to be substance; tell me why
My visions, like those haunting you,
May not be as substantial too.
Alas! who ever answer heard

From fish, and dream-fish, too? Absurd!

Your consciousness I half divine,
But you are wholly deaf to mine.
Go, I dismiss you; ye have done

All that ye could; our silk is spun:
Dive back into the deep of dreams,
Where what is real is what seems!

Yet I shall fancy till my grave
Your lives to mine a lesson gave;
If lesson none an image, then,
Impeaching self-conceit in men
Who put their confidence alone

In what they call the Seen and Known.

How seen? How known? As through your

glass

Our wavering apparitions pass
Perplexingly, then subtly wrought

To some quite other thing by thought.
Here shall my resolution be;
The shadow of the mystery
Is haply wholesomer for eyes
That cheat us to be overwise,
And I am happy in my right
To love God's darkness as His light.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

-Atlantic Monthly, July, 1889.

THE BROKEN HARP.

IF this now silent harp could wake,
How pure, how strong, how true
The tender strain its chords would make
Of love and grief for you!

But like my heart, though faithful long
By you cast forth to pain,
This hushed and frozen voice of song
Must never live again.

Yet haply when your fancy strays
O'er unregarded things,

And half in dream your gentle gaze
Falls on its shattered strings,
Some loving impulse may endear
Your memories of the past,
And if for me you shed one tear
I think 'twould wake at last:

Wake with a note so glad, so clear,
So lovely, so complete,

That birds on wing would pause to hear
Its music wild and sweet;

And you would know-alas, too late!-
How tender and how true

Is this fond heart that hugs its fate-
To die for love and you.

WILLIAM WINTER.

-Harper's Magazine, May, 1889.

CONEMAUGH.

"FLY to the mountain! fly!" Terribly rang the cry.

The electric soul of the wire

Quivered like sentient fire.

The soul of the woman who stood

Face to face with the flood

Answered to the shock

Like the eternal rock.

For she stayed

With her hand on the wire,
Unafraid,

Flashing the wild word down
Into the lowar town.

Is there a lower yet and another?
Into the valley she and none other
Can hurl the warning cry:
"Fly to the mountain! Fly!
The water from Conemaugh
Has opened its awful jaw.
The dam is wide

On the mountain side."

"Fly for your life, oh, fly!" They said.

She lifted her noble head:

"I can stay at my post and die."

Face to face with duty and death,
Dear is the drawing of human breath.
"Steady, my hand! Hold fast
To the trust upon thee cast.
Steady, my wire! Go, say
That death is on the way.
Steady, strong wire! Go, save!
Grand is the power you have!"

Grander the soul that can stand
Behind the trembling hand,
Grander the woman who dares.
Glory her high name wears.
"This message is my last!"
Shot over the wire, and passed
To the listening ear of the land.
The mountain and the strand
Reverberate the cry:

"Fly for your lives, oh, fly!

I stay at my post and die."

The torrent took her. God knows all.

Fiercely the savage currents fall

To muttering calm. Men count their dead.

The June sky smileth overhead.

God's will we neither read, nor guess.

Poorer by one more hero less

We bow the head, and clasp the hand:"Teach us, although we die, to stand." ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.

-The Independent.