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'T was twilight, and I bade you go- LOVE, dearest lady, such as I would But still you held me fast; It was the time of roses,

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We plucked them as we passed!

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That some time these bright stars, that now reply

In sunlight to the sun, shall set in night;

That this warm conscious flesh shall perish quite,

And all life's ruddy springs forget to flow;

That thought shall cease, and the immortal sprite

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speak,

Lives not within the humor of the

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Be lapped in alien clay and laid be- Its bough owns no December and no

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It is not death to know this-but to But bears its blossoms into winter's know clime.

GEORGE HOUGHTON.

[From The Legend of St. Olaf's Kirk.]

VALBORG WATCHING AXEL'S DEparture.

AT kirk knelt Valborg, the cold altar-stone
Reeling beneath her. Filled with choking grief
She could not say good-bye, but by a page
Her rosary sent him; and when he had climbed
His horse, and on the far-off bridge she heard

The dull tramp of his troopers, up she fared
By stair and ladder to old Steindor's post,
For he was mute, and could not nettle her
With words' cheap guise of sympathy. There perched
Beside him up among the dusty bells,

She pushed her face between the mullions, looked
Across the world of snow, lighted like day

By moon and moor-ild; saw with misty eyes
A gleam of steel, an eagle's feather tall;

And through the clear air watched it, tossing, pass
Across the sea-line; saw the ship lift sail
And blow to southward, catching light and shade
As 'mong the sheers and skerries it picked out
A crooked pathway; saw it round the ness,
And, catching one last flicker of the moon,
Fade into nothingness. With desolate steps
She left the bellman and crept down the stairs;
Heard all the air re-echoing: "He is gone!"
Felt a great sob behind her lips, and tears
Flooding the sluices of her eyes; turned toward
The empty town, and for the first time saw
That Nidaros was small and irksome, felt
First time her tether galling, and, by heaven!
Wished she'd been born a man-child, free to fare
Unhindered through the world's wide pastures, free
To stand this hour with Axel as his squire.
And with him brave the sea-breeze. Aimlessly

She sought the scattered gold-threads that had formed
Life's glowing texture: but how dull they seemed!
How bootless the long waste of lagging weeks,

With dull do-over of mean drudgeries,

And miserable cheer of pitying mouths

Whistling and whipping through small round of change
Their cowering pack of saw and circumstance!

How slow the crutches of the limping years!

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I gave my precious one back to the daisies,

From where they caught their color she came;

HE erred, no doubt, perhaps he And now, when I look in the face of

sinned;

Shall I then dare to cast a stone? Perhaps this blotch, on a garment white,

Counts less than the dingy robes I

own.

a daisy,

My little girl's face I see, I see! My tears, down dropping, with theirs commingle,

And they give my precious one back to me.

LORD HOUGHTON (RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES).

SINCE YESTERDAY.

I'm not where I was yesterday,
Though my home be still the same,
For I have lost the veriest friend
Whomever a friend could name;
I'm not where I was yesterday,
Though change there be little to see,
For a part of myself has lapsed away
From Time to Eternity.

How catch his greeting tone, — And thus I went up to his door, And they told me he was gone!

Oh! what is Life but a sum of love,
And Death but to lose it all?
Weeds be for those that are left be-
hind,

And not for those that fall!

And now how mighty a sum of love Is lost for ever to me

I have lost a thought that many a No, I'm not what I was yesterday,

year

Was most familiar food

To my inmost mind, by night or day, In merry or plaintive mood;

I have lost a hope, that many a year Looked far on a gleaming way, When the walls of Life were closing round,

And the sky was sombre gray.

I thought, how should I see him first, How should our hands first meet, Within his room, upon the stair,At the corner of the street ?

I thought, where should I hear him first,

Though change there be little to see.

LABOR.

HEART of the people! Working men! Marrow and nerve of human powers; Who on your sturdy backs sustain Through streaming time this world of ours; Hold by that title, which proclaims, That ye are undismayed and strong, Accomplishing whatever aims May to the sons of earth belong.

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