Far down, unaware of this glory,
The buried earth lies at my feet-
Shall I take them this balm salvatory?

Will they know it is healing and sweet?
Or will they pronounce this a vision,
And me but a coiner of dreams
Deserving their wiser derision,

Their jests and significant gleams?

What matters how plodders shall take it?
The grandeur of truth must be sung;
And the sneering of fools shall not shake it,
Where once its accents have rung.

And builder, and singer, and dreamer

Shall dream, and shall sing, and shall build, For the world will forget the vain schemer When the mission of these is fulfilled.

THE MAID OF ST. HELENA.

ACROSS the long, vine-covered land
She gazed, with lifted, shading hand.
Behind were hillsides, purple, brown;
Before were vineyards sloping down;
While northward rose, through golden mist,
St. Helen's mount of amethyst.

But forest, vine and mountain height
Were less divinely benedight
Than she who so serenely stood

To gaze on mountain, vine and wood.
Her presence breathed in sweet excess
The fragrance of rare loveliness-
A simple beauty in her face,
And in her form a simple grace.
She was so perfect and so fair,
So like a vision, and so rare,

The air that touched her seemed to me
To thrill with trembling ecstasy.
Spell-bound, for fear she might not stay,
I stood afar in sweet dismay.

At last, she sang some olden song,
I did not know its tale of wrong;

I only knew the oriole's note
Grew garrulous within its throat-

It seemed so shameful birds should sing
To silence so divine a thing.

She faded, singing, from my sight,
A dream of beauty and delight;
And I, with unconsenting will,
Retraced my footsteps down the hill.

I.

I. EDGAR JONES.

173

EDGAR JONES was born at Liverpool, Eng⚫ land, coming to this country with his parents when but eight years old. They settled upon a farm in Oneida county, N. Y., and there their son was brought up, working hard upon the farm in summer, going to the country school in winter, and studying in the evenings to gain that knowledge for which such youths hunger and strive.

At fifteen he became a telegrapher and, taking a position in Missouri during the last year of the war, enlisted there and became a boy soldier in the Union Army. Some years later, having distinguished himself by tact and remarkable courage in dealing with turbulent Indian tribes, he became a commander of Texan Rangers, and was distinguished for the cool courage and dogged determination with which he hunted down and killed or dispersed the desperadoes, who in robber gangs then infested the Mexican frontier. Later he became a journalist, and has served as chief editor or editorial writer upon some of the leading newspapers, winning high rank among them. He has also owned several journals, and was as successful in business management as in the higher field of editorial work. He early became a contributor to periodicals, and for years has ranked high as a poet. Mr. Jones has traveled extensively, especially in Central and South America and Mexico, and for years his career was one of adventure, full of stirring events. He lived in the South for a time, and it was here I first met him, at first as his political foe, deeply prejudiced against him as a Northern man outspoken in his views. We at once wrote to places in which he had lived, hoping to find something against him, but found that everywhere he had been highly esteemed, a leader in church and society, one of whom even his political enemies spoke well. His genial nature, manliness, powers as a writer and public speaker, and withal his unfailing kindliness were upon us, and we became his firm friends.

In western Maryland and at Washington and the South, as well as in other cities in which he has lived, his friends were the leaders in literature and society, while they and he corresponded with and were the friends of such men as Longfellow and Holland, who valued his work. I have heard both speak in high terms of him.

Some years ago he became proprietor of a leading Indianapolis newspaper, but for a year or two has lived at Muskegon, Michigan, being editor of the leading paper in that city. He has always been a religious man, an active worker in Sunday

O, BIRDS, that sing such thankful psalms
Rebuking human fretting,
Teach us your secret of content,

Your science of forgetting;
For every life must have its ills,

You too have hours of sorrow;
Teach us, like you, to lay them by,
And sing again to-morrow;
For gems of darkest jet may lie
Within a golden setting,
And he is wise who understands
The science of forgetting.

O, palms, that bow before the gale
Until its peaceful ending,

Teach us your yielding linked with strength,
Your graceful art of bending;
For every tree must meet the gale,

Each heart encounter sorrow;
Teach us, like you, to bow, that we

May stand erect to-morrow.

For there is strength in humble grace,
Its wise disciples shielding;
And he is wise who understands
The happy art of yielding.

O, brooks, which laugh all night, all day,
With voice of sweet seduction,

Teach us your art of laughing still

At every new obstruction;

For every life has eddies deep

And rapids fiercely dashing,

Sometimes through gloomy caverns forced,
Sometimes in sunlight flashing;
Yet there is wisdom in your way,
Your laughing waves and wimples
Teach us your gospel of content,

The secret of your dimples.

O, trees, that stand in forest ranks,
Tall, strong, erect and sightly,
Your branches arched in noble grace,
Your leaflets laughing lightly,

Teach us your firm and quiet strength,
Your secret of extraction
From slimy darkness in the soil
The grace of life and action;
For they are rich who understand
The secret of combining
The good that's hidden deep in earth
With that where suns are shining.

O, myriad forms of earth and air,
Of lake, and sea, and river,

Which make our landscapes glad and fair
To glorify The Giver,

Teach us to learn the lessons hid

In each familiar feature,
The mystery which still perfects
Each low or lofty creature;
For God is good, and life is sweet,
And suns are brightly shining
To glad the gloom and thus rebuke
The folly of repining.

Each night is followed by the day,
Each storm by fairer weather,
While all the works of nature sing

Their psalms of joy together.
Then learn, O, heart, the song of hope;
Cease, soul, thy thankless sorrow;
For though the clouds be dark to-day,
The sun shall shine to-morrow.
Learn well from bird, and tree, and rill,
The sin of dark resentment,

And know the greatest gift of God
Is faith and sweet contentment.

VEILED HARMONIES.

SWEETER the songs forever unsung

Than the psalms which found their voices; Back of the thought which found a pen A happier thought rejoices; And the grandest wonders hide and sleep In the space profound of the voiceless deep. Nobler the landscapes unrevealed

Than those that have charmed our seeing; Greater the things as yet unborn

Than those that have found a being;
And the brightest glories bathed in light
Are the ghosts of grander veiled from sight.

Sweet are the echoes soft and clear,
But the soul of sound is sweeter;

Glad are the joys which break in smiles,
But the sealed ones are completer;
And back of the loves our idols win
Are the deep heart secrets sealed within.

A

AUGUSTA COOPER BRISTOL.

UGUSTA COOPER was born in 1835 in Craydon, N. H., and was the youngest of ten children. Her first verses were written at the age of eight, and she had poems published when only fifteen. She was precocious in mathematics and showed in her early life an aptitude for logical and philosophical reasoning. The better part of her education was acquired at a public school, but she was also a student at Canaan Union Academy and Kimball Union Academy. She began teaching at fifteen and was thus employed summer and winter for seven years.

At twenty-two years of age Miss Cooper married G. H. Kimball, a printer, from whom she was divorced five years later. In 1866 she married Louis Bristol, a lawyer of New Haven, Conn., and removed to southern Illinois. In 1869 she published a volume of poems, and in this year gave her first public lecture, which latter circumstance seems to have changed the course of her intellectual career.

In 1872 she moved to Vineland, N. J., her present residence, from which date she has been called more and more before the public as a platform 'speaker. For four years she was president of the Ladies' Social Science Class in Vineland, N. J., giving lessons from Spencer and Carey every month. In the winter of 1880 she gave a course of lectures before the New York Positivist Society on "The Evolution of Character," followed by another course under the auspices of the Woman's Social Science Club of that city. In the following June she was sent by parties in New York to study the Equitable Association of Labor and Capital at the Familistère, at Guise, in France, founded by M. Godin. She was also commissioned to represent the New York Positivist Societry at an international convention of liberal thinkers at Brussels in September. Remaining at the Familistère for three months, and giving a lecture on the "Scientific Basis of Morality" before the Brussels convention, she returned home and published the "Rules and Statutes" of the association at Guise. In 1881 she was chosen state lecturer of the Patrons of Husbandry in New Jersey, and in the autumn of the following year was employed on a national lecture bureau of that order.

Since her husband's decease, which occurred in December, 1882, Mrs. Bristol has appeared but seldom on the public platform. For the last two years she has been the national superintendent of the Labor and Capital Department in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.

As a poet Mrs. Bristol weaves her earnest thoughts and tender fancies together with a natural and easy grace. Her ideas are clothed in pure and womanly, as well as tuneful, words.

But Mrs. Bristol is better known as a speaker than as a writer. While she constructs fewer verses than formerly, she is, however, none the less a poet. She is a woman of medium height, and though not a blonde, she is of the type of woman called fair, with silken golden-brown hair and blue eyes. She has a fascinating personality, is not a mere rhapsodist, but is simply and naturally eloquent rather than rhetorical L. V. B.

THE "PIXIE."

SWEET child of April, I have found thy place
Of deep retirement; where the low swamp ferns
Curl upward from their sheaths, and lichens creep
Upon the fallen bough, and mosses dank
Deepen and brighten; where the ardent sun
Doth enter with restrained and chastened beam,
And the light cadence of the blue-bird's song
Doth falter in the cedar. There the spring
In quietude hath wrought the sweet surprise
And marvel of thy unobtrusive bloom.

Most perfect symbol of my dearest thought;
A thought so close and warm within my heart
No words can shape its secret, and no prayer
Can breathe its sacredness. Be thou my type,
And breathe to one who wanders here at dawn
The deep dvotion which, transcending speech,
Lights all the folded silence of my heart
As thy sweet beauty doth the shadow here.
So let thy clusters brighten, star on star
Of pink and white, about his ling'ring feet,
Till, dreaming and enchanted, there shall pass
Into his life the story that my soul

Hath given thee. So shall his will be stirred
To purest purpose and divinest deed,

And every hour be touched with grace and light.

HEART AZALEAS.

SOFTLY I slept in the green of my garden,
Sweetly I dreamed of the coming dawn;
Innocence waited as watcher and warden,
Keeping the curtain of mystery drawn.
But miracles came with the pulse of the morning
Into my being; I woke with a start;

The young tree of Love without budding or warning

Had suddenly sprung into bloom in the heart. Love's own azalea! Crimson azalea!

Wonderful bloom in the green of the heart!

177

Such an aurora of halo resplendent
Seemed to the world and the universe given!
Earth was enwrapt in a glory transcendent
Close in the tender embraces of Heaven.
Oh, I was brave in an ecstatic passion!
Ruler of Fate and creator of Art!
For Love is the empress of law and of fashion
When her red blossom unfolds in the heart.
Love's own azalea! Crimson azalea!
Wonderful bloom in the green of the heart!

Yet while I exulted and laughed in the morning, The beautiful blossom was touched with decay; Its death, like its advent, had come without warning

And stolen the charm of existence away. Oh, there was loneliness, darkness and sorrow! Faith lifted quickly her wing to depart! Hope had no promise or lease of to-morrow When the red bloom had dropped out of my

heart.

Love's own azalea! Crimson azalea! Blossoms but once in the green of the heart.

Then to the desolate places of spirit,
Toilers and helpers came in at my need;
Over the furrows of scorn and demerit
Angels were stooping to scatter the seed.
Oh, it was joy, after waiting and praying,

To feel the faint pulse of the buried seed start! And it was bliss worth the pain and delaying When a white bud opened out in my heart. Love's white azalea! Perfect azalea!

Slowly it grows into bloom in my heart.

Meanings that lurked in subtle concealment
Now to my purified vision are given;
Life is an earnest and sacred revealment;
Earth is the twilight that brightens to heaven;
Duty is Beauty in saintlier whiteness;

Truth is sublimer than Genius or Art;

And the specter of sorrow is crowned with a

brightness

As pure as the blossom that grows in my heart. Love's white azalea! Perfect azalea!

Slowly it grows into bloom in my heart.

Such an eternity opens before me:

Vision o'ermatching the pain and the cost! While Hope ever whispers that heaven will restore

me

The essence and soul of the blossom I lost. Time can not lessen and doubt can not smother The hope that my blossoms will each form a

part