183

Stern destiny's grip must have slackened sooner

or late.

I am the tower of Belus! Can the story be written, "I was"?

Shall the tide of an ended existence flow back to the primal cause

Which sent it first into being, and records of age sublime

In utter nothingness vanish under the finger of time?

Hist! a jar in the ragged brickwork! it totters, and now is still;

I can feel the sand slow trickling with a cold, unearthly thrill;

Perchance but a stone is falling-perchance it is death's last throe

Ay! under the young moon's glitter I catch the roseate glow

Of the maiden's royal mantle; the clang of a mailed tread

Tells that the past has canceled its debt which held the dead.

He cometh with step triumphant! he readeth the fateful sign;

The last grim arch is shattered which linked their lot with mine.

Ah, fate, to the last relentless! thy vassal allegi

ance owns

Go back to your cities, O stranger! write, "Belus, a heap of stones."

WHITE SAILS.

Prelude

At dawn they sailed! a dancing, white-winged fleet; With freight of children's souls, sped to the sea, The waves, in-coming, dipped and smiled to meet Glad childish faces flushed with hope and glee; And soft winds blew, their untried sails to greet, While sea and air quivered with melody.

No swift "God speed" the happy voyagers lack; From them a song sweeps shoreward on the breeze;

And we, whose eyes but yesterday turned back,
Follow the wake of white-sailed argosies.
Nor cloud, nor storm, can dim the shining track
Across the harbor, left by ships like these.

HOME.

Oh! Love of Home! who clings to thee
Drifts not astray nor far!

Be thou, for aye, upon Life's sea
The children's guiding star!

-The Return of the Northmen.

THE

HU MAXWELL.

HE boyhood home of Hu Maxwell was far back among the Allegheny mountains in West Virginia, where the water wells pure from the earth, and the sky is serene above, and the greenness and the freshness of the primeval woodlands whisper to the soul of man, and "nature speaks with a myriad tongue that life is there." Beneath the hills, and among the forests, and by the brooks that played through the shadows, he spent his early years. It has been said of him that he never had any companions or playmates. He walked by the river, and climbed the mountains, and strolled through out-of-way places, and always alone. The rocks and rills, the leaves and trees, and flowers, and the whole inanimate world were his companions. That love of nature and that worship of the beautiful grew into his character and became himself. What he was as a boy he is

as a man.

His progress at school was discouraging. In fact there were few educational advantages in that rural country. At home he was surrounded by culture and refinement, for his parents were highly educated, but beyond his own home there was a deplorable illiteracy. His mother took his education under her special care, and instructed him in the primary branches and in algebra and Latin. A turn for mathematics was inherited from his father.

In course of time the poet entered college and at nineteen years of age graduated at the head of his class. He aspired to a cadet engineership in the navy, but was rejected on account of defective eyesight. He studied law, but soon saw that it did not suit him, and he quit it. For a short time he taught Latin and Greek in the St. George Academy. Having purchased a newspaper, he spent a time as editor, and in the meanwhile published in a volume of six hundred pages a history of his native county. This work has been pronounced a model of what a local history should be. Before his twenty-first year he had lectured on subjects of archæology. Twice before his twenty-fifth year he had been chosen poet of the West Virginia Press Association, and had been elected Mayor of his town. Before that time he had seen many parts of America, extending his travels to Mexico and California. He followed no beaten paths. His way was through forests and deserts and over mountains, and all the while his guiding spirit was that love of nature which developed in his early years. What to him as a boy was only a dream, he has realized; and strange lands, and islands of the

Pacific, and the forests of Spanish America, and the mountains on the frontiers of Alaska, have taken the place of the brooks, and woods, and hills of his boyhood. He travels alone, often passes days and weeks beyond the borders of civilization, spending the day searching for new things, and at night sleeping on the seashore, or in the desert, or in the crater of some extinct volcano, but always full of enthusiasm and hope. Still under thirty years of age, and with a constitution capable of withstanding any hardship or exposure, and with an energy invincible, his ambition to be a great traveler may be realized. To those not intimately acquainted with him he appears what he is notcold and distant in nature. His chosen friends are not many, but highly prized by him. He is an intense student of books and carries with him always some favorite author. Considering how much of his life has been spent in activity, few men of his years have read more extensively than he. He has studied the literatures of many languages, a few in the original, but more in translations.

He has written verse all his life and has contributed to various newspapers. In 1889 he published "Idyls of the Golden Shore," a small volume of poems, which was not well received by the critics. The faults pointed out were those of which he himself was conscious, principally due to haste and a lack of condensation. He writes too much to write the best. His ability undoubtedly lies more in prose than in verse, yet when he has taken time to write with care, his poetry shows no mean power. A. W. F.

THE CONQUEST.

WHEN you were alone this even,

Ada May,

Did you hear the soft winds whisper
In their play?

Did you hear them sighing, sighing,
O'er the withered roses lying
Where the butterflies were flying
All the day?

Zephyrs worship you and love you
More and more;
As you pass the flowers are bending
To adore.

Bluest blossoms bow before you,
Orange blossoms quiver o'er you,
Plead to kiss you and adore you
Evermore.

Truly you will not be cruel, Ada May!

You will let me hear you singing
Far away?

You'll not frown when I come nearer
So that I can hear you clearer,
If I'm quiet, dear and dearer
Ada May?

Ah, I know you will not chide me, For you know

That I came to hear you singing Soft and low.

And I came to sit beside you, Where the manzanitas hide you, And the breezes sweetly chide you As they blow.

Velvet fig-leaves cluster o'er us,
Ada May;

Cute blue quails are peeping at us
In their play;

And about us shadows shiver,
Blossoms o'er us quake and quiver
Like the sunlight on a river
Far away.

CALIFORNIA.

FAIR western realm that borders on the sea,
Kissed by the sun's last ray at eventide,
Full many a true, true heart has beat for thee,
Adored and loved thee with devoted pride.

I, too, although a stranger on thy shore, Would claim thee for a season as my own; Thou dream-like country, radiant evermore, No sun on fairer land has ever shone.

And I have loved thy valleys calm and still;
I've roamed at random o'er thy boundless plains;
I've lingered long on many and many a hill,
Where nature sleeps in peace and silence reigns.

Thy snow-white mountains rising to the sky
Have thronged my spirit with submissive dread,
Thrilled with the panorama wild and high,
Among creation's tombs of mighty dead.

And I have rested, there above the clouds,
On rocky crags wrapped in eternal snow,
While mists, like sailing ships with silver shrouds,
Swept white and wonderful afar below.

I've loved thy storms at times; for in the hour
Of tempests and tornadoes I can feel

A grandeur in the gloom of darkest power,
When thoughts rush forth too mighty to conceal.

185

Then, land of rapture, fairer and more bright Than other realms of earth, I came to thee, And loved thee; left thee, but thy summer light Will beam in splendor evermore for me.

BUENA VISTA.

YE summits of Sierras! I am here;

I pause, and westward look for the last time.
Beneath me far the rolling hills appear,
And farther down is Sacramento's clime,
Wrapped in the fullness of the spring sublime.
From southward, but beyond my vision's ken,
Flows the Joaquin, the grandest theme of rhyme
E'er touched upon by bard's poetic pen.

I bid ye all adieu, but I will come again.

My way is east across the continent,

To lands where angry winters rave and roar;
But, ere I turn, I pause in my intent
And look again on California's shore.
The more I linger here, I love thee more.
Those undulating hills and plains below,
To me they overthrong with legend lore,
And in time's mighty current rise and flow,
As mysteries and dreams from out the long ago.

Around about me lie the century snows,
The snows that I have seen from plains afar,
All glittering in the light that ever glows
In summer days when skies all azure are.
And here I am where thunders scathe and scar
The crags, and in deep echoes live and roll
In dread when winter drags his booming car.
And here I am! I feel my panting soul
Rise into ecstasy and throb beyond control.
The golden shore beneath me to the west,
Even in the distance beauteous more and more,
In verdure of the spring-time proudly dressed,
O beauteous, beauteous, beauteous Golden Shore!
To east I go where mountains cold and hoar
Frown o'er Nevada, gloomy, waste and drear;
But farther lands than these to wander o'er
Is now my task; the eastern plains appear.
Farewell, thou Golden Shore! The parting hour
is near!

SYMPATHY.

So a woman's deep existence turns to him who speaks of love

Turns to him who softly whispers words almost too low to hear;

But she knows the meaning, words are ne'er too low for woman's ear; [heart

Meaning never is too hidden for the wisdom of her To interpret love unspoken is a woman's native art. -The Bandit's Bride.

A

ANNA OLCOTT COMMELIN.

NNA OLCOTT COMMELIN was born in Brooklyn, N. Y., and has resided all her life in that city. She was educated at the Brooklyn Heights Seminary, of which the late Professor Alonzo Gray was principal. She has always been interested in literature and literary pursuits, having a special fondness for poetry. She contributed many poems to the Index, a Boston paper, and she has also written for the Open Court, the Christian Register, the Woman magazine. In 1889 Mrs. Commelin collected and published a small volume of her poems, and has received kind notes of appreciation from several eminent literary personages. M. W. O.

SPIRITS TWAIN.

THROUGH paths unfrequented,

All noiselessly, and as the lightning fleet,
By airy fancy or by sweet charm led,
We pass on winged feet.

By day aloft we soar,

Piercing the heaven's limitless blue dome,
By night its glittering starry splendors o'er,
Close, closer still we roam.

Then to the sapphire sea,
Where liquid emeralds and rubies glow,
Down into coral depths and treasures we
Close, close together go!

Sometimes a darker spell

From saddest memory lures us with its trend,
Past the dark cypress in the yew-tree dell,
Where over graves we bend.

We heed not bolt nor bar,
But enter at our will the palace gate,
With no credentials but as guests from far;
We neither stand nor wait.

We know no bound nor mete

In sky, in cloud, in sea, in air at home; On mountain peaks afar, with silent feet, O'er all the earth we roam.

Close, close, how close we cling! Nor marriage rite, nor thou, oh, child most dear! Nor friend, long-tried and ever true, can bring Soul unto soul so near.

How finely tuned are we!

We know true hearts below the forms of speech. Between no twain is subtle sympathy

Closer than love can teach.

Yes, where have we not been

FACES.

On land, on sea, on cloud or sunny sky?
What places dark, what spots so fair we've seen,
My thought, my thought and I!

WHEN SPRING-TIME COMETH ON.

WHEN Spring-time cometh on,
When the first wind-flower lifts its fragile head,
And purple violets faintest perfume shed,
And earth her robe shall don

Of emerald velvet sown with dots of gold,
Shall I thy face behold?

When Spring-time comes again,

When fruit trees deck themselves in bridal white,
And bush and shrub with living bloom are bright,
And the soft, gentle rain

Falls on the world and droppeth in the mere,
Wilt thou be here?

When Summer shall return,

With wealth of chestnut bloom and crown of flowers,

With hum of bee and bird and drowsy hours,
In her face shall I learn,

While all her glowing, ripened charm I see,
Aught yet of thee?

When Autumn shall have sway,
When golden-rod and purple aster show
In beauty where the maples deepest glow
And light with flame the way,

And barberries in coral shall appear,
Wilt thou be near?

When Winter draweth nigh

And wraps her ermine o'er earth's clay cold breast,

And every tree in jeweled sheen is drest,

If I for thee shall sigh,

Shall I, in home's familiar fire-lit place,

Behold thy face?

Through change of seasons told,

Through Spring with elm tree buds and tender

green,

And lavish Summer's pageantry of scene,

Through Autumn's red and gold, And Winter's frost and jeweled tracery, 'Twere vain, oh, Love, earth's fairest things to see Afar from thee.

Oh, Love! what guise soe'er

Thou takest, and in whom thy dwelling place, Albeit form unlovely, fair thy face!

Oh, gift of heaven rare,

Firer than light of day, than all things fair— Thou art beyond compare!

In the eye that lights to meet us and the face that smiles to greet us

Are the shadow of the future and the impress of the past;

And the cheek that in its dawning flushed as rosy as the morning

Shows the outline of its beauty as it fades away at last.

And the little children's faces-'mid their dimples are the traces

Of the maiden's glowing beauty and of manhood's brow of care;

And the prophecy of gladness, and the shadow of the sadness,

To the thoughtful eye that gazeth, are they lurking ever there.

But the faces that are nearest, and the faces that are dearest,

Are the true, the tender faces that our trust and loving win;

Then, when comes to them the shading, when the roses shall be fading,

Like the vase, with light illumined, shall we see the soul within.

MURILLO'S MAGDALENE.

I GAZE upon thy soul-lit eyes upturned,
And oft I marvel that Murillo's grace,
In holy thought and holy musing learned,
Conceived the wondrous beauty of thy face.
What glow of sacred genius in him burned?
No stain of earth upon thy brow I trace.
Was face of mortal ever seen so fair?

Was face of mortal ever seen so sweet?
Lies on thy neck, unbound, thy flowing hair,
Which dried, with golden threads, thy Master's
feet.

Methinks those eyes, which saw thy risen Lord,
Have held the glory in them everymore,
And high above all earthly thoughts they soar
To dwell in Heaven and see the things of God!

GEORGE ELIOT.

Back again across the ocean, wandering o'er the British Isles,

Through the fragrant English hedge-rows, where a

landscape fresh beguiles,

But we need not find her birthplace, yet to know her honored name,

Poet, author, wisest thinker, world-wide in her selfmade fame.

-A Woman's Choice.