The cattle wander home from the purple clover fields,

Where the bees are drunk with honey and perfume;

And my love trips on behind them, my meadow sweet that yields

Sweeter honey than the clover's purple bloom.

TO A WATER-LILY.

THOU naiant flower,

That liest so placid on yon crystal sheen, Thou pure of heart, the dower

Of Paradise serene!

White as the alabaster of God's throne, Thou Heaven's own!

That sealed the human on the brow divine, Redemption's genesis,

In thee combine

The sweet memorials of that tenderness,
Which, from unfathomed deeps,
O'er-reaching climbless steeps,

Bent low in love's caress,
And with supernal art,
Fashioned thy chaliced heart
For heavenly wine.

Blossom inımaculate!
Defenseless and alone;

Yet naught shall harm thee,

For angels arm thee

With their own strength confederate

In Heaven grown.

Thou lilied star

That floatest outward in the wind's unrest;
And yet not far,

For the returning crest
Bears thee upon its breast,
Sign of love's covenant,
A shining avatar

In resurrection radiant.

O, flower of Heaven!
O, nature's mystery!
Were it but given

To frail humanity

Thy wondrous birth to know,

How myriad hearts would glow,

And we should be,

As they who see

Beyond the sunrise and sunset's rim, One glorious face betwixt the cherubim.

Thou lily pure!

Thou shalt endure

The emblem of the soul's diviner life:

Of chastity, serenity,

And sacred immortality
Through earthly strife.

And, gazing on thy petals white,

Our hearts shall yearn to grow

As pure as thine, until the light
That shines with Heaven's glow
Shall fall upon them, and a hand,
Reaching across the strand,
Shall lift them from the lake of time,
And in a sunnier clime,

As lilies of eternity,

Where dew and light conspire,

Shall float them on the luminous sea

Of crystal mixed with fire.

M

WILLIAM CANTON.

R. CANTON was born in the island of Chusan, off the coast of China, in 1845, a specially exciting and interesting period of British history in the East. To the psycho-physiologist we leave it to conjecture how much of his future development was due to the circumstances of the time and to the strange scenes and stranger people associated with this eastern birthplace. By a startling freak of fortune we find him, still a child, spirited away from the far east to the far west. The early years of his boyhood were spent in the island of Jamaica, and among the most vivid of his boyish recollections are visions of the Blue Mountains-far away beyond which, he was told, there was a dear old England, where the ground in winter was covered with snow-and rambles up country in a tropical forest, beneath the high green arches and among the gnarled roots of which flowed a broad, shallow expanse of clear water, wherein he took his first rememberable bathe. He has since recognized with delight the brilliant pictures of these and kindred scenes in Michael Scott's admirable novel, "Tom Cringle's Log." Re-crossing the Atlantic, he was educated in France, and there he fell under the spell of that remote antiquity which has inspired some of the longest and most original of his poems. The occasion was a visit to a so-called Druidical cromlech in a corn-field on a hill-top overlooking a chain of swampy lakelets. The gloomy oak forests have vanished in smoke ages ago, and the blond Gaul with his golden torque had been replaced by the peasant in his blouse, but sufficient remained to set the youthful imagination in a blaze. As a rule, a poet's biography is divided into two portions-the story of his boyhood and the story of his poems; and in this instance it is only necessary to add that after some years of literary and educational work in England and Scotland he was appointed editor of the Glasgow Weekly Herald, and this was followed by promotion to a sub-editorship on the Glasgow Daily Herald.

That Mr. Canton is a prolifle writer is shown by the fact that, in addition to furnishing a very large and extended circle of the reading public with columns of matter, evincing the application to every subject of fullness of knowledge, aptness of illustration, and felicity of quotation, he has contributed to St. Paul's, Once a Week, Good Words, Scottish Church, All the Year Round, Cassell's Magazine, New Quarterly, Contemporary Review, etc. He is also the author of a three-volume novel and several novelettes that have appeared in the

AROUND the globe one wave from pole to pole
Rolled on, and found no shore to break its roll.
One awful water mirrored everywhere
The silent, blue, illimitable air,

And glassed in one same hour the midnight moon,
Sunrise and sunset and the sun at noon.

Beneath the noontide sun 'twas still as death,
Within the dawn no living thing drew breath.
Beneath the cold white moon the cold blue wave
Sealed with an icy hush the old world's grave.
But hark! upon the sunset's edge were heard,
Afar and faint, the cries of beast and bird.

Afar, between the sunset and the dark,
The lions had awakened in the Ark.
Across the great red splendor white wings flew,
Weary of wandering where no green leaf grew;
Weary of searching for that unfound shore
From which the Raven had returned no more.

And as the white wings labored slowly back,
And down the huge orb sank, a speck of black
Stood fluttering in the circle of the sun-
While the long billows, passing one by one,
Lifted and lowered in the crimson blaze
A dead queen of the old and evil days.

One gold-clasped arm lay beautiful and bare:
The gold of power gleamed in her floating hair;
Her jeweled raiment in the glassy swell
Glittered; and ever as she rose and fell,
And o'er his reddened claws the ripple broke,
The raven fluttered with uneasy croak.

413

How bright it was! No blossom trembled in the

hot blue noon,

And grasshoppers were thrilling all the drowsy heart of June!

O babe upon the bosom, O blossom on the tree!

And as I passed, the stridulous incessant jangleran Along the hedgerow following me, until my brain began

To mingle in a waking dream the baby at the breast,

The woman and the apple-bloom, the shrilly sounding pest,

To blend them with that great green age of trees which never shed

A bell of gold or purple or a petal of white or red, When all the music of the world-a world too young to sing

Was such a piercing riot made by such an insect wing.

O babe upon the bosom, O blossom on the tree!

And then I thought of all the ages, all the waste of power,

That went to tinge one pulpy fruit, to flush one little flower;

And just in this same wise, I mused, the Human too must grow

Through waste of life, through blood and tears, through centuries of woe,

To reach the perfect flower and fruit; for Nature

does not scan,

More than the individual tree, the individual man; A myriad blossoms shall be lavished, if but one

shall give

The onward impulse to the thought that Nature means to live.

O babe upon the bosom, O blossom on the tree!

O fair young mother, far removed from visions of unrest,

Be happy in the baby blossom flushing at thy breast!

The blesseder condition thine, that thou canst

never see

The strife, the cruel waste, the cyclic growth in man and tree;

That thou canst trust a heart, more kind than ever Nature shows,

Will gather each baby bloom that falls, will cherish each that blows;

Can'st need no solace from the faith, that since the world began

The Brute had reached the Human through the martyrdom of man.

O babe upon the bosom, O blossom on the tree!

MORNING.

Он, glad and red, the light of morn
Across the field of battle broke,
And showed the waste of trampled corn
And smouldering farmsteads wrapped in
smoke;

And cold and stark the soldier lay,
Shot down beside his shattered gun;
And grimly splashed with blood and clay,
His face looked ghastly in the sun.

Oh, glad and red, the morning shone
In happy England far away,
Where knelt a bright-haired little one
Beside her mother's knee to pray;
And prompting each fond faltering word,
The soldier's wife was glad and smiled-
She knew not 'twas a widow heard
The prattle of an orphan child.

Oh, glad and red, oh, glad and red

The morning light glowed everywhere; And one beam touched the father dead, And one the child who knelt in prayer; And from the trampled corn and clay

A skylark sprang with joyous breastFor shot and shell had spared that day Its four brown eggs and little nest.

TWO LIVES.

AMONG the lonely hills they played: No other bairns they ever knew;

A little lad, a little maid,

In sweet companionship they grew.

They played among the ferns and rocks

A childish comedy of life

Kept house and milked the crimson docks, And called each other man and wife.

They went to school; they used to go With arms about each other laid; Their flaxen heads, in rain or snow, Were sheltered by a single plaid.

And so, and so it came to pass

They loved each other ere they knew; His heart was like a blade o' grass,

And hers was like its drap o' dew.

The years went by; the changeful years Brought larger life and toil for life; They parted in the dusk with tears, They called each other man and wife.

They married-she another man,
And he in time another maid;
The story ends as it began-
Among the lonely hills-they played!

DAY-DREAMS.

BROAD August burns in milky skies,
The world is blanched with hazy heat;
The vast green pastures, even, lies

Too hot and bright for eyes and feet.

Amid the grassy levels rears

The sycamore against the sun
The dark boughs of a hundred years,
The emerald foliage of one.

Lulled in a dream of shade and sheen,
Within the clement twilight thrown
By that great cloud of floating green,
A horse is standing still as stone.

He stirs nor head nor hoof, although

The grass is fresh beneath the branch; His tail alone swings to and fro

In graceful curves from haunch to haunch.

He stands quite lost, indifferent

To rack or pasture, trace or reign; He feels the vaguely sweet content Of perfect sloth in limb and brain.

BIRTH AND DEATH.

SHE came to us in storm and snow-
The little one we held so dear-

And all the world was full of woe,

And war and famine plagued the year;

And ships were wrecked and fields were drowned, And thousands died for lack of bread;

In such a troubled time we found

That sweet mouth to be kissed and fed.

But oh, we were a happy pair,
Through all the war and want and woe;
Though not a heart appeared to care,
And no one even seemed to know.

She left us in the bright increase

Of glowing fruit and ripening corn, When all the nations were at peace, And plenty held a brimming hornWhen we at last were well to do,

And life was sweet, and earth was gay;

In that glad time of cloudless blue
Our little darling passed away.

And, oh! we were a wretched pair

In all the gladness and the glow; And not a heart appeared to care, And no one even seemed to know.

LAUS INFANTIUM.

In praise of little children I will say
God first made man, then found a better way
For woman, but his third way was the best.
Of all created things the loveliest

And most divine are children. Nothing here
Can be to us more gracious or more dear.

And though when God saw all his works were good,
There was no rosy flower of babyhood,
'Twas said of children in a later day

That none could enter heaven save such as they.

The earth which feels the flowering of a thorn,
Was glad, O little child, when you were born;
The earth, which thrills when skylarks scale the
blue,

Soared up itself to God's own heaven in you;
And Heaven, which loves to lean down and to glass
Its beauty in each dewdrop on the grass-
Heaven laughed to find your face so pure and fair,
And left, O little child, its reflex there!

AN APRIL GRIEF.

WITH little breast that wildly heaved,
With streaming eyes and hair uncurled,
She sat and sobbed, as if she grieved
For all the woes of all the world.

A sudden pause! She raised her head
In puzzled thought, and still a tear
Hung, like a dewdrop, as she said:
"Why was I crying, mamma dear?”
"Because I took poor Pussy's part."
Then all the woes beneath the skies
Once more convulsed that little heart
And rained from those despairing eyes!

Oh, never in the coming years,

My darling, may it be your lot To know a grief too deep for tears, Or one that cannot be forgot!

ACTION.

Insatiable, we know not what we would, We would not what we know!

The best of life

Is action-not the dream of action, thought.

-Comfort on Pelion.

415

Α'

ADA LANGWORTHY COLLIER.

In

DA LANGWORTHY was born on the 23d of December, 1843, in the first frame house ever built in Iowa. Her father, a man of New England race, was among the very first to explore the lead regions of Iowa, and found the city of Dubuque. Her mother was a beautiful and stately lady of an old Baltimore family. None of the hardships and privations that we associate with pioneer life were known to the little Ada. The lead mines were a source of wealth to her father and his brothers, and soon a group of spacious brick mansions arose on a beautiful bluff above the city, wherein dwelt the various Langworthy households. one of these Ada grew up, a strong, vigorous, attractive child. In early girlhood she was for a time a pupil in an excellent girl's school taught by Miss Catharine Beecher in Dubuque. Afterward she went to Lasell Seminary, at Auburndale, Mass. Having always found she could accomplish anything she chose to undertake, she now thought she could do the last two years' work in one year-and had nearly succeeded-when she was struck down by brain fever. In spite of this, she graduated in 1861, at the early age of seventeen. In 1868 she was married to Mr. Robert Collier, and has since lived in the pleasant home where she has ever since dispensed a gracious hospitality. She has one son, a fine young collegian of twenty-one, so that she has not missed the crowning experience of womanhood; nor has she been so occupied with maternal cares as to leave no time for literary work. She began writing for periodicals in her girlhood. She is the author of many sketches, tales and short poems, of several novels, and of one long narrative poem, "Lilith." The latter, published in book form in 1885, is indisputably her greatest work; nor can there be any doubt that she should be accounted a poet rather than a novelist. There is nothing morbid or odd about Mrs. Collier. She is a wholesome, handsome, generous, high-souled and high-spirited woman; one of those whose very presence brings with it health, happiness and hope. MRS. C. C. S.

HIGH, HIGH, BOLD EAGLE, SOAR.
HIGH, high, bold Eagle, soar;

I watch thy flight above the cragged rock.
Below thee torrents roar,
Down-bursting wild with angry shock

Upon the vales. O proud bird, free!
My spirit, mounting, follows thee,
Still follows thee, still follows thee.

O Sea, O Sea so wide!

Far roll thy waves ere yet they find thy shore. I hear thy sullen tide

Break 'neath the beetling cliffs with muffled roar. Afar, afar, O moaning Sea,

My roving soul still follows thee.

O Whirlwind black, O strong!

Thy scorching breath fierce burns the crouching land,

And thou dost sweep along
The raveled clouds. O Whirlwind, see,

My spirit rising, follows thee,
Still follows thee, still follows thee.

Nay, nay! My dauntless soul,
Still higher than thy wing, O Eagle, soars,
And wider still than roll

Thy waves, and farther than thy shores,
My spirit flees-O Sea, O Sea,
No more it follows, follows thee.

Whirlwind, more strong than thou My soul, that fearless leaps to thine embrace, And thy stern, wrinkled brow

Doth tender touch and soothingly,

And vassal art thou still to me,
That no more, Whirlwind, follows thee.
-Lilith.

AH, LINGER NO LONGER.

AH, linger no longer 'mong blooms of the mangoes, Nor pluck the bright shells by the low sighing sea, Swift, swift through the groves of the palms and acacias

Comes Lilith, the childless one, seeking for thee. She will bind thee so fast in her yellow-gold hairAh, hasten, my children, of Lilith beware!

Cold, cold are her cheeks as the spray of the wild sea,

Red, red are her lips as the pomegranate's bloom; Cold, cold are the kisses the phantom will give thee, Ah, cruel her kisses, that smell of the tomb. Hist, hist! 'tis the sorceress with yellow-gold hairOh! lullaby, baby-of Lilith beware.

She flies to the jungle, with false tales beguiling,

Ah, hear'st thou her elfin babes scream overhead! Close, close in her strong arms she bears my babe, smiling;

She hath sucked the soft bloom from the lips of my dead.

Now far speeds the vampire, with yellow-gold hairOh! lullaby, baby-of Lilith beware.