S.M. A. Pritt.

AFTER WINGS.

This was your butterfly, you see.
His fine wings made him vain ?—

The caterpillars crawl, but he

Pass'd them in rich disdain ?—

My pretty boy says, "Let him be

Only a worm again?”

Oh, child, when things have learned to wear
Wings once, they must be fain

To keep them always high and fair.
Think of the creeping pain

Which even a butterfly must bear
To be a worm again!

MY BABES IN THE WOOD.

I know a story, fairer, dimmer, sadder,

Than any story painted in your books.

You are so glad? It will not make you gladder;

Yet listen, with your pretty, restless looks.

"Is it a Fairy Story?"

Well, half fairy

At least it dates far back as fairies do, And seems to me as beautiful and airy; Yet half, perhaps the fairy half, is true.

You had a baby sister and a brother.

(Two very dainty people, rosily white, Each sweeter than all things except the other!) Older yet younger-gone from human sight!

And I, who loved them, and shall love them ever,
And think with yearning tears how each light hand
Crept toward bright bloom or berries—I shall never
Know how I lost them. Do you understand?

Poor slightly golden heads! I think I miss'd them
First in some dreamy, piteous, doubtful way;
But when and where with lingering lips I kiss'd them,
My gradual parting, I can never say.

Sometimes I fancy that they may have perish'd
In shadowy quiet of wet rocks and moss,
Near paths whose very pebbles I have cherish'd,
For their small sakes, since my most lovely loss.

I fancy, too, that they were softly cover'd

By robins, out of apple-flowers they knew,
Whose nursing wings in far home sunshine hover'd,
Before the timid world had dropp'd the dew.

Their names were-what yours are! At this you wonder. Their pictures are-your own, as you have seen;

And my bird-buried darlings, hidden under

Lost leaves-why, it is your dead selves I mean!

THE WITCH IN THE GLASS.

"My Mama says I must not pass Too near that glass;

She is afraid that I will see

A little witch that looks like me,
With a red, red mouth, to whisper low
The very thing I should not know!"

Alack for all your mother's care!
A bird of the air,

A wistful wind, or (I suppose

Sent by some hapless boy) a rose,

With breath too sweet, will whisper low The very thing you should not know!

A PRETTIER BOOK.

"He has a prettier book than this,"

With many a sob between, he said; Then left untouched the night's last kiss, And, sweet with sorrow, went to bed.

A prettier book his brother had?—
Yet wonder-pictures were in each.
The different colors made him sad;

The equal value-could I teach?

Ah, who is wiser? . . . Here we sit,

Around the world's great hearth, and look,

While Life's fire-shadows flash and flit,

Each wistful in another's book.

I see, through fierce and feverish tears,
Only a darkened hut in mine;
Yet in my brother's book appears
A palace where the torches shine.

A peasant, seeking bitter bread
From the unwilling earth to wring,
Is in my book; the wine is red,

There in my brother's, for the king.

A wedding, where each wedding-guest Has wedding garments on, in his,—

In mine one face in awful rest,

One coffin never shut, there is!

In his, on many a bridge of beams Between the faint moon and the grass, Dressed daintily in dews and dreams, The fleet midsummer fairies pass;

In mine unearthly mountains rise,
Unearthly waters foam and roll,
And stared at by its deathless eyes—
The master sells the fiend a soul!

Put out the lights. We will not look
We weep,

At pictures any more.

"My brother has a prettier book,"

And, after tears, we go to sleep.

The apple-trees with bloom are all aglow-
Soft drifts of perfumed light-

A miracle of mingled fire and snow-
A laugh of spring's delight!

Their ranks of creamy splendor pillow deep

The valley's pure repose;

On mossy walls, in meadow nooks, they heap

Surges of frosted rose.

Around old homesteads clustering thick, they shed

Their sweets to murm'ring bees,

And o'er hushed lanes and wayside fountains spread Their pictured canopies.

Green-breasted knolls and forest edges wear

Their beautiful array;

And lonesome graves are sheltered, here and there,

With their memorial spray.

The efflorescence on unnumbered boughs

Pants with delicious breath;

O'er me seem laughing eyes and fair, smooth brows,

And shapes too sweet for death.