O, BIRDS, that sing such thankful psalms Your science of forgetting; You too have hours of sorrow; O, palms, that bow before the gale Teach us your yielding linked with strength, Your graceful art of bending; For there is strength in humble grace, O, brooks, which laugh all night, all day, Teach us your art of laughing still For every life has eddies deep And rapids fiercely dashing, Sometimes through gloomy caverns forced, O, trees, that stand in forest ranks, Teach us your firm and quiet strength, The grace of life and action; O, myriad forms of earth and air, Which make our landscapes glad and fair Teach us to learn the lessons hid In each familiar feature, Each night is followed by the day, And know the greatest gift of God 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; Sweet are the echoes soft and clear, Glad are the joys which break in smiles, dren. 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. AUGUSTA 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 Most perfect symbol of my dearest thought; Hath given thee. So shall his will be stirred And every hour be touched with grace and light. HEART AZALEAS. SOFTLY I slept in the green of my garden, 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 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, 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 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 Of the heaven that is coming, the one and the other, To open for aye in the angelic heart. Crimson azalea! Snowy azalea! Love has no loss in the angelic heart. THE BIRD-SONG. UPON the southern porch I sit And smile to see the summer come; I watch the July blossom turn I hear the drip of woodland springs, I feel the fingers of the breeze And think that touches such as these But most I marvel at a bird, That trills a wild and wondrous note; The sweetest sound that ever stirred A warbler's throat. He perches not in leafy nooks, But seeks a tree-top, gaunt and bare, That all the woodland overlooks, And warbles there. Incarnate melody! Serene He bides upon the summit high, Hides in the plumage of the bird And bids my human heart forego Earth's easy coverts, cool and green, The long-drawn aisles of pomp and show, Wealth's flower screen, And the poor words of worldly praise, With not a laurel leaf between The sunlight and my lifted eye, Or earthly shade to intervene 'Twixt soul and sky. EMMA HUNTINGTON NASON. RS. NASON is a native of Hallowell, Maine. Mshe is of stanch Puritan descent, her father, Samuel Huntington (a name not without distinguished representatives in other generations), being directly descended from Simon and Margaret Huntington, who emigrated from Norwich, England, to Massachusetts in 1639; while the family of the mother, Sally Mayo, was founded in this country in the same year by the Rev. John Mayo, one of the original settlers of Barnstable, Cape Cod, and first pastor of the second church, Boston. Mrs. Nason attended the Hallowell Academy for a time, and afterwards was gradutated from Kent's Hill, Maine. When only twelve years old she began to write in verse, and her poems were published in the Portland Transcript. For several years she wrote under the name of John G. Andrews, but was finally persuaded to appear under her own name. Since then she has been a frequent contributor to The Independent, The Churchman, The Commonwealth, etc., although she has been especially interested in writing for young people. Before the publication of her volume, “White Sails," she was chosen one of ten poets whose ballads, beautifully illustrated, appear in a volume entitled, "Children's Ballads from History and Folk Lore." Mrs. Nason is an enthusiastic student of German literature, being very fond of that language. Moreover she wields a brush with almost as much grace as she does the pen. She has a face in which do meet "sweet records, and promises as sweet.” In her dark eyes one sees "thought folded over thought." Hers is a face which must be very grave, indeed, in her hours of meditation when writing such a poem as "Simon the Cyrene." Yet she is an optimist, happily; a woman, too, whose lightest word and movement are stamped by refinement. K. V. THE BISHOP'S VISIT. TELL you about it? Of course I will! I thought 't would be dreadful to have him come, And made me unharness the parlor chairs, The house must be in order, you know. |