WHY?

I THROW One wild, long glance across the sea,

Then wistful eyes turn back o'er endless meads; Why, in this length and breadth, is there no place For us, dear love, and our few simple needs? Why is a word forever on my lips,

That leaps to life with every panting breath?
Yet search the earth as only love can search,
I see no way to solve it, save in-death.

BIRTH AND DEATH.

SCARCE do we meet ere we are told,

In the deepening gloom of day grown old, New paths to tread, our tents to fold; How soon Death's robe is round us rolled!

GOD'S ACRE.

ALL around me men are sleeping.

Not a man amongst them waketh,
Not a breath their slumber breaketh
As o'er them a watch I'm keeping.
Warm their couches are, and soft,

Not a sorrow haunts their slumber,
Not a pain can one soul number,
Though I've questioned them full oft.
The wood-dove sighs; the pine tree mourns;
Women weep; strong men are sobbing.
In the pulse of life that's throbbing
There is naught to cull but thorns.
Only here where watch I'm keeping
Finds the soul a peace unbroken
And a comfort all unspoken,
In the garden of the sleeping.

THE CHANT-ROYAL OF THE PINE-TREES. O FOR the voice of the forest, the chant-royal of the pine-trees;

My heart leaps to life just to hear it, the recurrent,

melodic, rushing,

Now near and now distant, now silent, the air in

its stillness oppressive,

Till the winds sweep again o'er the harp-strings, the pine-needles quiver and tremble,

And offer up incense balsamic. My spirit with intoxication,

Yields unto dreaming, and visions crowd swiftly through half-conscious brain-cells.

O life-giving soul of the pine-trees! thou'rt here in my dead balsam pillow

Yet thy soul disembodied restoreth; the dreams of the mountains and forests

Unloose me awhile from the thralldom of city walls close and confining,

And I sink into slumber refreshing, to the chantroyal of the pine-trees.

M

ANNA J. HAMILTON.

ISS HAMILTON was born on April 20, 1860. Descended on her mother's side from the old Kentucky family of Caldwells, and on the paternal side from the Hamiltons of Pennsylvania, she inherits the marked intellectual traits which distinguished her ancestors. Louisville, Ky., her birthplace, is still her home. Here she attended the public schools, and in 1878 graduated from the Louisville Female High School.

A student from her childhood, she grew to womanhood ardent in her love of study, and after her graduation, accepted a position as teacher in the Third Ward school, which she still occupies. Original in her methods, attention has been attracted to her work, and she has already become a leader among her colleagues. Teaching in both day and night schools, the time she has given to thought-voicing has been necessarily very limited.

As a pupil, her compositions were always noted for facility of expression and poetic fancy, yet not until 1885, while visiting the house of a friend in the country, was her first poem written. The two young ladies were discoursing sweet sounds with their violins, when both were charmed by one entrancing air. In answer to her friend's regret that the air had never been given words, Miss Hamilton in a few moments composed a poem to accompany the music. This was the beginning, and is a fair illustration of the manner in which her succeeding poems were written. Most of Miss Hamilton's poems have been published in the Louisville Courier-Journal. L. B. W.

PRAY HOW.

A ROSE says mildly, "I'm sweet, I'm sweet.'
The air sighs gently, "Pray how, pray how?
Send me thy fragrance to greet, to greet,
The truth I can then avow, avow."

A streamlet murmurs, "I cheer, I cheer."
Earth says eagerly, "Pray how, pray how?
Lend me thy waters so clear, so clear,

The truth I can then avow, avow."

A maid tells sweetly, "I love, I love!"

Her lover entreats, "Pray how, pray how? Give me your love, O my dove, my dove, The truth I can then avow, avow."

AT SET OF SUN. THE soft'ning twilight creeps apace, The after mood of stormful day, And close within its fond embrace The yielding shadows pass awaTM, At set of sun.

The heart's soft twilight creeps apace,

The after mood of stormful day, And hides within its calm embrace The pride that held imperial sway, At set of sun.

LINES TO THE MEMORY OF FATHER RYAN.

WANDERING down the aisle of years,

Thou hast sighed for rest-sweet restAnd prayed with earnest voice, with tears, For rest, sweet rest, O soul oppressed!

Doubly noble! Poet-Priest!

Thy earnest, pleading voice was heard, And thy soul in heaven doth feast;

Gladder thy song than that of bird.

Thou hast thy rest, O noble soul!

Thy spirit fled, by earth oppressed, And found a bright and welcome goal'Tis rest, sweet rest; 'tis rest, sweet rest!

Doubly noble! Poet-Priest!

Thy memory shall ever cling

In hearts whom fortune favored least-
Of thee they'll speak, thy praises sing.

As long as time shall last, I ween,
Thy living words shall ne'er depart;
Thy name shall be an evergreen
In every loyal Southern heart.

O soul oppressed! almost divine!

Now pulseless is thy throbbing breast; Thy work is done-reward is thine; Oppressed no more-thou hast sweet rest!

A PERFECT WOMAN.

A SCULPTOR to his friend did say,
"I'll lay a wager I can make
From this huge mass of shapeless clay
A perfect woman, sans mistake."

"I'll take you," was his friend's reply,
And soon the sculptor's work was done.
His friend gazed on with earnest eye,
And, with a smile, said, "I have won.

"Woman without a tongue, oh my!

I think you'll own that I have won."

The sculptor, smiling, made reply,

A perfect woman should have none."

HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN.

HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN is one of those

acquisitions from a foreign land by which our country is all the richer. He is a Scandinavian of the Scandinavians, having been born on September 23, 1848, at Fredricksvern, a small seaport town on the southern coast of Norway, where his father, an army officer, was stationed at the time. In 1854 his father went abroad, leaving his family with the maternal grandfather, Judge Hjorth, of Systrand, by whom young Boyesen was brought up, his mother dying when he was eleven years old. His chief characteristic in his boyhood days was a love of animals. He was the possessor of several hundred pigeons, besides numerous rabbits, dogs, cows and horses. When he first went to school he was extremely homesick, and the constant remembrance of his days of freedom in the picturesque region surrounding his beautiful home on the Sognefjord made it impossible for him to apply himself diligently to study, though his natural ability saved him from anything approaching real failure, and the praise he got for his compositions instigated him in time to more earnest endeavors in other directions. In his summer vacations he used to walk home, a distance of nearly two hundred miles, stopping by the way at the houses of the peasants, from whom he heard over again the legends to which, as a child, he frequently listened, when narrated by his grandfather's servants in his stolen visits to the kitchen. The observations he made in these journeys, supplemented by these legends, supplied the material for the description of Saeter life in "Gunnar."

In time Boyesen entered the University of Christiania, where his remarkable aptitude for learning foreign languages attracted the attention of his teachers, who urged him to devote himself to the study of philology. He was graduated in 1868, and at his father's earnest desire came to America, intending to return in a year. He traveled for about eight months through New England and the western states, arriving at Chicago in the beginning of 1870, where he became associate editor of a Norwegian paper, the Fremad. In September of the same year Mr. Boyesen accepted an invitation to become instructor in Latin and Greek in Urbana College, Ohio, chiefly for the opportunity it gave him to better acquire the English language. In 1873 he revisited Europe, spending most of his time at Leipsic in the study of comparative philology, passing some time in Norway, France and England on his way back to this country. After his return he resumed his professorship of German

And glints of sunny skies through dark leaves flashing,

And dimpling seas beneath a golden day,

Against the strand with soft susurrus plashing! And fair nude youths, with shouts and laughter, dashing

Along the shining beach in martial play,

And rearing'gainst the sky their snowy portals,
The temples of the glorious immortals!

Thus oft thou risest, Hellas, from my soul-
A vision of the happy vernal ages,

When men first strove to read life's mystic scroll,
But with the torch of joy lit up its pages;
When with untroubled front the cheerful sages
Serenely wandered toward their shadowy goal,

And praised the gods in dance of stately
measure,

And stooped to pluck the harmless bud of
pleasure.

Out of the darkness of the primal night,
Like as a dewy Delos from the ocean,
Thy glory rose-a birthplace for the bright

Sun-god of thought. And freedom, high devotion
And song sprung from the fount of pure emotion,
Bloomed in the footsteps of the God of light.
And Night shrank back before the joyous pæn,
And flushed with morning rolled the blue Ægean.

Then on Olympus reigned a beauteous throng; The heavens' wide arch by wrathful Zeus was shaken;

Fair Phoebus sped his radiant path along,

The darkling earth from happy sleep to waken; And wept when, by the timorous nymph forsaken, His passion breathing in complaining song; And kindled in the bard the sacred fire, And lured sweet music from the silent lyre.

Then teemed the earth with creatures glad and fair,

A calm and benignant god dwelt in each river, And through the rippling stream a naiad's bare White limbs would upward faintly flash and quiver;

Through prisoning bark the dryad's sigh would shiver,

Expiring softly on the languorus air;

And strange low notes, that scarce the blunt sense seizes,

Were zephyr voices whispering in the breezes. Chaste Artemis, who guides the lunar car,

The pale nocturnal vigils ever keeping, Sped through the silent space from star to star; And, blushing, stooped to kiss Endymion sleeping. And Psyche, on the lonely mountain weeping, Was clasped to Eros' heart and wandered far To brave dread Cerberus and the Stygian water, With that sweet, dauntless trust her love had taught her.

On Nature's ample, warmly throbbing breast, Both God, and man, and beast reposed securely; And in one large embrace she closely pressed

The sum of being, myriad-shaped but surely The self-same life; she saw the soul rise purely, Forever upward in its groping quest

For nobler forms; and knew in all creation
The same divinely passionate pulsation.

Thus rose the legends fair, which faintly light

The misty centuries with their pallid glimmer, Of fauns who roam on Mount Cithairon's height, Where through the leaves their sunburnt faces shimmer;

And in cool copses, where the day is dimmer, You hear the trampling of their herded flight; And see the tree-tops wave their progress after, And hear their shouts of wild, immortal laughter. The vast and foaming life, the fierce desire Which pulses hotly through the veins of Nature, Creative rapture and the breath of fire

Which in exalting blight and slay the creature; The forces seething 'neath each placid feature Of Nature's visage which our awe inspire,

All glow and throb with fervid hope and gladness
In Dionysus and his sacred madness.

Each year the lovely god with vine-wreathed brow
In dreamy transport roves the young earth over.
The faun that gayly swings the thyrsus bough,
The nymph, chased hotly by her satyr lover,
The roguish Cupids 'mid the flowers that hover,
All join his clamorous train, and upward now
Sweep storms of voices through the heavens

sonorous,

With gusts of song and dithyrambic chorus. But where great Nature guards her secret soul, Where viewless fountains hum in sylvan closes, There, leaned against a rugged oak tree's bole, Amid the rustling sedges, Pan reposes,

And round about the slumberous sunshine dozes, While from his pastoral pipe rise sounds of dole;

And through the stillness in the forest reigning,
One hears afar the shrill, sad notes complaining.
Thus, in the olden time, while yet the world
A vale of joy was, and a lovely wonder,
Men plucked the bud within its calyx curled,
Revered the still, sweet life that slept thereunder;
They did not tear the delicate thing asunder
To see its beauty wantonly unfurled,

They sat at Nature's feet with awed emotion,
Like children listening to the mighty ocean.

And thus they nobly grew to perfect bloom,
With gaze unclouded, in serene endeavor,
No fever-vision from beyond the tomb

Broke o'er their bright and sunlit pathway ever,
For gently as a kiss came death to sever
From spirit flesh, and to the realm of gloom

The pallid shades with fearless brow descended
To Hades, by the winged god attended.

Why sorrow, then, with vain petitions seek
The lofty gods in their abodes eternal?
To live is pleasant, and to be a Greek:

To see the earth in garments fresh and vernal,
To watch the fair youths in their sports diurnal,
To feel against your own a maid's warm cheek,
To see from sculptured shrines the smoke ascend-
ing,

And with the clouds and ether vaguely blending.

And sweet it is to hear the noble tongue,

Pure Attic Greek with soft precision spoken! And ah! to hear its liquid music flung,

In rocking chords and melodies unbroken, From Homer's stormy harp, the deathless token That Hellas' Titan soul is strong and young, Young as the spring that's past, whose name assuages

The gloom and sorrow of the sunless ages. Her fanes are shattered and her bards are dead, But, like a flame from ruins, leaps her glory Up from her sacred dust, its rays to shed

On alien skies of art and song and story. Her spirit, rising from her temples hoary, Through barren climes dispersed, has northward

fled;

As, though the flower be dead, its breath may hover,

A homeless fragrance sweet, the meadows over.

EGIL SCALD'S LAMENT.

STRANGELY, son, thou starest;

And thy sight is sunken;

Still thou art and silent,

As with slumber drunken:

Lo, thy lips are livid;

Loud erewhile their laughter! Shall I vainly listen

For thy voice hereafter?

Dumb thou art, and dampness,

In dark drops descending From thy brow is breaking,

With thy bright beard blending. Foam-flakes fleck thy forehead; Fixed thine eyes and frigid; And thy mighty frame is

Faint with frost and rigid.

Swift spreads slumber's shadow!

Speak ere strength foresake thee! Woe! my witless wailing

Never more will wake thee! Dead thou art, my darling;

Long the night before thee. Thou hast left thy father Lonely to deplore thee.

Bodvar! best beloved!

Of bold sons the boldest!

In thy hapless hand my

Life's snapped thread thou holdest. Swordless Death has sought thee Mid the sea-waves swelling;

Fain thy father follows

Thee to Hela's dwelling.

From thy birth's bright hour

Blessings bloomed around thee; Fast about my heart-roots

Wound, each fresh year found thee; On thy brave young boy-face

Glad my sight would linger, As thou fedst me lightly

With thy baby finger.

Oft I stood in spirit,

By strong sons surrounded; Whose sonorous saga

Through my soul resounded; Saw their fearless phalanx

Fame and fortune gatherSafe within their shield-burg I, their happy father!

Saw them swords unsheathing; Heard their armors' rattle; Saw them storming, shouting With the joy of battle: Bodvar foremost fighting,

Fair and fierce and glorious,

And his falchion flashing

In his path victorious.