In the gray of the winter morning, Sent up like a toy by a whistling boy, He reckoned it only a plaything- The box that had space, O Father of Grace! Twas only a shaller coffin, I placed it there by the poor wife's chair, And I thinks, "At last she'll weep." and cold and so light to hold— Then, moving with noiseless footfall, The little one's mug, and the china pug, With her own cold hands, my Mary stands I carried the plaything coffin, And she stood there at the head of the stair, So parson he comes in his nightgown. And earth had trust of the pinch of dust I was trying to guess the riddle I never could answer pat What the wisdom and love as is planning above And I'd got my foot on the doorstep. Shrill, wild, and clear, there tore on my car The sound of a maniac scream. The scream of a raving maniac, I listened and knew, the madness through, And up to the sky my wrestling cry I went to her room, and found her; She sat on the floor, poor soul! Two burning streaks on her death-pale cheeks, And eyes that were gleeds of coal. And now she would shriek and shudder, And now she would laugh aloud, And now for a while with an awful smile, And then, through the day and darkness, I sat at her side while she shrieked and cried, At last through the winder, morning And, faint but clear, to my straining ear I went to the door in wonder, And there, in the dawning day, All swaddled and bound in a bundle round, It lay on the frosty door-step, A peart little two-months' child; I grajuly growed aware As the Father in bliss had sent us this, In wonder and joy and worship, With tears that were soft and blest, I carried the mite, and, still and light, I laid it on Mary's breast. I didn't know how she'd take it, So goes on an artful track: "The little 'un cried for her mother's side, And then, I shall ne'er forget it, The eyes that were hard and vacant Grew wonderfully sweet and mild, As she cries, "Come, rest on your mother's breast, My own little hangel child!" And so from that hour my darling Grew happy and strong and well; And the joy that I felt as to God I knelt Is what I can noways tell. There's parties as sneers and tells you There's nothing but clouds up there; I answers 'em so: "There's a God, I know, And what if my Mary fancies The babe is a child of light Our own little dear sent back to us here? A friend has come to town; Don't mind for her nose nor changing her clo'es, But bring us the hangel down. ILLILEO. JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY. Illileo, the moonlight seemed lost across the valesThe stars but strewed the azure as an armor's scattered scales; The airs of night were quiet as the breath of silken sails, And all your words were sweeter than the notes of nightingales. Illileo Legardi, in the garden there alone, carved of stone, There came to me no murmur of the fountain's undertone So mystically, musically mellow as your own. You whispered low, Illileo-so low the leaves were mute, And the echoes faltered breathless in your voice's vain pursuit; And there died the distant dalliance of the serenader's lute: And I held you in my bosom as the husk may hold the fruit. Illileo, I listened. I believed you. In my bliss, What were all the worlds above me since I found you thus in this?— Let them reeling reach to win me-even Heaven I would miss, Grasping earthward!—I would cling here, though I clung by just a kiss. And blossoms should grow odorless-and lilies all aghast And I said the stars should slacken in their paces through the vast, Ere yet my loyalty should fail enduring to the last. So vowed I. It is written. It is changeless as the past. Illileo Legardi, in the shade your palace throws Like a cowl about the singer at your gilded porti COS, A man goes with the music that may vex the high repose Of a heart that fades and crumbles as the crimson of a rose. ASTARTE. ROBERT BULWER LYTTON. When the latest strife is lost, and all is done with, Ere we slumber in the spirit and the brain, We drowse back in dreams, to the days that life begun with, And their tender light returns to us again. I have cast away the tangle and the torment mant 'Neath their pressure, and the old wounds bleed afresh. I am touched again with shades of early sadness, Like the summer-cloud's light shadow in my hair; I am thrilled again with breaths of boyish glad ness, Like the scent of some last primrose on the air. And again she comes with all her silent graces, The lost woman of my youth, yet unpossessed; And her cold face, so unlike the other faces Of the women whose dead lips I since have pressed. The motion and the fragrance of her garments Seem about me, all the day long, in the room; And her face with its bewildering old endearments, Comes at night, between the curtains, in the gloom. When vain dreams are stirred with sighing, near the morning, To my own her phantom lips I feel approach; And her smile, at eve, breaks o'er me without warning From its speechless, pale, perpetual reproach. When life's dawning glimmer yet had all the tint there Of the orient, in the freshness of the grass (Ah, what feet since then have trodden out the print there!) Did her soft, her silent footsteps fall, and pass. They fell lightly, as the dew falls, 'mid ungathered Meadow flowers, and lightly lingered with the dew. But the dew is gone, the grass is dried 'and with. ered, And the traces of those steps have faded too. Other footsteps fall about me,-faint, uncertain, In the shadow of the world, as it recedes; Other forms peer through the half-uplifted curtain Of that mystery which hangs behind the creeds! What is gone, is gone forever. And new fashions May replace old forms which nothing can restore; But I turn from sighing back departed passions, With that pining at the bosom as of yore. I remember to have murmured, morn and even, "Though the earth dispart these earthlies, face from face, Yet the heavenlies shall surely join in heaven, For the spirit hath no bonds in time or space. |