Come forth, sweet stars, and comfort Heaven's heart;

Glimmer, ye waves, round else-unlighted sands; O Night, divorce our sun and sky apartNever our lips, our hands.

THE HARLEQUIN OF DREAMS.

Swift through some trap mine eyes have never found,

Dim-panelled in the painted scene of sleep,
Thou, giant Harlequin of Dreams, dost leap
Upon my spirit's stage. Then sight and sound,
Then space and time, then language, mete and bound,
And all familiar forms that firmly keep
Man's reason in the road, change faces, peep
Betwixt the legs, and mock the daily round.
Yet thou canst more than mock: sometimes my tears
At midnight break through bounden lids—a sign
Thou hast a heart; and oft thy little leaven
Of dream-taught wisdom works me bettered years.
In one night witch, saint, trickster, fool divine,
I think thou'rt Jester at the Court of Heaven!

FROM THE FLATS.

What heartache-ne'er a hill!
Inexorable, vapid, vague, and chill

The drear sand-levels drain my spirit low.
With one poor word they tell me all they know;
Whereat their stupid tongues, to tease my pain,
Do drawl it o'er again and o'er again.

They hurt my heart with griefs I cannot name:
Always the same, the same.

Nature hath no surprise,

No ambuscade of beauty, 'gainst mine eyes
From brake or lurking dell or deep defile;
No humors, frolic forms-this mile, that mile;
No rich reserves or happy-valley hopes
Beyond the bends of roads, the distant slopes.
Her fancy fails, her wild is all run tame:
Ever the same, the same.

Oh, might I through these tears

But glimpse some hill my Georgia high uprears,
Where white the quartz and pink the pebbles shine,
The hickory heavenward strives, the muscadine
Swings o'er the slope, the oak's far-falling shade
Darkens the dog-wood in the bottom glade,
And down the hollow from a ferny nook
Bright leaps a living brook!

Thomas Stephens Collier.

AMERICAN.

917

A native of New York city, born in 1842, Collier was left an orphan at six years of age. He took to the sea, and before he was sixteen had visited Africa, China, and Japan. He was in the United States Naval Service during the Rebellion, and visited China and the East a second time. On his return he became a resident of New London, Conn. His poems are marked by a progressive improvement, indicative of reserved power, yet undeveloped.

A WINDY EVENING.

The sun sank low; beyond the harbor bar
The waves ran white and high;
The reefed sails of a vessel showed afar
Against the gray-blue sky.

Sharp called the gulls, as 'mid the tossing spray They circled swift; and loud

The north wind roared, as it rushed down the bay, And rent the seaward cloud.

Past the old light-house, rising white and tall, Like birds the wind deceives,

Swept from the forest by the surging squall, Sail the sear autumn leaves.

Fast o'er the dark and foam-capped waves they fly,
Brown ghosts of May and June,

Seeking the ship tossed up along the sky
Beneath a thin, white moon.

Then as they sped on to the shadows gray,
The sun sank lower down,

Sending a golden light across the bay,
And through the dark old town.

It made the church spires glow with shifting light,
That slow grew faint and pale,

As it was borne into the coming night
By the swift rushing gale.

The shadows darkened, and along the sea
The swaying ship had flown;

The sun was gone; one bright star, glisteningly,
Near to the moon outshone.

Through crimson, flame, amber, and paling goid,
Faded the day's sweet light;

And on the sea and land gathered the cold
Gray shadows of the night.

A SEA ECHO.

The waves came moaning up the shore,
Came white with foam close to her feet,
And sang, "Your love will come no more
To give you kisses sweet."

The low wind sighed among the trees,
"Your love is sailing far away,
Where over bright, sun-lighted seas
Soft summer breezes play."

"O sighing wind! O moaning sea! You have no knowledge of my love; Where'er his ship doth sail, still he

To me will faithful prove:

While skies are blue, while stars are bright,
And waves come singing up the shore,

I know my lover will delight
In me, and love me more."

"And if your lover silent lies,

Where coral flowers around him grow, The love-light faded from his eyes, That once they used to know— If he no more can come to you, Where will your soul find joy and rest? What is your gain, if he is true

And loves you still the best ?"

"Ah, sea and wind, if he no more
Can come to me, I still shall hold
His love more precious than before;
No death can make love cold.
Why moan or cry? what use of tears?

Though long days make my eyes grow dim,
There comes an end to all the years-
And I can go to him."

John Payne.

Payne, born in England in 1843, has won some distinction by his graceful and musical but highly elaborate imitations of French forms of verse. He has published "The Masque of Shadows, and other Poems" (1870); "Intaglios: Sonnets" (1871); "Songs of Life and Death" (1872); "The Poems of Francis Villon done into English Verse in the Original Forms" (printed for private circulation); "Lautrec, a Poem;" "New Poems" (1880). The Westminster Review says of Payne: "He has succeeded in wedding thought to new music. He may not be popular with the 'blind multitude,' but he is sure to be so with all lovers of poetry both to-day and tomorrow." Some of the best of his imitations of French forms appeared in the London Athenæum.

RONDEAU REDOUBLE.

My day and night are in my lady's hand;
I have no other sunrise than her sight:
For me her favor glorifies the land;

Her anger darkens all the cheerful light;
Her face is fairer than the hawthorn white,
When all a-flower in May the hedge-rows stand:
Whilst she is kind I know of none affright;
My day and night are in my lady's hand.

All heaven in her glorious eyes is spanned:
Her smile is softer than the Summer night,
Gladder than daybreak on the Faery strand:
I have no other sunrise than her sight.
Her silver speech is like the singing flight
Of runnels rippling o'er the jewelled sand,
Her kiss a dream of delicate delight;
For me her favor glorifies the land.

What if the Winter slay the Summer bland! The gold sun in her hair burns ever bright: If she be sad, straightway all joy is banned; Her anger darkens all the cheerful light.

Come weal or woe, I am my lady's knight, And in her surface every ill withstand; Love is my lord, in all the world's despite, And holdeth in the hollow of his hand My day and night.

VILLANELLE.

The air is white with snow-flakes clinging; Between the gusts that come and go Methinks I hear the woodlark singing.

Methinks I see the primrose springing

On many a bank and hedge, although The air is white with snow-flakes clinging.

Surely the hands of Spring are flinging

Wood-scents to all the winds that blow: Methinks I hear the woodlark singing.

Methinks I see the swallow winging

Across the woodlands sad with snow; The air is white with snow-flakes clinging.

Was that the cuckoo's wood-chime swinging?
Was that the linnet fluting low?
Methinks I hear the woodlark singing.

Miss Preston is a native of Danvers, Mass. She has won distinction by her excellent translations of Provençal poetry, and is the author of "Aspendale," "Love in the Nineteenth Century," and several attractive magazine papers. She is also the translator of Frederick Mistral's "Mirèio" (1872); and in 1876 published a volume entitled "Troubadours and Trouvères, New and Old," from which we extract "Thirteen," after Theodore Aubanel, a modern Provençal poet-the poem being founded on the old superstition that in a dinner-party of thirteen one will die before a year is ended. In her original verses she has been equally successful.

THIRTEEN.

"Touch, for your life, no single viand costly!
Taste not a drop of liquor where it shines!
Be here but as the cat who lingers ghostly
About the flesh upon the spit and whines;
Ay, let the banquet freeze or perish wholly
Or ever a morsel pass your lips between!
For I have counted you, my comrades jolly,
Ye are thirteen, all told,-I say thirteen!"

"Well, what of that?" the messmates answered, lightly;

"So be it then! We are as well content! The longer table means, if we guess rightly,

Space for more jesters, broader merriment." ""Tis I will wake the wit and spice the folly! The haughtiest answer when I speak, I ween. And I have counted you, my comrades jolly! Ye are thirteen, all told,-I say thirteen!"

"So ho! thou thinkest then to quench our laughter?
Thou art a gloomy presence, verily!
We wager that we know what thou art after!
Come, theu, a drink! and bid thy vapors fly!
Thou shalt not taint us with thy melancholy"-

"Nay, 'tis not thirst gives me this haggard mien. Laugh to your hearts' content, my comrades jolly; Still I have counted, and ye are thirteen!"

"Who art thou then, thou kill-joy? What's thy nature,

And what thy name, and what thy business here?" "My name is Death! Observe my every feature! I waken longing and I carry fear. Sovereign am I of mourners and of jesters; Behind the living still I walk unseen, And evermore make one among the feasters When all their tale is told, and they thirteen.”

"Ha! art thou Death? I am well pleased to know thee,"

A gallant cried, and held his glass aloft; "Their scarecrow tales, O Death, small justice do

A native and resident of Providence, R. I., Miss Perry has published two volumes of poems: "After the Ball, and other Poems" (1876), and "Her Lover's Friend, and other Poems." David A. Wasson, a good critical judge, says of the last-named volume: "I recognize in some of these pieces a quality of literary production which is very uncommon, if it be not quite unique, in this country." Harriet Prescott Spofford, herself a poet, writes: "There is little art in Nora Perry's songs; they are as natural as a bird's. There are very few figures,