Page images
PDF
EPUB

It glows with the light

Of the love of my AnnieWith the thought of the light Of the eyes of my Annie.

ANNABEL LEE.

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of ANNABEL LEE;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea:

But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my ANNABEL LEE;

With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me—

Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE:

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling-my darling-my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

CHARLES F. MARKELL.

HE Markells of Maryland represent one of the

THE
Teldest and most distinguished families in the

Commonwealth, its lineage being traceable back to the sixteenth century. The house is of FrancoPrussian origin, and from an old parchment in the possession of the subject of this sketch it is learned that the name was primitively spelled Marc-kell and that its ancestry did honorable service in the armies of Frederick William I. of Prussia and Louis XV. of France. But the fires of patriotism which burned upon the hearthtsones of the father-land lost none of their lustre when transplanted to American soil and upon the military annals of the Revolution and and war of 1812 the name is found conspicuous in the cause of freedom and defense of liberty.

Charles Frederick Markell was born in Frederick City, Md., October 16th, 1855 and locating, at an early age, with his parents, in the South, received an academic and collegiate education, graduating in 1874. From the Law Department of the Columbian University, Washington D. C. he was graduated, before attaining his majority with the highest honors, in 1876, where his legal essay was awarded the first competitive prize of forty dollars in gold. He was admitted to practice at the Bar of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, and after making an extended tour of Europe, returned to his native city where he has since been engaged in the active prosecution of his profession. Mr. Markell represented his county in the Maryland Legislature in 1884, where he served upon some of the most important committees and won the reputation of being the most polished speaker of that body. For three years he owned and edited a daily Republican newspaper and, being a fine orator and thoroughly conversant with the political issues of the day has always been active upon the rostrum in the advocacy of his party faith.

Literary in his tastes and studious in his habits, he has devoted much of his leisure time to the mastering of modern languages, historical investigation and local and biographical sketching. In 1886 appeared a small volume entitled "Chamodine" a collection of Mr. Markell's poems designed only for circulation among his coterie of friends several selections from which received the warmest encomiums of one of America's most venerable poets. Possessed of an intense imagination, bordering upon the wierd and melancholy, he is endowed with a strange combination of strong dramatic instinct and delicious versatile humor, and no one listening to his sparkling passes in polemics, his apt response at repartee and vivacity of conversation, would suspect

or recognize the stratum of deep pathos and sad phase of his nature that reveals itself in all of his poetic writings. Mr. Markell was appointed by President Harrison, in July, 1892, Secretary of Legation at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. C. S. T.

MY LITTLE GIRL.

My little girl with flutt'ring heart
Creeps nestling to my bosom,
And trembles, as before the wind
The fragile spring-time blossom.

As some poor bird whose homeward wing
The cruel shot has riven,

She rests at last, dear frightened child,
And asks to be forgiven.

O precious one, could you but know
How void life is without thee;
How dull its sunshine and its fields,
You ne'er again would doubt me.
Then, dear girl, let my bosom be
Henceforth thy home and heaven;
The bitter past we'll both forget,
Forgiving and forgiven.

CATOCTIN.

ATHWART the grain-clad fields and meadows teeming,

Catoctin, old mountain, as thy shadows fall, They set my soul to throbbing and to dreaming, And close around me as a melancholy pall.

At morn thy moss-clad crown glints soft in glory,
When mellow dawn first casts its purple ray;
At noon thy peaks repeat thy silent story
And breathe again thy song at vesper's sway.

Upon thy grassy slopes the sunlight, vieing

With drifting clouds, weaves shadows all the day, Where bending gems in undried dews are lying

Till noontide wipes the tears of heaven away.

How oft thy brow, in hues of pearl and amber, Glows ere the lingering ray would say good night,

Or, bursting roseate from its eastern chamber,
It wraps thee in its soft seductive light.

Again, within the melting twilight fading,
As some sad spirit of the coming gloom;
Or genii in their silent watch parading,

Condemned to watch until the break of doom,

Thou risest, with thy dark and deep'ning shadow
Flung round thee as a cloak of blissful rest,
Upon the moor, the fallow and the meadow,
The sleeping hamlet and the river's breast.

Perched on thy craggy cliff the eagle gazing,
Scans the glad valley resting at thy feet.
Upon the upland sward, the cattle grazing,
Break the deep hush with lowing, softly sweet.

And, when they one by one, tired out with roaming, Wind slowly homeward through the dying light, Thy outlines pale, and melting in the gloaming, Blend in the sombre shadings of the night.

Through all the night the whip-poor-will is crying,
Its name the only burthen of its lay.
Within thy glens the wandering brook is sighing,
And sighing breathes its song and self away.

And now, when all is peace, and stars above me
Shine softly down, night winds make piteous

moan;

I come to thee, old mount, to say I love thee;
Love every tree, each rill, each path, each stone.

There was a time when shot and shell, Catoctin,
Bathed thee in floods of fire, of steel, of gore;
When every trembling crag and cliff was rocked in
The murderous belchings from Antietam's moor.

Many a limb and heart, grown tired of aching,
Succumbed to die within thy mossy glades;
Craving for rest, nor caring for the waking;
Their dust reposes 'neath thy guardian shades.

Although historic name of Harper's Ferry,
Of old South Mountain, and of Crampton's Gap,
Are told with thine in war's immortal story,
And place thee in the pale of glory's lap;

'Tis not for these, Catoctin, that I love thee;
Beneath thy shadows wont to play was I,
When life was bright as thy proud peak above me;
Beneath thy shadows may my ashes lie.

ONCE AGAIN.

ONCE again the leaves are falling,

Once again the Autumn's here. All day long the wind's been calling; Calling to the fading year. Once again the grassy mountain

Glints in blue and brown and gold; And the dreamy haze of Autumn Wraps it in its purple fold.

[blocks in formation]

C

CHARLOTTE FISKE BATES.

HARLOTTE FISKE BATES, was born in New York, 30th November, 1838. Her father died during her infancy, and her home, from the time she was in her eighth year almost up to her marriage was with her mother and family in Cambridge, the Cambridge which is not now on land or sea, inhabited by such a race of scholars and poets as her green elms shall not see again. Miss Bates attended the public schools of the town, and then engaged herself for twenty-five years in private teaching. She began to write at eighteen, and her first paid efforts appeared in the pages of Our Young Folks." There is extant but one volume of her verse, "Risk and Other Poems," issued in 1879, though she has much in manuscript awaiting publication, and contributes occassionally to the periodicals. She has made two compilations from the work of her friend, Longfellow, and to his memory was dedicated her last gift to the reader, "The Cambridge Book of Poetry and Song," a large critical collection of British and American verse bearing the date of 1882, to which its publishers gave a pretty, but too local name. It was arranged entirely by herself; all the laborious details, save only the indexes, are the outcome of one woman's unassisted energy, during a period of fifteen months, or rather, of such leisure as she could spare, meanwhile, from many pressing duties. Her life has been a busy and quiet one, diversified during her literature, teaching days in a celebrated school in her native city, by the tragic-comedy of her reported death which most readers will remember. Despite the impending doom declared one night, by the physicians, she survived a well-nigh fatal attack of pneumonia, so that the recording angel has no such entry as that which figures in Mr. Douglas Sladen's "Younger American Poets." As Don Adriano says, in his mischief, "the catastrophy is a nuptial." Miss Bates, a year and a half afterward, contracted a posthumous marriage with M. Adolphe-Edouard Rogé, of New York City, which is certainly in every sense, a marriage made in heaven. She has done much for good causes, in this world, especially for those connected with her art, and has proved herself, once at least, a successful organizer. Alone, and under difficulties, she carried out the author's reading in Sander's Theater, Cambridge, which added a loyal emphasis and a considerable sum to the Longfellow memorial fund, and which won the warmest thanks of its official leaders. She has given some admirable lectures and readings of her In the literary air of Boston, she has been a

own.

[blocks in formation]
« PreviousContinue »