SARAH HELEN WHITMAN.

Beside the brook and on the umbered meadow,

Where yellow fern-tufts fleck the faded ground, With folded lids beneath their palmy shadow,

The gentian nods, in dewy slumbers bound.

M

Upon those soft, fringed lids the bee sits brooding,

Like a fond lover loath to say farewell; Or, with shut wings, through silken folds intruding,

Creeps near her heart his drowsy tale to tell.

RS. SARAH HELEN WHITMAN was born

in Providence, R. I., in 1803, and died there, June 27, 1878. She was the daughter of Nicholas Power. She was married to John Whitman, a lawyer, of Boston, Mass., in 1828. She lived in Boston until her husband died, in 1833, when she returned to Providence. There she devoted herself to literature. In 1848 she became conditionally engaged to Edgar A. Poe, but she broke the engagement. They remained friends. She contributed essays, critical sketches and poems to magazines for many years. In 1853 she published a colleciion of her works entitled, “Hours of Life, and Other Poems.” In 1860 she published a volume entitled “Edger A. Poe and His Critics,” in which she defended him from harsh aspersions. She was the joint author with her sister, Miss Anna Marsh Power, of “Fairy Ballads,” “The Golden Ball,” “The Sleeping Beauty” and “Cinderella ” (1867). After her death a complete collection of her poems was published.

H. A. V.

The little birds upon the hill-side lonely

Flit noiselessly along from spray to spray, Silent as a sweet, wandering thought, that only

Shows its bright wings and softly glides away.

The scentless flowers, in the warm sunlight

dreaming, Forget to breathe their fullness of delight; And through the trancèd woods soft airs are

streaming Still as the dew-fall of the summer night.

So, in my heart, a sweet, unwonted feeling

Stirs, like the wind in ocean's hollow shell, Through all its secret chambers sadly stealing, Yet finds no words its mystic charm to tell.

A STILL DAY IN AUTUMN.

THE LAST FLOWERS.

I love to wander through the woodlands hoary,

In the soft gloom of an autumnal day, When Summer gathers up her robes of glory,

And, like a dream of beauty, glides away.

"The undying voice of that dead time, With its interminable chime, Rings on my spirit like a knell.”

How through each loved, familiar path she lingers,

Serenely smiling through the golden mist, Tinting the wild grape with her dewy fingers,

Till the cool emerald turns to amethyst;

Kindling the faint stars of the hazel, shining
To light the gloom of Autumn's mouldering

halls;
With hoary plumes the clematis entwining,

Where, o'er the rock, her withered garland falls.

Dost thou remember that Autumnal day

When by the Seekonk's lonely wave we stood, And marked the langor of repose that lay,

Softer than sleep, on valley, wave, and wood ? A trance of holy sadness seemed to lull

The charmed earth and circumambient air, And the low murmur of the leaves seemed full

Of a resigned and passionless despair. Though the warm breath of summer lingered still

In the lone paths where late her footsteps passe The pallid star-flowers on the purple hill

Sighed dreamily, “We are the last! the last!”

Warm lights are on the sleepy uplands waning

Beneath dark clouds along the horizon rolled, Till the slant sunbeams, through their fringes

raining, Bathe all the hills in melancholy gold.

I stood beside thee, and a dream of heaven

Around me like a golden halo fell! Then the bright veil of fantasy was riven, And my lips murmured, “Fare thee well!—fare

well!”

The moist winds breathe of crispèd leaves and

flowers, In the damp hollows of the woodland sown, Mingling the freshness of autumnal showers

With spicy airs from cedarn alleys blown.

I dared not listen to thy words, nor turn

To meet the mystic language of thine eyes, I only felt their power, and in the urn

Of memory, treasured their sweet rhapsodies.

We parted, then, forever,-and the hours

Of that bright day were gathered to the past, But, through long wintry nights, I heard the flowers,

Sigh dreamily, “We are the last! the last!"

Earth's long, long dream of martyrdom and pain;
No God in heaven to rend the welded chain
Of endless evolution!

Is this all ?
And mole-eyed “Science,” gloating over bones
The skulls of monkeys and the age of stones,
Blinks at the golden lamps that light the hall
Of dusty death, and answers:

" It is all."

SONNETS TO EDGAR ALLEN POE.

I.

ARBUTUS.

When first I looked into thy glorious eyes,

And saw, with their unearthly beauty pained, Heaven deepening within heaven, like the skies

Of autumn nights without a shadow stained,
I stood as one whom some strange dream enthralls;

For, far away, in some lost life divine,
Some land which every glorious dream recalls,

A spirit looked on me with eyes like thine.
E'en now, though death has veiled their starry light,
And closed their lids in his relentless night-
As some strange dream, remembered in a dream,
Again I see, in sleep, their tender beam;
Unfading hopes their cloudless azure fill,
Heaven deepening within heaven, serene and still.

II.

If thy sad heart, pining for human love,

In its earth solitude grew dark with fear,
Lest the high Sun of Heaven itself should prove

Powerless to save from that phantasmal sphere
Wherein thy spirit wandered—if the flowers
That pressed around thy feet, seemed but to

bloom In lone Gethsemanes, through starless hours,

When all, who loved, had left thee to thy doom:Oh, yet believe, that, in that hollow vale, Where thy soul lingers, waiting to attain So much of Heaven's sweet grace as shall avail

To lift its burden of remorseful pain, My soul shall meet thee and its Heaven forego Till God's great love, on both, one hope, one

Heaven bestow.

There's a flower that grows by the greenwood tree,
In its desolate beauty more dear to me
Than all that bask in the noontide beam
Through the long, bright summer by fount and

stream.
Like a pure hope nursed beneath sorrow's wing,
Its timid buds from the cold moss spring;
Their delicate hues like the pink sea-shell,
Or the shaded blush of the hyacinth's bell;
Their breath more sweet than the faint perfume
That breathes from the bridal orange-bloom.
It is not found by the garden wall,
It wreathes no brow in the festal hall;
But it dwells in the depths of the shadowy wood,
And shines, like a star, in the solitude.
Never did numbers its name prolong,
Ne'er hath it floated on wings of song;
Bard and minstrel have passed it by,
And left it, in silence and shade, to die.
But with joy to its cradle the wild bees come,
And praise its beauty with drony hum;
And children love, in the season of spring,
To watch for its earliest blossoming.

– The Trailing Arbutus.

INFANCY.
Ere youth with its auroral blooms
Dispels the tender twilight glooms
O Infancy, while yet it lies
Close to the gate of Paradise,
No fears the guileless bosom thrill;
The little stranger slumbers still,
O’ershadowed by the silent wings
Of angels, till the morning brings
Music and perfume, and around him flings
Her rosy mist-wreaths, drooping warm and low,
And prints her fragrant kisses on his brow.

- Morning

HOPE. Not all in vain the vision of your youth, The apocalypse of beauty and of love, The stag-like heart of hope. Life's mystic dream The soul shall yet interpret; to our prayer The Isis veil be listed. – A Hollow of the Hills.

SCIENCE.

While the dull Fates sit nodding at their loom,
Benumbed and drowsy with its ceaseless boom,
I hear, as in a dream, the monody
Of life's tumultuous, ever-ebbing sea;
The iron tramp of armies hurrying by
Forever and forever but to die.
The tradgedies of time, the dreary years,
The frantic carnival of hopes and fears,
The wild waltz-music wailing through the gloom,
The slow death-agonies, the yawning tomb,
The loved ones lost forever to our sight,
In the wide waste of chaos and old night;

LEWIS MORRIS.

DEAR LITTLE HAND.

B

Dear little hand that clasps my own,

Embrowned with toil and seamed with strife; Pink little fingers not yet grown To the poor strength of after-life

Dear little hand!

Dear little eyes which smile on mine

With the first peep of morning light; Now April-wet with tears, or fine With dews of pity, or laughing bright.

Dear little eyes!

Dear little voice, whose broken speech

All eloquent utterance can transcend; Sweet childish wisdom strong to reach A holier deep than love or friend;

Dear little voice!

Dear little life! my care to keep

From every spot and stain of sin; Sweet soul foredoomed, for joy or pain, To struggle and-which ? to fail or win?

Dread mystical life!

THE TREASURE OF HOPE.

OR in Carmarthen in 1833. Mr. Lewis Morris

was educated first at Cowbridge and Sherborne schools, and subsequently at Jesus College, Oxford. A learned scholar, a diligent student, he early attained the coveted honor of being placed in the first class in classics in the First Public Examination, in 1853. Two years later he was again placed in the first class in classics at the Final Examination. In 1858 he was awarded the Chancellor's Prize for the best English Essay. In the same year he took his degree of M. A., and in 1861 he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn, obtaining at that period a Certificate of Honor of the First Class. From this time forward till the year 1880, we find him practicing chiefly as a Conveyancing Counsel. In this year he was appointed on the Departmental Committee charged by the government to inquire into intermediate and higher education in Walesa post for which, by his deep and detailed knowledge of the educational deficiencies and requirements of that picturesque country, he was eminenlty qualified to lend very material and considerable assistance. Mr. Morris is, further, an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Honorary Secretary of the University College of Wales, a Knight of the Order of the Saviour of Greece, a Justice of the Peace for the County of Carmarthenshire, and Vice-Chairman of the Political Committee of the Reform Club. It was during the later years of his connection with the bar that Mr. Morris found time to set about the first of those classic contributions to poetic literature that have won him favor throughout the length and breadth of the land. Between the years 1871 and 1874 appeared three volumes of “Songs of Two Worlds,” now in their thirteenth edition. “The Epic of Hades,” stamps beyond all dispute its author's genius, belongs to a somewhat later period, and has already passed into its twenty-third edition. This was followed, in 1879, by “Gwen, a Drama in Monologue,” and “The Ode of Life,” both in their seventh edition. In 1883 came “Songs Unsung,” in 1886, “Syria,” a powerful drama of the Byzantine period, written for Miss Anderson, but, owing to the departure of that lady for America, not yet acted; and in 1887, “Songs of Britain," comprising Welsh legands of great beauty, which may one day become famous. All these, with the exception of the two last-named, were published anonymously as the productions of “A New Writer," and have only, within a comparatively recent period, made their appearance with the signature of their author.

F. A. H. E.

O Fair bird, singing in the woods,

To the rising and the setting sun, Does ever any throb of pain

Thrill through thee ere thy song be done: Because the summer fleets so fast;

Because the autumn fades so soon; Because the deadly winter treads

So closely on the steps of June?

O sweet maid, opening like a rose

In love's mysterious, honeyed air, Dost think sometimes the day will come

When thou shalt be no longer fair: When love will leave thee and pass on

To younger and to brighter eyes; And thou shalt live unloved, alone,

A dull life, only dowered with sighs ?

O brave youth, panting for the fight,

To conquer wrong and win thee fame, Dost see thyself grown old and spent,

And thine a still unhonored name: When all thy hopes have come to naught,

And all thy fair schemes droop and pine And wrong still lifts her hydra heads

To fall to stonger arms than thine?

One day, one day, our lives shall seem
Thin as a brief forgotten dream:
One day, our souls by life opprest,
Shall ask no other boon than rest.

And shall no hope nor longing come,
No memory of our former home,
No yearning for the loved, the dear
Dead lives that are no longer here?

It shall be well with thee indeed,
Whate'er thy grace, thy tongue, thy creed,
Thou shalt not lose thy fitting meed;

It shall be surely well.
Not, where, nor how, nor when we know,
Nor by what stages thou shalt grow;
We may but whisper faint and low,

“It shall be surely well.”
It shall be well with thee, oh, soul,
Tho' the heavens wither like a scroll;
Tho' sun and moon forget to roll, -

Oh, soul, it shall be well.

If this be age, and age no more Recall the hopes, the fears of yore, The dear dead mother's accent mild, The lisping of the little child,

Come, Death, and slay us ere the blood
Run slow, and turn our lives from good
For only in such memories we
Consent to linger and to be.

CELUM NON ANIMUM.