X.

To thee, to thee, the songs of all my joy,
To thee the songs that wildly seem to bless,
And those that mind thee of a past caress
Lo! with a whisper to the Winged Boy
Who rules my fate, I will my strength employ
To make a maten-song of my distress.

XI.

But playing thus, and toying with the notes,
I half forget the cause I have to weep;
And, like a reaper in the realms of sleep,
I hear the bird of morning where he floats
High in the welkin, and in fairy boats

I see the minstrels sail upon the deep.
XII.

In mid-suspension of my leaping bow
I almost hear the silence of the night;
And, in my soul, I know the stars are bright
Because they love, and that they nightly glow
To make it clear that there is nought below,
And nought above, so fair as Love's delight.

XIII.

But shall I touch thy heart by speech alone,
Without Amiti? Shall I prove by words,
That hope is meant for men as well as birds;
That I would take a scorpion, or a stone,
In lieu of gold, and sacrifice a throne

To be the keeper of thy flocks and herds?

XIV.

Ah no, my Lady! though I sang to thee
With fuller voice than sings the nightingale-
Fuller and softer in the moonlight pale

Than lays of Keats, or Shelley, or the free
And fire-lipp'd Byron-there would come to me
No word of thine to thank me for the tale.

XV.

Thou would'st not heed. Thou would'st not anywhen,

In bower or grove-or in the holy nook Which shields thy bed-thou would'st not care to look

For thoughts of mine, though faithful in their ken As are the minds of England's fighting men

When they inscribe their names in Honor's book.

XVI.

Thou would'st not care to scan my face, and through

This face of mine, the soul, for scraps of thought. Yet 'tis a face that somewhere has been taught To smile in tears. Mine eyes are somewhat blue And quick to flash (if what I hear be true)

And dark, at times, as velvet newly wrought.

XVII.

But wilt thou own it? Wilt thou in the scroll
Of my sad life, perceive, as in a hive,
A thousand happy fancies that contrive
To seek thee out? Thy bosom is the goal
Of all my thoughts, and quick to thy control
They wend their way, elate to be alive.

XVIII.

But there is something I could never bring
My soul to compass. No! could I compel
Thy plighted troth, I would not have thee tell
A lie to God. I'll have no wedding-ring
With loveless hands around my neck to cling;
For this were worse than all the fires of hell.

XIX.

I would not take thee from a lover's lips,
Or from the rostrum of a roaring crowd,
Or from the memory of a hushand's shroud,
Or from a goblet where a Cæsar sips.

I would not touch thee with my finger tips,
But I would die to serve thee-and be proud.

XX.

And could I enter Heaven, and find therein,
In all the wide dominions of the air,
No trace of thee among the natives there,
I would not bide with them-No! not to win
A seraph's lyre-but I would sin a sin,
And free my soul, and seek thee otherwhere.
ERIC MACKAY.

FRANCIS S. SALTUS.

O, MASTERS! your sweet singer lieth here--
The lovely and unloved, the lone and lost;
His life's frail barque, on seas tumultous tossed.
Hath reached the heaven where the skies are clear.
All's well! Take ye thought, and shed no tear-
Ye that were blinded when his spirit crossed
Your songless world, and, counting not the cost.
Sang in the dark, to die when dawn was near!
When his heart hungered for your love, ye gave
Nothing. Now that his famished lips are dumb-
Lips that Love kissed not, though their kiss was

NOW AND EVER.

Ask what you will, my own and only love;

For to love's service true,

Your least wish sways me as from worlds above,

And I yield all to you

Who art the only she,

And in one girl all womanhood to me.

Yet some things e'en to thee I cannot yield,—
As that one gift by which

On the still morning on the woodside field
Thou mad'st existence rich,-

Who wast the only she,

And in one girl all womanhood to me.

We had talked long, and then a silence came; And in the topmost firs

To his nest a white dove floated like a flame, And my lips closed on hers

Who was the only she,

And in one girl all womanhood to me.

Since when, my heart lies by her heart-nor now Could I, 'twixt hers and mine,

Nor the most love-skilled angel choose; so thou In vain wouldst ask for thine,

Who art the only she,

And in one girl all womanhood to me.

ELIZABETH HENRY MILLER.

POEM.

Printed in the Fort Wayne Gazette, in 1878, after the death of the author by suicide.

O GENTLE death, bow down and sip

The soul that lingers on my lip;

O gentle death, bow down an keep

Eternal vigil o'er my sleep;

For I am weary and would rest
Forever on your loving breast.

I stood beneath a summer moon
All swollen to uncanny girth,
And hanging like the sun at noon
Above the center of the earth:
But with a sick and sallow light
As it had sickened of the night,
And fallen in a palid swoon.
Around me I could hear the rush
Of sullen winds an feel the whirr
Of unseen wings against me brush,
Like phantoms in a sepulcher.

A lawn unrolled beneath my feet
Bespangled o'er with flowers as sweet
To look upon as those that nod
Within the garden fields of God;
But odorless as those that blow
In ashes in the shades below.
And on my hearing fell a strain
Of gusty music, sadder yet
Than every whimper of regret

That sobbing utterance could form,

And patched with scraps of sound that seemed
Torn out of tunes that devils dreamed,

And pitched to such a piercing key
It stabbed the ear with agony.
And when at last it lulled and died,
I stood aghast and terrified,
And staring with a dazed surprise,
I saw a creature so divine
That never subtle thought of mine
May reproduce to inner sight
So fair a vision of delight.

A syllable of dew that drips
From out a lily's laughing lips
Could not be sweeter than the word

I listened to yet never heard.

For oh! the woman standing there
Within the shadow of her hair,
Spoke to me in an undertone
So delicate my soul alone
But understood it as a moan
Of some weak melody of wind
A heavenly breeze had left behind.

A tracery of trees grotesque Against the sky behind her seen Like shapeless shapes of arabesque Wro't in an oriental screen;

And, tall austere and statuesque

She loomed before it-e'en as tho'

The spirit hand of Angelo

Had chiseled her to life complete,

With chips of moonshine round her feet.

And I grew jealous of the dusk

To see it softly touch her face,
As lover-like in fond embrace,
It folded round her like a husk;
But when the glitter of her hand,
Like wasted glory, beckoned me,
My eyes grew blurred and dull and dim,
My vision failed—I could but see,

I could not stir-I could but stand,

Till, quivering in every limb,

I flung me prone as if to swim

The tide of grass whose waves of green Went rolling ocean-wide between

My helpless ship-wrecked heart and her
Who claimed me for a worshiper.
And, waiting thus in my despair,
I heard a wierd unearthly sound,
That seemed to lift me from the ground,
And hold me floating in the air.
I looked, and lo! I saw her brow
Above a harp within her hands-
A crown of blossoms on her brow,
And in her harp were twisted strands
Of silken starlight, rippling o'er
With music never heard before
By mortal ears; and at the strain
I felt my spirit snap its chain
And break away, and I could see
It as it turned and fled from me
To greet its mistress, where she smiled
To see the phantom dancing wild
And wizard-like before the spell
Her mystic fingers knew so well.
What is it? Who will rightly guess
If it brought but nothingness,
That dribbles from a wayward pen
To spatter in the eyes of men?
What matter? I will call it mine,
And I will take the changeling home
And bathe its face with morning shine
And comb it with a golden comb
Till every tangled tress of rhyme
Will fairer be than summer-time,

And I will nurse it on my knee
And dandle it beyond the clasp
Of hands that grip and hands that grasp
Through life and all eternity.

JAMES O'REILley.

SOLACE OF THE WOODS.

WOODS, waters, have a charm to soothe the ear, When common sounds have vexed it: when the day

Grows sultry, and the crowd is in thy way,
And working in thy soul much toil and care,
Betake thee to the forest: in the shade
Of pines, and by the side of purling streams
That prattle all their secrets in their dreams,
Unconscious of a listener-unafraid-

Thy soul shall feel their freshening and the truth,
Of nature then, reviving in thy heart,
Shall bring thee the best feelings of thy youth,
When in all natural joys thy joy had part,
Ere lucre and the narrowing toils of trade

Had turned thee to the thing thou wast not made.
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS.

CURRENT POEMS.

THE BANNER THAT WELCOMES THE
WORLD.

THE dawn of new ages is breaking,
The cycle of Concord has come;
There is peace in the echoing bugle,
And a festival march in the drum.
To-day the old Sandy Hook wakens
An echo that never will cease;

O'er the spot where the grand hero perished
The winds lift the banner of peace!

O flag of the Navesink Highlands That patriot bands gave the air, The joy that our bosom is thrilling,

The hearts of the ages shall share!

The war ships, the peace ships, shall hail thee,
The prows from the nations oppressed,
As thy iris gleams forth from the heaven
At the sentinelled gates of the West!

The eye of the immigrant mother

Shall long through the melting mist gaze, And turn into tears to behold thee,

And close in the silence of praise. The sky-piercing eye of the sailor

From afar shall thy sun ripples view; The tempest-tossed traveler returning Shall pledge his allegiance anew.

The skies of good-will bend above us,
The ocean beneath us rolls fair;
The chords of new harmonies move us,
What sayest thou, Seer of the air?

The west winds breathe low for thy message,
And wait it the waters impearled.

Speak, Flag of the ocean auroras,

Speak, banner that welcomes the world!

"O Liberty, thou who hast lifted

My eye to the walls of the sun,

I float for the new years of heaven,
The brotherhood conflict has won.
No longer for races contending,

But for man move the cycles sublime; The summons for peace is ascending From the jubilee trumpets of time!

"I salute ye, O feet that have followed Fair Hesper to destinies new.

I salute ye, O pioneers coming,
I bid ye, O voyagers, adieu!

And so this glimmering life at last recedes

In unknown, endless depths beyond recall; And what's the worth of all our ancient creeds, If here, at the end of ages, this is all— A white face floating in the whirling ball, A dead face plashing in the river reeds?

CHARLES EDWIN MARKHAM. -Californian Magazine, June, 1893.

THE LAST BATTLE.

THE noisy day was over; like a red rose tossed to the sky

Its petals floated out to the West, and a pale moon hung on high.

We lay in the sweet, white clover, half sorry, mayhap, half glad,

John and I together, and there was Stephen the lad.

We said not a word of the battle which drew anear with day,

Our thunder the musket's rattle, our rain was the bullet's play;

Face to face with Death forgot were a thousand ills,

For it was the last, long night of all, and home lay over the hills!

Home, which yearned and watched in more than one dear face,

To whom that bitterest absence had brought the tenderest grace,

And lying at rest in the clover, facing the waning light,

To-morrow held happiness only, and War was a dream of the night.

Then sudden I spoke my thought, “What eyes are of all most true?"

And Stephen, his young face turned to the stars, smilingly answered "Blue;"

"Ay" said John "you are right, boy, my all under heaven lies

In a pair that are waiting for me alone, the bluest and truest of eyes!

"I have her picture here safely hidden over my heart;

I'll show it to you to-morrow, boys, to-morrow before we part!"

And Stephen, he made no sign, but his hand lay over his breast,

And I knew he thought of the last sweet look of the blue eyes he loved best.

It was only a chance, light word, and seems still less to tell,

Yet I thought of it on that next, dread day in a shudder of shot and shell,

Strange, like the flash of a sword, when John fell down at my side;

Straight, as a mountain pine tree smitten by storm, he died.

We drew him out of the tumult, Stephen the lad and I,

Back in the sweet, white clover, his face to the

quiet sky,

And the boy all flushed with fervor, kneeling beside him said,

"Give me his musket; mine is gone; I'll fight for the bravest dead!"

His hand was on John's heart when sudden he leaned and gazed,

Then sprung to his feet with a cry as of anguish sore amazed;

Had a bullet pierced him too? Nay, then 'tis the body dies!

He saw but the face on the dead man's breast,— John's "bluest and truest of eyes."

Was it Stephen who looked through the smoke with a face like the face of the dead? Who laid his lips to the picture once, then back through the tumult sped?

In the din it seemed but a dream, and I left John lying apart

With the smiling, blue forget-me-not eyes of the pictured face on his heert.

Surely it was a dream, yet through all that horrible day

The stricken face of Stephen the lad was before my sight alway;

In the densest rout, in the broken ranks, in the smoking, blood-red air,

In danger's front, in the direst need, I found that young face there!

And found it again, as I knew I should, at the close of that daytime, when

The sunset flamed o'er a smoking pyre strewn with the hearts of men;

Upward turned, with a smile that it never in lifetime had,

With a light as of triumph upon its brow, was the face of Stephen the lad.

And I came on a mystery there, kneeling by him apart,

For the same fair face looked up from his breast That lay on John's brave heart;