379 YOUTH AND DEATH. WHAT hast thou done to this dear friend of mine, What power is thine, o'ermastering Love's own power? THE NEW COLLOSSUS. NOT like the brazen giant of Greek fame, The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" SUCCESS. OFT have I brooded on defeat and pain, LIFE AND ART. NOT while the fever of the blood is strong, THE UNDINES' DANCE. UPON the silver beach the undines dance Upon their virgin rites pale moonbeams glance. Print not the moist floor where they trip their round: Affrighted, they will scatter at a sound, Leap in their cool sea-chambers, nimbly fleet, And we shall doubt that we have ever seen, While our same eyes behold stray wreaths of mist, Shot with faint colors by the moon rays kissed, Floating snow-soft, snow-white, where these had been Already, look! the wave-washed sands are bare, And mocking laughter ripples through the air. ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD. E LIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD was born in Boston, Mass., August 31, 1844. Her father was Rev. Austin Phelps, professor of sacred rhetoric in Andover Theological Seminary. The family removed from Boston to Andover in 1848, and lived there until the death of Professor Phelps, in 1890. Professor Phelps was elected president of the seminary in 1869, and in Elizabeth 1879 he became professor emeritus. was a precocious, imaginative child, and her education was liberal and thorough. Her mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, was an author of note. After the death of her mother, in 1852, Miss Phelps, who had been christened with another name, took her mother's name in full. She began to publish sketches and stories in her thirteenth year and her literary work was mingled with charitable, temperance and general reform work. In 1876 she delivered a course of lectures in the Boston University. Her published works are "Ellen's Idol," (1864); "Up Hill," (1865); "The Tiny Series," (4 vols., 1866 to 1869); "The Gipsy Series,” (4 vols., 1866 | to 1869); "I Don't Know How," (1867); "The Gates Ajar," (20 editions in the first year, 1868); Men, Women and Ghosts," (1868); "Hedged In, (1870); "The Silent Partner," (1870); "The Frotty Book," (1870); "Frotty's Wedding Tour," (1873); "What to Wear," (1873); “Poetic Studies,” (1875); "The Story of Avis," (1877); "My Cousin and I,” (1879); "Old Maids' Paradise," (1879); "Sealed Orders," (1879); "Friends: A Duet," (1881); "Beyond the Gates," (1883); “Dr. Zay,” (1884); "The Gates Between," (1887); and "Jack the Fisherman," (1887). Besides her books, she has written many sketches, stories and poems for Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Youth's Companion, and other periodicals. Her most famous work is "The Gates Ajar," which has passed through many large editions in the United States and Great Britain, and was translated into several European languages. In October, 1888, she became the wife of Rev. Herbert D. Ward. Since then she has published "The Master of the Magicians," "Come Forth," and "Fourteen to One," a volume of stories. She is a slight, delicate woman, and her health is not strong. In the summer she and her husband live in East Gloucester, Mass., and in the winter their home is in Newton Highlands. Her productions throughout are marked by elevated spirit and thoughtfulness. She is interested in all philanthropic work. Her circle of readers is constantly growing. I. A. K. APPLE BLOSSOMS: I SIT beneath the apple-tree, You asked me once a little thing— Too short to bear the happiness That bounded through the day, That made the look of apple-blooms, And you and me and May! For long between us there had hung The mist of love's young doubt; Sweet, shy, uncertain, all the world Of trust and May burst out. I wore the flowers in my hair, Your heart with memories so small, Heart! yield up thy fruitless quest, Beneath the apple tree; Youth comes but once, love only once, And May but once to thee ! GALATEA. A MOMENT'S grace, Pygmalion! Let me be Remembered at his leisure, and forgot, Worshipped and worried, clasped and dropped at mood, Or soothed or gashed at mercy of his will, Oh, who, Foreknowing, ever chose a fate like this? Thine, thine I dare to be, in scorn of them; Pygmalion! Take me from my pedestal, ELAINE AND ELAINE. DEAD, she drifted to his feet. Oh! the river floweth deep. Fathoms deeper is her sleep. Oh! the current driveth strong. Wilder tides drive souls along. Drifting, though he loved her not, To the heart of Launcelot, Let her pass; it is her place. Death hath given her this grace. Let her pass; she resteth well. Mute the steersman; why, if he Speaketh not a work, should we? II. Dead, she drifteth to his feet. Living, he had loved her well. High as Heaven and deep as Hell. Yet that voyage she stayeth not. Wait you for her, Launcelot ? Oh! the river floweth fast. Who is justified at last? Locked her lips are. Hush! If she Sayeth nothing, how should we? AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT. FOR the faith that is not broken THE ROOM'S WIDTH. I THINK if I should cross the room, Far as fear; Should stand beside you like a thought Touch you, Dear! Like a fancy. To your sad heart It would seem That my vision passed and prayed you, Or my dream. Then you would look with lonely eyes— Lift your head And you would stir, and sigh, and say"She is dead." Baffled by death and love, I lean Through the gloom. O Lord of life! am I forbid To cross the room? ALL THE RIVERS. "ALL the rivers run into the sea." Like the pulsing of a river, The motion of a song, Wind the olden words along The tortuous turnings of my thoughts whenever I sit beside the sea. "All the rivers run into the sea." O you little leaping river, Laugh on beneath your breath! With a heart as deep as death, Strong stream, go patient, grave, and hasting never, I sit beside the sea. "All the rivers run into the sea." The striving of a soul? Upon the eternal shore. At last, whatever "All the rivers run into the sea." O thou bounding, burning river, Hurrying heart! I seem To know (so one knows in a dream) That in the waiting heart of God forever, Thou too shalt find the sea. LOVE. Though all the wine of life be lost, Try well the red grape's hue. Holy the soul that cannot taste The false love for the true. -Parted. GA DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. ABRIEL CHARLES DANTE ROSSETTI, poet and painter, and usually known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was the second child of Gabriele and Frances Rossetti, and was born in London on the 12th of May, 1828. When only five years old he distinguished himself from the childish crowd by actually writing down an attempt at dramatic composition. He cannot have been more than seven years of age when he was sent to the private school of the Rev. Mr. Paul, in Foley Street, London, for already, in 1835, his education appears to have been transferred to King's College School. Here he remained until 1843, having in the meantime written some verse, and shown a strong bent towards painting. A literary composition of his thirteenth or fourteenth year owes its preservation to the same cause as that which gave us his sister's early poems. "Sir Hugh the Heron: a Legendary Tale, in Four Parts," was privately printed by his grandfather in 1843. From the time of attaining his fourteenth year he was instructed in art at Cary's Art Academy (Bloomsbury) until 1846, when he entered the Antique School of the Royal Academy. The notable poems "My Sister's Sleep" and "The Blessed Damozel " were composed before he was nineteen years old, though not published till 1850. After quitting the schools of the Royal Academy, he became the pupil of Mr. Ford Madox Brown; but it was not till he left that artist's studio and took one jointly with Mr. Holman Hunt that he commenced his early picture, "The Girlhood of the Virgin," exhibited in 1849 at the Portland Gallery. He visited Antwerp, Bruges and Ghent in this early period of his career, and was greatly influenced by what he then saw of the work of Memling and Van Eyck; and about the same time he wrote " Hand and Soul," the most considerable piece in prose which he has left us. Shortly afterwards the celebrated Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, of which he was the leading spirit, was founded; and in 1850 Rossetti co-operated with his brother and sister and a small band of earnest young men in the issue of that extraordinary publication the Germ, the first organ of Pre-Raphaelitism. From that time until 1870 he worked on, practically unknown to the public either as artist or as poet, though familiar to a few as a genius in the foremost rank among contemporaries. The work of his pencil, eagerly acquired by private clients, came but rarely where the general public could see it, and while deeply influencing the tone and tendency of English art, he seems to have been content to remain, so to speak, a living tradition, except to his clients and intimates. In 1856 he contributed a few poems to the Germ's successor, the more lasting but yet short-lived Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, and in 1861 he published one of the most remarkable collections of poetic translations ever given to the world, "The Early Italian Poets, from Ciullo d'Alcamo to Dante Alighirri," a volume which includes a version of the "Vita Nuova." At that time he had by him a considerable collection of original poetry, on which he had bestowed that earnest thought and ceaseless revision characteristic of all his work; and of this poetry he now designed to offer the reading public a selection. In 1860 he had married Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, who died in February, 1862, suddenly, and in somewhat tragic circumstances. The greater part of the poems intended for the public, but then still in manuscript, he impulsively brought together and laid as a last offering in his wife's coffin, in which they were accordingly buried. In time, however, he let himself be persuaded to recall this seemingly irrevocable sacrifice, and eventually the precious manuscripts were exhumed and revised for publication. In 1870 appeared the volume entitled "Poems," which contains "Dante at Verona," Sister Helen," "The Burdens of Ninevah,” "Jenny," "A Last Confession," and many of the wonderful sonnets of "The House of Life," a volume which at once met with an acceptance as wide and warm as it was unprecedented in its suddenness. Of this volume he made more than one revision; in 1874 he republished his translations, "revised and re-arranged" under the new title of " 'Dante and His Circle," and in 1881 he issued a second collection of original poetry, entitled "Ballads and Sonnets," at the same time reediting the "Poems," and redistributing the contents of the two volumes. Shortly after the issue of this definitive edition of his poems, Rossetti's health, which had once before completely broken down, gave way, and after a few months all hope of its restoration was at an end. He died on Easter Sunday, 1882, at Westgate-on-Sea, and was buried in the neighboring churchyard of Birchington. H. B. F. THE BLESSED DAMOZEL. THE blessed damozel leaned out And the stars in her hair were seven. Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem, For service meetly worn; Herseemed she scarce has been a day Had counted as ten years. (To one, it is ten years of years. Yet now, and in this place, Surely she leaned o'er me-her hair Fell all about my face. . . Nothing: the autumn fall of leaves. The whole year sets apace.) It was the rampart of God's house By God built over the sheer depth So high, that looking downward thence It lies in Heaven, across the flood With flame and darkness ridge The void, as low as where this earth Spins like a fretful midge. Around her, lovers, newly met 'Mid deathless love's acclaims, Spoke evermore among themselves Their rapturous new names; And the souls mounting up to God Went by her like thin flames. And still she bowed herself and stooped The bar she leaned on warm, Along her bended arm. From the fixed place of Heaven she saw Time like a pulse shake fierce Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove Within the gulf to pierce Its path; and now she spoke as when The stars sang in their spheres. |