WHAT LOVE IS. LOVE is the center and circumference; The cause and aim of all things-'tis the key To joy and sorrow, and the recompense For all the ills that have been, or may be. Love is as bitter as the dregs of sin. As sweet as clover-honey in its cell; Love is the password whereby souls get in To Heaven-the gate that leads, sometimes, to Hell. Love is the crown that glorifies; the curse And nothing can exist without its breath. Love is the impulse which directs the world, And all things know it and obey its power. Man, in the maelstrom of his passions whirled; The bee that takes the pollen to the flower; The earth, uplifting her bare, pulsing breast To fervent kisses of the amorous sun;— Each but obeys creative Love's behest, Which everywhere instinctively is done. Love is the only thing that pays for birth, Or makes death welcome. Oh, dear God above This beautiful but sad, perplexing earth, Pity the hearts that know-or know not-Love! IMPATIENCE. How can I wait until you come to me? The once fleet mornings linger by the way; Their sunny smiles touched with malicious glee At my unrest, they seem to pause and play Like truant children, while I sigh and say, How can I wait? How can I wait? Of old, the rapid hours How can I wait? The nights alone are kind; They reach forth to a future day, and bring Sweet dreams of you to people all my mind, And time speeds by on light and airy wing. I feast upon your face, I no more sing, How can I wait? THERE was a man, it was said one time; The sinner reformed, and the preacher told And the world strewed their pathway with blossoms a-bloom, Crying, "God bless lady and God bless groom!” In the golden dawn of life's young day. And she followed blindly where fond Love led. The woman repented and turned from her sin, The preacher prayed that she might be forgiven, A brave man wedded her, after all, But the world said, frowning, "We shall not call." WILL. THERE is no chance, no destiny, no fate, Can circumvent or hinder or control The firm resolve of a determined soul. Gifts count for nothing; will alone is great; LULAH RAGSDALE. UST after the closing of the late war, a solemn eyed baby in the ancient family mansion of the Clover Hill plantation in Copiah county, Miss issippi, attracted much attention from a wide circle of relatives and friends because of its peculiarly sorrowful advent, and because it had seemed to enter the world with a premonition of the bitterness of life. That baby, who never smiled, but whose constant, unusual sighs awoke pity and strange sympathy in all hearts, was Lulah Ragsdale, only child of the gallant Confederate officer, James L. Ragsdale, who had lately fallen in the battle field, leaving a brilliant and beautiful young wife, widowed and desolate, to whom the little one was born in the midst of bereavement. Lulah Ragsdale's rearing, and later her training and education thus became the mother's only solace, and no doubt, that mother, whose own heart had been so deeply lashed by sorrow, unconsciously did much towards developing and accentuating the fine, sensitive, imaginative characteristics of her daughter's mind. At an early age, Lulah Ragsdale became an unsatisfyable reader, always seeking the weird, the unreal, the mystic; or else, the vivid, the passionate, the glowing in prose and poetry. The characters in her favorite books became her best friends, and in the constant company of such unreal creatures as she most fancied, her thoughts, her manners and her conversation became very odd and unchildlike. At sixteen, Miss Ragsdale was graduated from the Whitworth College, Brookhaven, Miss., and though she had been for some years writing in secret, it was not until about three years ago that her first published poem, "My Love," appeared in the New Orleans Times-Democrat. It at once created a furore in the South, and was copied widely. Her "Galatea," "Upton Rey" and many other poems were stereotyped and reproduced throughout the United States. She lives in her magnolia-shadowed Southern home at Brookhaven, Miss., where she devotes nearly all of her time to her fancies and her writing. GALATEA. D. H J. I FOUND a woman white and pure and cold; So cold I said: "She has no human heart. A statue this, which some deft hand of old Cut from fair marble with a cunning art." Yet shone this chill, pale being's yellow hair Each chisled feature with no fault to mar. Her every chilling, scintillating grace, Was more to me than other's sunny beams. I went anear this woman, where, like stone, No threatening swords of Moslem hosts, CLARENCE A. BUSKIRK. LARENCE A. BUSKIRK was born in the CL pleasant little village of Friendship, in Allegany county, N. Y., on the 8th day of November, 1842. He enjoyed good educational opportunities, studied law, and entered the practice at Princeton, Gibson county, Ind., in 1866. He was a close student and won ready recognition in his chosen profession. He has made Princeton his home, with the exception of the four years from 1874 to 1878, when, as Attorney-General for the State, he resided in Indianapolis. He has been somewhat active in politics, and, prior to his election to the Attorney-Generalship was a member of the State legislature, chosen in 1872. But notwithstanding these preferments, he has not been in any sense a place-seeker, being more at home in the practice of his profession and in giving rein, as leisure has permitted, to his love for poetry. In addition to poetry he is deeply interested in the related pursuit of horticulture, and, in the practice of these favorite arts finds relaxation from the everyday routine of legal practice. Mr. Buskirk is endowed with a fine poetic tem. perament. As a poet he is painstaking and cautious and yet not to the extent of bridling in his muse or restraining her flights. He possesses a fine vein of humor that finds easy and natural expressions in his limpid verse. B. S. P. THE MESSIAH. THE true Messiah came to earth, He saw the strutting Cæsars pass, He saw the parasites of power, All as the insects of an hour, Or flitting shadows on the grass. He valued not what men most prized; The light of the Messiah's birth, Still as the centuries go by, Broadens its radiance round the earth. No frightful gifts on Pagan shrines, No awful menaces and signs, A SUNSET. A SINGLE Sunset hath more loveliness shapes Of wondrous grace, and airy gulfs and capes; And every instant splendors ever new NATURE'S BALM. A MAN among his fellow-men THE FLOWERS OF THOUGHT. THE Flowers of Thought, with their divine perfume, To clothe them in perrenial loveliness? That they outvie the splendor of the rose? Not fed by kisses of Arcadian stream;— |