Dear, balm is not for griefs like ours;
Nor resurection for dead hope:
In vain we cover wounds with flowers,
That grow upon life's western slope.
Their leaves tho' bright, are hard and dry,
They have no soft and healing dew;
The pansies of past spring-times lie
Dead in the shadow of the yew.

You feel this in your heart, and turn

To pace the dimness of your room; But lo, like fire within an urn,

The moonlight glows through all the gloom. It sooths you like a living touch,

And spite of the slow-falling tears, Sweet memories crowd with oh, so much, Of all that girlhood's time endears.

On nights like this, with such a moon,
Full shining in a wintry sky,

Or on the softer nights of June,

When fleecy clouds fled thought-like by, Within our chamber opening east,

With curtains from the window parted, With hands and cheeks together prest,

We dreamed youth's glowing dreams, lighthearted.

Or talked of that mysterious love

That comes like fate to every soul, And vowed to hold our lives above, Perchance its sorrowful control. Alas, the very vow we made,

To keep our lives from passion free, To wiser hearts well had betrayed Some future love's intensity.

How well that youthful vow was kept, Is written on a deathless pageVain all regrets, vain tears we've wept, The record lives from age to age. But one who "doeth all things well," Who made us differ from the throng, Has it within his heart to quell

This torturing pain of thirst, ere long.

And you, whose soul is all aglow

With fire Prometheus brought from heaven, Shall in some future surely know

Joys for which high desires are given. Not always in a restless pain

Shall beat your heart, or throb your brow; Not always shall you sigh in vain

For hope's fruition, hidden now.

Beloved, are your tear-drops dried?

The moon is riding high above:Though each from other 's parted wide, We have not parted early love. And tho' you never are forgot,

The moonrise in the east shall be The token that my evening thought Returns to home, and love and thee!

SOUVENIR.

You ask me, "Do you think of me?" Dear, thoughts of thee are like this river, Which pours itself into the sea,

Yet empties its own channel never.

All other thoughts are like this sail Drifting the river's surface over; They veer about with every gale—

The river keeps its course forever.

So deep and still, so strong and true, The current of my soul sets thee-ward, Thy river I, my ocean you,

And all myself am running seaward.

LOST AT SEA.

A FLEET set sail upon a summer sea: 'Tis now so long ago,

I look no more to see my ships come home; But in that fleet sailed all 'twas dear to me.

Ships never bore such precious freight as these, Please God, to any woe.

His world is wide, and they may ride the foam, Secure from danger, in some unknown seas.

But they have left me bankrupt on life's change;
And daily I bestow

Regretful tears upon the blank account,
And with myself my losses re-arrange.

Oh, mystic wind of fate, dost hold my dower
Where I may never know?

Of all my treasure ventured what amount
Will the sea send me in my parting hour!

RIVER.

Through deep ravine, through burning, barren plain,

Through wild and rocky strait,

Through forest dark, and mountain rent in twain, Toward the sunset gate.

—Sunset at Mouth of Columbia River.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

QUOTATIONS.

TENNYSON.

Poet, I come to touch thy lance with mine;
Not as a knight who on the listed field
Of tourney touched his adversary's shield
In token of defiance, but in sign
Of homage to the mastery, which is thine,

In English song; nor will I keep concealed,
And voiceless as a rivulet frost congealed,
My admiration for thy verse divine,
Not of the howling dervishers of song,

Who craze the brain with their delirious dance
Art thou, O sweet historian of the heart!
Therefore to thee the laurel-leaves belong,
To thee our love and our allegiance,
For thy allegiance to the poet's art.

Never stoops the soaring vulture
On his quarry in the desert,
On the sick or wounded bison,
But another vulture, watching
From his high aerial look-out,
Sees the downward plunge, and follows;
And a third pursues the second,
Coming from the invisible ether,
First a speck, and then a vulture,
Till the air is dark with pinions.
So disasters come not singly;
But as if they watched and waited,
Scanning one another's motions,
When the first descends, the others
Follow, follow, gathering flock-wise
Round their victim, sick and wounded,
First a shadow, then a sorrow,
Till the air is dark with anguish.

-The Light of Stars.

DESTINY.

ART.

-Ibid.

Art is the child of Nature; yes,
Her darling child, in whom we trace
The features of the mother's face,
Her aspect and her attitude,

All her majestic loveliness

Chastened and softened and subdued

Into a more attractive grace,

And with a human sense imbued.

He is the greatest artist, then,

Whether a pencil or a pen,

Who follows Nature. Never man,
As artist or as artisan,

Pursuing his own fantasies,

Can touch the human heart, or please

Or satisfy our nobler needs,

As he who sets his willing feet
In Nature's footprints, light and fleet
And follows fearless where she leads.

-Keramos.

Pride goeth forth on horseback grand and gay,
But cometh back on foot, and begs its way;
Fame is the fragrance of heroic deeds,
Of flowers of chivalry and not of weeds!
-Tales of a Wayside Inn.
JUNE.

Mine is the month of Roses; yes, and mine
The month of Marriages! All pleasant sights
And scents, the fragrance of the blossoming vine,
The foliage of the valleys and the heights;
Mine are the longest days, the loveliest nights;
The mower's scythe makes music to my ear;

I am the mother of all dear delights;
I am the fairest daughter of the year.

-The Poet's Calendar.

NIGHT.

The day is done, and the darkness Falls from the wings of Night,

As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in his flight.

-The Day is Done.

For there are moments in life, when the heart is so

full of emotion,

That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble

Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret,

Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together.

-The Courtship of Miles Standish.