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We cannot tell, but even now,

When mortals are asleep, Across her visage, fixed and pale, She hasteneth to draw a veil,

And only dares to peep,

But fears to bare her marble brow.

And only when the month has rolled
Right round upon its wheel,
Full cautiously, with anxious dread,
She lifts the shadow from her head,
One moment to reveal

Her glory, and her face unfold.

The stars that are her children dear,
And learning to be moons,
Hang out their little lamps to burn,
And quake and tremble in their turn,
Or fall in sudden swoons,
Infected by her grievous fear.

And though to watch the ways of men
Sun, moon, and stars are told,
The sun alone, with open stare,
Upon the guilty world doth dare

To cast his eye of gold,

And clouds enfold him even then.

Perchance One brooding o'er the land Of purpose willed it so,

And hath not been extreme to mark The crooked ways that in the dark His stumbling children go;

And even Cain shall have his brand.

And if the moon her secret keep
He may his brother find,
And kiss away the dreadful blue
That changed his body's goodly hue

By sudden stroke unkind,
And left him dead among his sheep.

Perchance at lifting of the lid

Of the resurrection day Sweet Abel, with his brother's hand Fast locked in his, shall meekly stand, And for that other pray,

Behold, he knew not what he did!"

And for the brightness of that Blood
That covers every stain,

The brothers two, in fields afar
United, may forget they are

The slayer and the slain,

And emulate each other's good.

NINA F. LAYARD. -Harper's Magazine, September, 1889.

THE POET.

HE's not alone an artist weak and white

O'er-bending scented paper, toying there With languid fancies fashioned deft and fair, Mere sops to time between the day and night. He is a poor torn soul who sees aright

How far he fails of living out of the rare
Night-visions God vouchsafes along the air;
Until the pain burns hot, beyond his might.

The heart-beat of the universal will

He hears, and, spite of blindness and disproof, Can sense amidst the jar a singing fine. Grief-smitten that his lyre should lack the skill To speak it plain, he plays in paths aloof, And knows the trend is starward, life divine. RICHARD E. BURTON.

-The Century, September, 1889.

THE GRAPEVINE SWING. WHEN I was a boy on the old plantation, Down by the deep bayou

The fairest spot of all creation,

Under the arching blue

When the wind came over the cotton and corn,
To the long slim loop I'd spring,

With brown feet bare, and a hat-brim torn,
And swing in the grapevine swing.

Swinging in the grapevine swing, Laughing where the wild birds sing

I dream and sigh

For the days gone by,

Swinging in the grapevine swing.

Out-o'er the water-lilies bonnie and bright,
Back to the moss-grown trees;

I shouted and laughed with a heart as light
As a wild rose tossed by the breeze.
The mocking-bird joined in my reckless glee,
I longed for no angel's wing;

I was just as near heaven as I wanted to be,
Swinging in the grapevine swing!

Swinging in the grapevine swing,

Laughing where the wild birds sing

Oh, to be a boy,

With a heart full of joy,

Swinging in the grapevine swing.

I'm weary at morn, I'm weary at night, I'm fretted and sore of heart;

And care is sowing my locks with white, As I wend through the fevered mart.

I'm tired of the world, with its pride and pomp

And fame seems a worthless thing;

I'd barter it all for one day's romp,
And a swing in the grapevine swing.

Swinging in the grapevine swing,
Laughing where the wild birds sing-
I would I were away

From the world to-day,
Swinging in the grapevine swing.

SAMUEL MINTURN PECK.

-New Orleans Times-Democrat.

SUMMER NIGHT.

ON all the outer world, a holy hush,

A soul-entrancing stillness, steeped in light
Of summer moon-rise, clear and purely bright;
After a day of toil and ceaseless rush,

From pallid morn to evening's fevered flush,
Softly descends the cooling breath of night;
In soothing cadence heard, though hid from sight,
The shallow river runs with rippling gush.

In outline clear against the star-lit sky

The high-roofed barn stands dark-the silent trees
Lifting their leafy, shadowy arms on high
Quiver- as dreaming of a swaying breeze;
Cool, dewy fragrance lingers faintly nigh,
A world at peace the lonely gazer sees.

HELEN FAIRBAIRN. -The Week, September 13, 1889.

UNCALENDARED.

ONLY a year have thou and I been friends,
If time be counted on our calendar;
Away with that! What it begins, it ends;
From all eternity, close souls we were,
And shall be, so God grant! forevermore,
For two were never faster bound before.

"With God, one day is as a thousand years:"
Oh, Love is mighty, God's most blessed name!
The more that man his Maker's image bears
The more must months and æons be the same.
Love knows not time.-It is eternity,
And not a year, that I count out with thee!
CHARLOTTE FISKE BATES.

- The Century, September, 1889.

POETRY.

PRIZE QUATRAINS.

FIRST PRIZE.

I.

She comes like the husht beauty of the night,
But sees too deep for laughter;

Her touch is a vibration and a light
From worlds before and after.
SECOND PRIZE.

2.

Oh, we who know thee know we know thee not, Thou Soul of Beauty, thou Essential Grace! Yet undeterr'd by baffled speech and thought, The heart stakes all upon thy hidden face. THIRD PRIZE.

3.

God placed a solid rock man's path across,

And bade him climb; but that it might not be Too rough, He wrapped it o'er with tender moss: The rock was Truth, the moss was Poetry. SPECIAL MENTION.

4.

'Tis the celestial body, in which bideth

The risen Truth-the form most fair and fit, Which doth reveal the soul, and nothing hideth, And the pure spirit doth illumine it.

5.

Paean of peace and ancient battle-song,

Love-lyric and pastoral voice thy varied art; Man and the universe to thee belong, Interpreter of Nature and the heart. 6.

When Eden's gate was barred, one winged wind Stole out, with the forbidden sweetness fraught; In Poetry it whispers to the mind

And is the fragrance and the flower of Thought. 7.

Vision, to see in all created things

The imprisoned soul thereof that stirs its wings
And voice, that can interpret with a song
The rhythmic passion of their flutterings.
8.

I am the great Amen, the Flower of Life,
Wherewith when God created me he signed
For blessedness, the conquest and the strife,
All rapture and all pain that men should find.

9.

The moon's spell on the wistful deep-
A young bird's call at hour of sleep-
A minor key within the music's strain-
The sound of wind amidst the Autumn rain.

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The Fount invisible whose overflow,

Murmurs divinely in the souls of men
The harmonies that never tongue nor pen
Hath yet made clear to him who does not know.
34.

We name thee not the Angel of the Tomb:
O'er that, vain-glory fleets, waning wrath:
God's light alone dispels the churchyard's gloom:
Yet whisperings hast thou with God's Daughter,
Faith.

35.

Her face and form I oft would try to trace

But the shy maid loves Freedom more than bars; Her home is in the boundless spirit-space

She flies away and soars among the stars.

36.

Faint memories of that olden, perfect speech
Of Eden, and a striving vain to reach
Once more its subtle, sovereign power, alike
The seraphim and serpent sense to strike.

37.

All arts in one; speech of the living skies; Outburst of wakened soul and worshipper; Flame of ignited minds, and Beauty's guise; Heaven's own revealer and interpreter!

38.

The symphony of the responsive shell,— The voiced beauty of his soul who hears, And to the lesser soul and duller ears Only the hollow murmur of a shell.

Thou hear'st the pang that speaks not o'er its breath:

Man's sister-confessor art thou-no more: Few see thy face full-fronted: seen it saith "Where Gods conversed stood beside the door."

40.

Once Echo showed to me her gentle face,
And once a Shadow spoke sweet words to me,
Then Shadow-music married Echo-grace,
And lo! their fairer child was Poetry.

41.

One spot of green, water'd by hidden streams,
Makes summer in the desert where it gleams;
And mortals gazing on thy heavenly face
Forget the woes of earth and share thy dreams.

42.

It is the speech that angels know,

By poets overheard,

The deepest thought by feeling's glow

To music softly stirred.

PRIZE AWARD.

For the best Quatrain (subject: Poetry) received by the editor on or before June 1, 1889, one hundred dollars. First prize, $50; second prize, $30; third prize, $20.

First prize won by Charles E. Markham, San José, Cal. Second prize won by Miss Katherine Lee Bates, Wellesley, Mass. Third prize won by Bert Ingliss (Miss Kate Goode) Boydton, Va.

Judges: Clinton Scollard, Charles Goodrich Whiting, Henry Abbey, J. Macdonald Oxley, and Nettie Leila Michel.

Number of poems sent in competition 466; representing every state and territory in the United States, every province and territory in the Dominion of Canada. Poems also received from England, Ireland, Scotland, Germany and France.

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George Houghton. 18. Croasdale E. Harris. 19. Francis Howard Williams. 20. Anne Reeve Aldrich. 21. Rev. M. R. Knight. 22. Mary F. Butts. 23. Louise Phillips. 24. St. James Cummings. 25. Mary E. Mannix. 26. Charles E. Markham. 27. Alice Williams Brotherton. 28. Clara J. Benedict. 29. Caroline S. Spencer. 30. Bertha H. Burnham. 31. Mary E. Blanchard. 32. Helen W. North. 33. Anna L. Muzzey. 34. Aubrey DeVere. 35. C. H. Crandall. 36. Mamie S. Paden. 37. A. P. Miller. 38. Elizabeth A. Hill. 39. Aubrey DeVere. 40. Louise V. Boyd. 41. Florence Earle Coates. 42. Alice Williams Brotherton.

NOTES.

HAYNE. The death of Paul Hamilton Hayne, one of the noblest poets that the South has produced, lends peculiar interest to" Face to Face," a lofty strain of final triumph. Mr. Hayne early devoted himself to literature, and his name is associated with nearly all the best American magazines, especially the Southern ones, several of which, though short lived, rose to eminence under his editorship. When the war deprived him of his fortune he still continued true to his standard. His picturesque little home near Augusta, furnished with what ancestral goods he managed to save in the destruction of Charleston, was the scene of his labors for twenty years. Having experienced all the phases of prosperity and adversity, his lingering decline with consumption made him a calm and fearless student of the coming change. The result is beautifully shown in this poem, which, though written two years before, by a strange coincidence was published in Harper's Magazine, just before the writer was permitted to verify its truth.

IBID. "Love's Autumn" is from Scribner's Magazine for October, 1880. Vol. 20, page 874.

SANGSTER. "Are the Children at Home?" was written in 1867, while the author was sitting on her pleasant veranda at Norfolk, Va., overlooking the Elizabeth River. Its blending of pathos, tenderness, and simplicity, are rarely equalled.

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fashioned itself into verse, and Leaf by Leaf' was written almost without volition as it seemed on my part. It was published in Gleason's Pictorial, and from thence copied widely into various papers, meanwhile being set to musc for a Boston publication, the composer claiming the words as his own. This experience has been several times repeated, and twice even, in one magazine of late years. Meanwhile it makes its appearance in the form of sheet music adapted for the piano, becoming very popular and having large sales, this composer also claiming the authorship of the poem. In 1865, on being introduced to Mr. Oliver Ditson as the writer of this song, he immediately desired proof, which, when furnished, he set before the different publishers, and through his efforts credit has been given me in all subsequent editions. I had not thought that the simple 'note of cheer,' sent to me that morning in the rose-garden, would make its way into other hearts or homes. A fine transcription of the song has been made by Wehli, adapted for the piano."

YEATS. "An Old Song Re-sung" is an attempt to reconstruct an old song from three lines imperfectly remembered by an old peasant woman in the village of Ballysodare, Sligo, who often sings them to herself.

HAY. While on the Tribune staff Mr. Hay amused himself, one night, while waiting for a proof, by jotting down some rhymes running i his head, and read them afterwards to two o three of his associates. They liked them and urged him to publish them. He refused for some time, but their praise persuaded him, and one morning "Little Breeches" appeared in the paper over the initials J. H. They were read more than anything printed in that issue of the Tribune; they were copied from Maine to California, and generally commended. The lesson of practical Christianity they enforced was ardently approved, and in a few weeks everybody knew that J. H. stood for John Hay, who had been Lincoln's private secretary, had seen much diplomatic service abroad, and is a particularly pleasant fellow. "Little Breeches" caused society and public to seek him; but he was too wise to allow himself to be hurt by what he called a rhyming accident. He wrote "Jim Bludso" and several other dialect pieces, though he refused to beat out his material very thin. He was conscious of possessing something besides capacity for those rhythmic skits. After he had published "Castilian Days," which he considered serious work, he was often mortified to find that "Little Breeches" had the preference.

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