To whom the better elements

And kindly stars have given A form so fair, that, like the air, 'Tis less of earth than heaven.

Her every tone is music's own,
Like those of morning birds,
And something more than melody
Dwells ever in her words;
The coinage of her heart are they,
And from her lips each flows
As one may see the burdened bee
Forth issue from the rose.

Affections are as thoughts to her,
The measures of her hours;
Her feelings have the fragrancy,
The freshness of young flowers;
And lovely passions, changing oft,
So fill her, she appears

The image of themselves by turns,

The idol of past years!

Of her bright face one glance will trace
A picture on the brain,

And of her voice in echoing hearts

A sound must long remain;
But memory, such as mine of her,
So very much endears,

When death is nigh my latest sigh
Will not be life's, but hers.

I fill this cup to one made up
Of loveliness alone,

A woman, of her gentle sex

The secming paragon—

Her health! and would on earth there stood

Some more of such a frame,

That life might be all poetry,

And weariness a name.

Edward Coate Pinkney [1802-1828]

Our Sister

375

OUR SISTER

HER face was very fair to see,
So luminous with purity:-

It had no roses, but the hue

Of lilies lustrous with their dew-
Her very soul seemed shining through!

Her quiet nature seemed to be
Tuned to each season's harmony.

The holy sky bent near to her;
She saw a spirit in the stir

Of solemn woods. The rills that beat
Their mosses with voluptuous feet,

Went dripping music through her thought.

Sweet impulse came to her unsought

From graceful things, and beauty took

A sacred meaning in her look.

In the great Master's steps went she

With patience and humility.

The casual gazer could not guess

Half of her veiled loveliness;

Yet ah! what precious things lay hid

Beneath her bosom's snowy lid:—
What tenderness and sympathy,

What beauty of sincerity,

What fancies chaste, and loves, that grew
In heaven's own stainless light and dew!

True woman was she day by day
In suffering, toil, and victory.
Her life, made holy and serene
By faith, was hid with things unseen.
She knew what they alone can know
Who live above but dwell below.

Horatio Nelson Powers [1826-1890]

FROM LIFE

HER thoughts are like a flock of butterflies.

She has a merry love of little things,

And a bright flutter of speech, whereto she brings A threefold eloquence-voice, hands and eyes. Yet under all a subtle silence lies

As a bird's heart is hidden by its wings;

And you shall seek through many wanderings The fairyland of her realities.

She hides herself behind a busy brain

A woman, with a child's laugh in her blood;
A maid, wearing the shadow of motherhood—
Wise with the quiet memory of old pain,
As the soft glamor of remembered rain
Hallows the gladness of a sunlit wood.

Brian Hooker [1880

THE ROSE OF THE WORLD

WHO dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,
Mournful that no new wonder may betide,
Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,
And Usna's children died.

We and the laboring world are passing by:
Amid men's souls, that waver and give place,
Like the pale waters in their wintry race,
Under the passing stars, foam of the sky,
Lives on this lonely face.

Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode:
Before you were, or any hearts to beat,
Weary and kind one lingered by His seat;
He made the world to be a grassy road

Before her wandering feet.

William Butler Yeats [1865

The Shepherdess

377

THE SHEPHERDESS

SHE walks the lady of my delight-
A shepherdess of sheep.

Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white;
She guards them from the steep.

She feeds them on the fragrant height,

And folds them in for sleep.

She roams maternal hills and bright,
Dark valleys safe and deep.
Into that tender breast at night

The chastest stars may peep.
She walks-the lady of my delight-
A shepherdess of sheep.

She holds her little thoughts in sight,
Though gay they run and leap.
She is so circumspect and right;
She has her soul to keep.

She walks the lady of my delight-—

A shepherdess of sheep.

Alice Meynell [1853

STEPPING WESTWARD

STEPPING WESTWARD

"What, you are stepping westward?"—" Yea.” -'Twould be a wildish destiny,

If we, who thus together roam

In a strange Land, and far from home,
Were in this place the guests of Chance:
Yet who would stop, or fear to advance
Though home or shelter he had none,
With such a sky to lead him on?

The dewy ground was dark and cold;
Behind, all gloomy to behold;
And stepping westward seemed to be
A kind of heavenly destiny:

I liked the greeting; 'twas a sound
Of something without place or bound;
And seemed to give me spiritual right
To travel through that region bright.

The voice was soft, and she who spake
Was walking by her native lake:
The salutation had to me

The very sound of courtesy:

Its power was felt; and while my eye
Was fixed upon the glowing Sky,
The echo of the voice enwrought
A human sweetness with the thought
Of travelling through the world that lay
Before me in my endless way.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850]