While I? I sat alone and watched;

My lot in life, to live alone
In mine own world of interests,
Much felt, but little shown.

Not to be first: how hard to learn
That lifelong lesson of the past;
Line graven on line and stroke on stroke:
But, thank God, learned at last.

So now in patience I possess
My soul year after tedious year,
Content to take the lowest place,
The place assigned me here.

Yet sometimes, when I feel my strength Most weak, and life most burdensome, I lift mine eyes up to the hills

From whence my help shall come:

Yea, sometimes still I lift my heart
To the Archangelic trumpet-burst,

When all deep secrets shall be shown,
And many last be first.

DEAD HOPE.

OPE new born one pleasant morn

HOPE

Died at even;

Hope dead lives nevermore,

No, not in heaven.

If his shroud were but a cloud

To weep itself away;

Or were he buried underground

To sprout some day!

But dead and gone is dead and gone

Vainly wept upon.

Nought we place above his face

To mark the spot,

But it shows a barren place

In our lot.

A DAUGHTER OF EVE.

A F

FOOL I was to sleep at noon,
And wake when night is chilly
Beneath the comfortless cold moon;
A fool to pluck my rose too soon,
A foo. to snap my lily.

My garden-plot I have not kept;
Faded and all-forsaken,

I weep as I have never wept :
Oh it was summer when I slept,
It's winter now I waken.

Talk what you please of future spring

And sun-warmed sweet to-morrow :
Stripped bare of hope and every thing,
No more to laugh, no more to sing,
I sit alone with sorrow.

I

VENUS' LOOKING-GLASS.

MARKED where lovely Venus and her court With song and dance and merry laugh went by ; Weightless, their wingless feet seemed made to fly, Bound from the ground and in mid air to sport. Left far behind I heard the dolphins snort,

Tracking their goddess with a wistful eye, Around whose head white doves rose, wheeling high Or low, and cooed after their tender sort. All this I saw in spring. Through summer heat I saw the lovely Queen of Love no more.

But when flushed autumn through the woodlands went

I spied sweet Venus walk amid the wheat:

Whom seeing, every harvester gave o'er

His toil, and laughed and hoped and was content.

LOVE LIES BLEEDING.

face,

LOVE
OVE that is dead and buried, yesterday
Out of his grave rose up before my
No recognition in his look, no trace
Of memory in his eyes dust-dimmed and grey.
While I, remembering, found no word to say,

But felt my quickened heart leap in its place;
Caught afterglow thrown back from long set days,
Caught echoes of all music passed away.
Was this indeed to meet? I mind me yet

In youth we met when hope and love were quick, We parted with hope dead, but love alive: I mind me how we parted then heart sick, Remembering, loving, hopeless, weak to strive :Was this to meet? Not so, we have not met.

TH

BIRD RAPTURES.

HE sunrise wakes the lark to sing,
The moonrise wakes the nightingale.
Come darkness, moonrise, every thing
That is so silent, sweet, and pale:
Come, so ye wake the nightingale.

Make haste to mount, thou wistful moon,
Make haste to wake the nightingale :
Let silence set the world in tune

To hearken to that wordless tale
Which warbles from the nightingale

O herald skylark, stay thy flight
One moment, for a nightingale
Floods us with sorrow and delight.
To-morrow thou shalt hoist the sail;
Leave us to-night the nightingale.

MY FRIEND.

WO days ago with dancing glancing hair,
With living lips and eyes:

Now pale, dumb, blind, she lies;

So pale, yet still so fair.

We have not left her yet, not yet alone;

But soon must leave her where

She will not miss our care,

Bone of our bone.

Weep not; O friends, we should not weep:

Our friend of friends lies full of rest;

No sorrow rankles in her breast,

Fallen fast asleep.

She sleeps below,

She wakes and laughs above;

e;

To-day, as she walked, let us walk in love To-morrow follow so.