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BACKWARD, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,

Make me a child again just for to-night! Mother, come back from the echoless shore, Take me again to your heart as of yore; Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care, Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair;

Over my slumbers your loving watch keep;

Rock me to sleep, mother, -rock me to sleep!

Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years!

I am so weary of toil and of tears,
Toil without recompense, tears all in vain,-
Take them, and give me my childhood
again!

I have grown weary of dust and decay, -
Weary of flinging my soul-wealth away;
Weary of sowing for others to reap; -
Rock me to sleep, mother, -rock me to
sleep!

Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue, Mother, O mother, my heart calls for you! Many a summer the grass has grown green, Blossomed and faded, our faces between: Yet, with strong yearning and passionate pain,

- MARY ASHLEY TOWNSEND 329

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DOWN THE BAYOU

THE Cypress swamp around me wraps its spell,

With hushing sounds in moss-hung branches there,

Like congregations rustling down to prayer,
While Solitude, like some unsounded bell,
Hangs full of secrets that it cannot tell,
And leafy litanies on the humid air
Intone themselves, and on the tree-trunks
bare

The scarlet lichen writes her rubrics well. The cypress-knees take on them marvellous shapes

Of pygmy nuns, gnomes, goblins, witches, fays,

The vigorous vine the withered gum-tree drapes,

Across the oozy ground the rabbit plays, The moccasin to jungle depths escapes, And through the gloom the wild deer shyly gaze.

RESERVE

THE sea tells something, but it tells not all That rests within its bosom broad and deep; The psalming winds that o'er the ocean

sweep

From compass point to compass point may call,

Nor half their music unto earth let fall;
In far, ethereal spheres night knows to keep
Fair stars whose rays to mortals never creep,
And day uncounted secrets holds in thrall.
He that is strong is stronger if he wear
Something of self beyond all human clasp,-
An inner self, behind unlifted folds

Of life, which men can touch not nor lay bare:

Thus great in what he gives the world to grasp,

Is greater still in that which he withholds.

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