The Past bright nature's gift did leave thee,
Love was thy throne.

Flowers were around thee, blooming, smiling, Nor whispered thee of change, decay; Joy beamed from common things, beguiling Each passing day.

So, in the face of grim want laughing,

E'en poverty glowed with thy mirth;

Thy lips Life's sweetest wine were quaffing,
Unknown its worth.

The wind ne'er drove thee to thy dwelling,
The sun's warm kisses browned thy face,
Earth's many voices ever telling

Thee some new grace.

Poor child upon the roadside sitting,
These were thy heritage on earth:
Life, health and love; Angels befitting
The poor man's hearth.

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD.

Still through the mazes of our early dreams
We seem to see her tripping through the wood,
The sunshine tints her curls with golden beams,
And lights with rosy blushes on the seams

Her crimson hood.

The flowers look upward with tear-spangled cheeks
And seek to lure her from her coming doom;
But smiling on them with her dove-eyes meek,
She, hast'ning onward to her granddame sick,
Reflects their bloom.

The bushes cling around her to impede
Her fatal progress as she onward walks ;
The sunbeams beckon her from hill and mead;
She pauses not but to the wolf gives heed
And fearless talks.

So children lend a list'ning ear to sin,

While Nature's influences around them plead, Seeking through every sense the soul to win, Urging them now in spring-time to begin To sow good seed.

And list'ning oft their steps will go astray,
Until the sin that seemed a granddame old,

From which so easy 'twas to turn away,—
Rises, wolf-like, on its unwilling prey

With fiercest hold !

THE BEREAVED.

"Have you seen my Beautiful Ones?"

Said the mother bereaved to Earth;

"Have you not missed them in valley and glen? Turn not your flowers to seek them again?

Lose not your echoes their mirth ?"

The Earth looked up with smiling face,

But told not of treasures in trust;

Of small, dimpled hands clinging close to her breast,
Of young, sunny heads on green pillows that rest,
Of Beauty asleep in the dust.

"Have you seen my Beautiful Ones ?"

The mother to Sorrow then said,

Whose head was bowed low, her tears falling fast;
She said, "I have seen them; a spectre strode past
And your babes by the hand swiftly led !"

Then the mother her Beautiful Ones

Wept with tears gushing forth like the rain;

She sought the low mound in the gloomy church-yard, And she cried out, "O Earth," as she knelt on the sward, Restore me my loved ones again!"

"I have seen your Beautiful Ones,"

Said Faith, drawing near to her side; "They passed from earth with a form clad in white

(For to me the blest vision was given);

A voice I heard as they fled from your sight, 'Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.'

'TIS BUT A STEP.

'Tis but a step, as though we passed next door, Meeting the friends whom we have known of yore,

Talking of present things, of what has been,
Of this or that among our fellow men.

'Tis but a step-faces beloved to see,

To meet love's glances bent as earnestly,

Warm hands to grasp whose clasp affection knew, Warm lips to press whose words were kind and true.

'Tis but a step for through the opened door

The listening spirit gathers more and more; Of children lost, can hear the pattering feet Run as of old their earthly friends to meet.

'Tis but a step, although we deem it far,

And doubts arise our dreams of heaven to mar And eyes grow dim striving to pierce the gloom, And death looks sternly from the opened tomb.

'Tis but a step-friends wait to usher in

The new-born soul free from its woe and sin;
Free from its grief and pain, its many tears,
Free from the burden of its earthly years.

Could we but see the beautiful beyond,

Towards which the soul with aspirations fond

Looks upward ever through the passing years

(E'en though its eyes are dimmed with sin-wrung tears),

No bars could stay th'impatient spirit's flight,

No chains confine it to this earthly night;

Forth it would rush, alone, on fearless wing,
Seeking an endless day, an everlasting spring!

THE CLOSED ROOM.

[Sidney Smith, on entering a dark apartment, used to throw open the shutters and cry out with his wholesome lungs, "Glorify the room!"]

O Room, where daylight never pours
Its sunny showers of golden wine,
Shedding upon the meanest things
A halo shining and divine,

How darkness, like a wandering soul,
Doth make thy stillness seem unrest!
The burden of a heavy crime

That may not leave the gloomy breast.

Spring looks not in with smiling face,
Of earth's brown garment trimmed to tell,
The beauty of the woods to bring

And cast o'er daily life its spell,

She enters here no opened pane

To shake her scented garments round;
Here all in vain the summer rain
Doth patter with entreating sound.

The sunlight glideth off elsewhere

To tinge the leaf and gild the flower,

For gorgeous carpets cannot bear

The sun's warm glances for an hour.