MAY RILEY SMITH, EW waifs have found more frequent editorial adoption and house-room than one generally bearing the title "If We Knew." Every newspaper in the land, almost, has given it a place from year to year, since it strayed from home. Careless scissors early clipped away all hint of authorship, and careless compositors have so marred the waif itself that often it seems in disguise. On one occasion, indeed, it has been awkwardly transformed, and, with a new name attached, has gone abroad with a new claimant for its parentage. Perhaps it is going so, still. It originally appeared in the Rochester Union & Advertiser of February 23, 1867, with its author's identity thinly veiled under the initials "M. L. R.," and the date of "Brighton." We give it as then put forth : IF WE KNEW. If we knew the woe and heart-ache If our lips could taste the wormwood, For our ships to come from sea? If we knew the baby fingers Pressed against the window-pane, Would the bright eyes of our darling 2 Ah, those little ice-cold fingers, How they point our memories back Strewn along our backward track! Strange we never prize the music Till the sweet-voiced bird has flown; Strange that we should slight the violets Till the lovely flowers are gone; Strange that summer skies and sunshine Never seem one-half so fair As when Winter's snowy pinions Shake their white down in the air! Lips from which the seal of silence With their beautiful pertume, Come to us in sweeter accents Through the portals of the tomb. Let us gather up the sunbeams Lying all along our path; Before Mrs. Albert Smith, now of Chicago, Illinois, was married to the man of her choice in the Brick Church of Rochester, N. Y.-which was about seven years ago she lived in Brighton, a suburb of that city, and wrote herself May Louise Riley. She was born on the 29th of May, 1842, in that same Brighton, in a pretty white cottage surrounded by trees, and shrubs, and flowers, its very atmosphere suggestive of things poetical. "Wasn't it long," she wrote once to a friend, "to live in the old house twenty-seven years? to call it home all that time?" Of course she was away somewhat-at Brockport Collegiate Institute two years; another year she devoted herself to painting; another year she spent at the West. "But all that time," she wrote, “I came and went from the old home. Saw father die there, and a sister, and seven years ago brother Charlie followed them, and came no more back forever." Of a warm, impulsive nature, her love for her birthplace, and for the old associations clinging about it, glows in the very tone of her words. It is an element akin to this which makes her poems so popular-their homeliness, we might almost say. They are never cold, icy bits of intellectuality, which you can admire but do not feel; they come welling up warmly from her heart, and sink tremulously into yours. The chords she strikes are responsive chords. She touches the key-note of all that is best in human nature-sympathy-and it vibrates everywhere. To those who know Mrs. Smith, it is no wonder that she writes as she does. There is nothing somber in her blue eyes, nor in her light-brown hair or sunshiny face. She believes in the bright side; she sings as she believes. In conversation and in correspondence her nature is manifest, and she wins friends wherever she goes. "If We Knew" was one of Mrs. Smith's earlicst poems. It has not quite the finish of some later efforts, but has in a large degree her individuality. It is one of those simple, unpretending things, far easier in the seeming than in the doing, unless one be born thereto, which will continue to live. Having been set to music, under title of "Scatter seeds of kindness," the last three stanzas appear often in school song-books, and are often sung. Gerrit Smith had an especial liking for them, and at his burial they were sung by a choir of children from the orphan asylum he endowed and maintained. Mrs. Smith has fine literary taste, and writes gracefully and excellently in prose. She has contributed sketches, as well as poems, to various newspapers and other periodicals, and some of them have been widely copied. The Troy Whig, The Union and Advertiser and 5 The Rural Home, of Rochester, and one or two of the New York story papers, have published many contributions from her pen. She writes easily and rapidly, with a felicitous choice of words; and in general her versification is very melodious, very perfect. We have alluded to her sympathy. One can hardly find real poetic sentiment allied to more tender sympathy than is contained in this poem : IF." If, sitting with this little worn-out shoe And scarlet stocking lying on my knee, The pearl-set gates that lie 'twixt heaven and me, I could be reconciled and happy too, And look with glad eyes toward the Jasper Sea If, in the morning, when the song of birds I listen for his pretty broken words And for the music of his dimpled feet, I could be glad, if, when the day is done, By just the travel of a single day." If I could know those little feet were shod In sandals, wrought of light in better lands, |