Born too late, when the strength of the world hath been bowed:

Back, back to the Orient, from whose sunbright womb
Sprang the giants which now are no more, in the bloom
And the beauty of times that are faded forever!

To the palms! to the tombs! to the still Sacred River!

Where I too, the child of a day that is done,

First leaped into life, and looked up at the sun,-
Back again, back again, to the hill-tops of home

I come, O my friend, my consoler, I come!

Are the three intense stars, that we watched night by night Burning broad on the band of Orion, as bright?

Are the large Indian moons as serene as of old,

When, as children, we gathered the moonbeams for gold?
Do you yet recollect me, my friend? Do you still
Remember the free games we played on the hill,

'Mid those huge stones upheaved, where we recklessly trod O'er the old ruined fane of the old ruined god?

How he frowned while around him we carelessly played!
That frown on my life ever after hath stayed,
Like the shade of a solemn experience upcast

From some vague supernatural grief in the past.

For the poor god, in pain more than anger he frowned,— To perceive that our youth, though so fleeting, had found, In its transient and ignorant gladness, the bliss

Which his science divine seemed divinely to miss.

Alas! you may haply remember me yet,—

The free child, whose glad childhood myself I forget.
I come a sad woman, defrauded of rest;

I bear to you only a laboring breast;

My heart is a storm-beaten ark, wildly hurled

O'er the whirlpools of time, with the wrecks of a world.

The dove from my bosom hath flown far away;

It is flown and returns not, though many a day

Have I watched from the windows of life for its coming.
Friend, I sigh for repose, I am weary of roaming.

I know not what Ararat rises for me

Far away, o'er the waves of the wandering sea:
I know not what rainbow may yet, from far hills,
Lift the primrose of hope, the cessation of ills:
But a voice, like the voice of my youth, in my breast
Wakes and whispers me on-to the East! to the East!
Shall I find the child's heart that I left there? or find
The lost youth I recall, with its pure peace of mind?

9354

Alas! who shall number the drops of the rain?

Or give to the dead leaves their greenness again?

Who shall seal up the caverns the earthquake hath rent?

Who shall bring forth the winds that within them are pent?

To a voice who shall render an image? or who

From the heats of the noontide shall gather the dew?

I have burned out within me the fuel of life,

Wherefore lingers the flame? Rest is sweet after strife.
I would sleep for a while. I am weary.

My friend,

But 'tis vain!

I had meant in these lines to regather, and send
To our old home, my life's scattered links.
Each attempt seems to shatter the chaplet again;
Only fit now for fingers like mine to run o'er,
Who return, a recluse, to those cloisters of yore
Whence too far I have wandered.

How many long years

Does it seem to me now since the quick, scorching tears,
While I wrote to you, splashed out a girl's premature
Moans of pain at what women in silence endure!

To your eyes, friend of mine, and to yours alone,
That now long-faded page of my life hath been shown
Which recorded my heart's birth, and death, as you know,
Many years since,- how many?

A few months ago

I seemed reading it backward, that page! Why explain
Whence or how? The old dream of my life rose again.
The old superstition! the idol of old!

It is over.

The leaf trodden down in the mold
Is not to the forest more lost than to me
That emotion. I bury it here by the sea,

Which will bear me anon far away from the shore
Of a land which my footsteps will visit no more;

And a heart's requiescat I write on that grave.

Hark! the sight of the wind, and the sound of the wave,
Seem like voices of spirits that whisper me home!

I come, O you whispering voices, I come!

My friend, ask me nothing.

Receive me alone

As a Santon receives to his dwelling of stone

In silence some pilgrim the midnight may bring:

It may be an angel that, weary of wing,

Hath paused in his flight from some city of doom,

Or only a wayfarer strayed in the gloom.

This only I know: that in Europe at least

Lives the craft or the power that must master our East. Wherefore strive where the gods must themselves yield at

last?

Both they and their altars pass by with the Past.

The gods of the household, Time thrusts from the shelf;
And I seem as unreal and weird to myself

As these idols of old.

Other times, other men,

Other men, other passions!

So be it! yet again

I turn to my birthplace, the birthplace of morn,

And the light of those lands where the great sun is born! Spread your arms, O my friend! on your breast let me feel The repose which hath fled from my own.

YOUR LUCILE.

FROM PROLOGUE TO THE WANDERER'

Ο

H, MOMENT of sweet peril, perilous sweet!
When woman joins herself to man; and man
Assumes the full-lived woman, to complete

The end of life, since human life began!
When in the perfect bliss of union

Body and soul triumphal rapture claim,
When there's a spirit in blood, in spirit a flame,
And earth's lone hemispheres glow, fused in one!

Rare moment of rare peril!- The bard's song,
The mystic's musing fancy. Did there ever

Two perfect souls in perfect forms belong

Perfectly to each other? Never, never! Perilous were such moments, for a touch

Might mar their clear perfection. Exquisite

Even for the peril of their frail delight.

Such things man feigns; such seeks: but finds not such.

No; for 'tis in ourselves our love doth grow:

And when our love is fully risen within us, Round the first object doth it overflow,

Which, be it fair or foul, is sure to win us

Out of ourselves.

We clothe with our own nature The man or woman its first want doth find. The leafless prop with our own buds we bind, And hide in blossoms; fill the empty feature

With our own meanings; even prize defects

Which keep the mark of our own choice upon The chosen; bless each fault whose spot protects Our choice from possible confusion

With the world's other creatures; we believe them

What most we wish, the more we find they are not; Our choice once made, with our own choice we war not; We worship them for what ourselves we give them.

Doubt is this otherwise. -When fate removes

The unworthy one from our reluctant arms, We die with that lost love to other loves,

And turn to its defects from other charms. And nobler forms, where moved those forms, may move With lingering looks: our cold farewells we wave them. We loved our lost loves for the love we gave them, And not for anything they gave our love.

Old things return not as they were in Time.

Trust nothing to the recompense of Chance,
Which deals with novel forms. This falling rhyme
Fails from the flowery steeps of old romance
Down that abyss which Memory droops above;
And gazing out of hopelessness down there,

I see the shadow creep through Youth's gold hair
And white Death watching over red-lipped Love.

MAARTEN MAARTENS

(J. M. W. VAN DER POORTEN SCHWARTZ)

(1858-)

BY WILLIAM SHARP

HERE are few authors of the day more widely popular with the English-reading public all over the world than the now celebrated Anglo-Dutch romancist, Maarten Maartens. interesting to note that the testimony of many of the leading librarians, both in America and Great Britain, is to the effect that few if any novels are in such steady demand

throughout the year as those of the able writer just named.

MAARTEN MAARTENS

This is the more interesting from the fact that Mr. Maartens is, as his name applies, a foreigner; and the more remarkable because that he, a Hollander, does not (as commonly supposed) translate his original. Dutch MS. into English, but writes at first hand in his adopted language. Naturally, after he had first won reputation, there was a general idea that his books were successful romances in Holland itself, and that they had been translated into English as a venture, and as it proved, a successful venture. As a matter of fact, it is only quite recently that Maarten Maartens's novels have appeared in the Dutch language in Holland. For long his own countrymen, curious as to his writings, had to procure his books from the Tauchnitz Library, or else to purchase English copies. One might well wonder why a novelist should have so little heed for reputation in his own country. Perhaps it is because of too keen a recognition of the fact that a prophet is not without honor save in his own land; perhaps it is because the small Dutch public in little Holland is infinitesimal in comparison with that in America and Great Britain, to say nothing of Australia and Canada; perhaps - and indeed, here we have the real cause, I understand-it is because Maarten Maartens has depicted certain aspects of Dutch life only too vividly