INA D. COOLBRITH.

357

OFT have I walked these woodland paths
In sadness, not foreknowing
That underneath the withered leaves

The flowers of spring were growing.

To-day the winds have swept away

Those wrecks of autumn splendor,
And here the sweet arbutus flowers
Are springing, fresh and tender!

O prophet flowers! with lips of bloom
Surpassing in their beauty

The pearly tints of ocean-shells-
Ye teach me faith and duty.

"Walk life's dark ways," ye seem to say;
"In love and hope, foreknowing
That where man sees but withered leaves
God sees the sweet flowers growing!"

GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP.

[U. S. A.]

FAIRHAVEN BAY.

I PUSH on through the shaggy wood;
I round the hill: 't is here it stood :
And there, beyond the crumbled walls,
The shining Concord slowly crawls,

Yet seems to make a passing stay,
And gently spreads its lilied bay,
Curbed by this green and reedy shore,
Up toward the ancient homestead's door

But dumbly sits the shattered house,
And makes no answer: man and mouse
Long since forsook it, and decay
Chokes its deep heart with ashes gray.

On what was once a garden-ground
Dull red-bloomed sorrels now abound;
And boldly whistles the shy quail
Within the vacant pasture's pale.

Ah, strange and savage where he shines, The sun seems staring through those pines

That once the vanished home could bless With intimate, sweet loneliness.

The ignorant, elastic sod

The feet of them that daily trod
Its roods hath utterly forgot:

The very fire-place knows them not.

For in the weedy cellar, thick
The ruined chimney's mass of brick
Lies strown. Wide heaven, with such

an ease

Dost thou, too, lose the thought of these?

Yet I, although I know not who
Lived here in years that voiceless grew
Ere I was born-and never can-
Am moved, because I am a man.

Oh, glorious gift of brotherhood!
Oh, sweet elixir in the blood,

That makes us live with those long dead,
Or hope for those that shall be bred

Hereafter! No regret can rob
My heart of this delicious throb;
No thought of fortunes haply wrecked,
Nor pang for nature's wild neglect.

And, though the hearth be cracked and cold,

Though ruin all the place enfold,
These ashes that have lost their name,
Shall warm my heart with lasting flame.

S. WEIR MITCHELL.

[U. s. A.]

A CAMP IN THREE LIGHTS.

AGAINST the darkness sharply lined
Our still white tents gleamed overhead,
And dancing cones of shadow cast-

When sudden flashed the camp-fire red,

Where fragrant hummed the moist swamp-spruce,

And tongues unknown the cedar

spoke,

While half a century's silent growth Went up in cheery flame and smoke.

Pile on the logs! A flickering spire

Of ruby flame the birch-bark gives, And as we track its leaping sparks, Behold in heaven the North-light lives! An arch of deep, supremest blue, A band above of silver shade, Where, like the frost-work's crystal spears,

A thousand lances grow and fade,

Or shiver, touched with palest tints
Of pink and blue, and changing die,
Or toss in one triumphant haze

Their golden banners up the sky,

With faint, swift, silken murmurings, -
A noise as of an angel's flight,
Heard like the whispers of a dream

Across the cool, clear northern night.

Our pipes are out, the camp-fire fades,
The wild auroral ghost-lights die,
And stealing up the distant wood
The moon's white spectre floats on
high,

And, lingering, sets in awful light

A blackened pine-tree's ghastly cross, Then swiftly pays in silver white The faded fire, the aurora's loss.

NIGHT ON LAKE HELEN.

I LIE in my red canoe

On the waters still and deep, And o'er me darkens the sky, And beneath the billows sleep;

Till, between the stars above

And those in the lake's embrace,
I seem to float like the dead
In the noiselessness of space.

Betwixt two worlds I drift,
A bodiless soul again,-
Between the still thoughts of God
And those which belong to men;

And out of the height above,

And out of the deep below, A thought that is like a ghost Doth gather and gain and grow,

That now and forevermore

This silence of death shall hold,

ANDREW LANG.

While the nations fade and die,

And the countless years are rolled.

But I turn the light canoe,

And, darting across the night, Am glad of the paddles' noise

And the camp-fire's honest light.

ANDREW LANG.

HIS CHOICE OF A SEPULCHRE.

HERE I'd come when weariest ! Here the breast

Of the Windburg's tufted over Deep with bracken; here his crest Takes the west,

O pleasant gauger, long since dead I hear you fluting on ahead.

You go with me the self-same way
The self-same air for me you play:
For I do think, and so do you,
It is the tune to travel to.

359

For who would gravely set his face
To go to this or t' other place?
There's nothing under heaven so blue,
That's fairly worth the travelling to.

On every hand the roads begin,
And people walk with zeal therein:
But wheresoe'er the highways tend,
Be sure there's nothing at the end.

Then follow you, wherever hie
The travelling mountains of the sky.
Or let the streams in civil mode
Direct your choice upon a road.

For one or all, or high or low,
Will lead you where you wish to go;
And one and all go night and day,
Over the hills and far away!

LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY.

[U. s. A.]

TEMPTATION.

I COME where the wry road leads
Thro' the pines and the alder scents,
Sated of books, with a start,

Sharp on the gang to-day:
Scarce see the Romany steeds,
Scarce hear the flap of the tents,
When hillo! my heart, my heart
Is out of its leash, and away.

Gypsies, gypsies, the whole
Tatterdemalion crew!
Brown and sly and severe
With curious trades in hand.
A string snaps in my soul,
The one high answer due
If an exile chance to hear
The songs of his fatherland.

To be abroad with the rain, And at home with the forest hush, With the crag, and the flower-urn, And the wan sleek mist upcurled;

To break the lens and the plane,
To burn the pen and the brush,
And, clean and alive, return
Into the old wild world! ...

How is it? O wind that bears
The arrow from its mark,
The sea-bird from the sea,

The moth from his midnight lamp,
Fate's self, thou mocker of prayers!
Whirl up from the mighty dark,
And even so, even me

Blow far from the gypsy camp!

EDITH MATILDA THOMAS.

[U S. A.]

SOMETHING PASSES.

SOMETHING passes in the air,
That if seen would be most fair;
And if we the ear could train
To a keener joy and pain,
Sweeter warblings would be heard
Than from wild Arabian bird:
Something passes.

Blithest in the spring it stirs,
Wakes with earliest harbingers;
Then it peers from heart's-ease faces,
Clothes itself in wind-flower graces:
Or begirt with waving sedge,
Pipes upon the river's edge;
Or its whispering way doth take
Through the plumed and scented brake;
Or, within the silent wood,
Whirls one leaf in fitful mood.
Something knits the morning dews
In a web of seven hues ;

Something with the May-fly races,
Or the pallid blowball chases
Till it darkens 'gainst the moon,
Full, upon a night of June:
Something passes.

Something climbs, from bush or croft,
On a gossamer stretched aloft;

Sails, with glistening spars and shrouds,
Till it meets the sailing clouds;
Else it with the swallow flies,
Glimpsed at dusk in southern skies;
Glides before the even-star,
Steals its light, and beckons far.
Something sighs within the sigh

Of the wind, that, whirling by,
Strews the roof and flooded eaves
With the autumn's dead-ripe leaves.
Something-still unknown to me —
Carols in the winter tree,

Or doth breathe a melting strain
Close beneath the frosted pane:
Something passes.

Painters, fix its fleeting lines;
Show us by what light it shines!
Poets, whom its pinions fan,
Seize upon it, if ye can!
All in vain, for, like the air,
It goes through the finest snare:
Something passes.

A. MARY F. ROBINSON.

MUSIC.

BEFORE the dawn is yet the day
I lie and dream so deep,
So drowsy-deep I cannot say
If yet I wake or sleep.

But in my dream a tune there is -
It rings so fresh and sweet
That I would rather die than miss
The utmost end of it.

And yet I know not an it be

Some music in the lane, Or but a song that rose with me From sleep, to sink again.

And so, alas, and even so

I waste my life away; Nor if the tune be real I know, Or but a dream astray.

EDMUND WILLIAM GOSSE.

FROM "THE GOLDEN ISLES."

SAD Would the salt waves be,
And cold the singing sea,

And dark the gulfs that echo to the sevenstringed lyre,

If things were what they seem,

If life had no fair dream,

No mirage made to tip the dull sea-line with fire.