R. H. STODDARD.

With daffodil and starling

And hours of fruitful breath;
If you were life, my darling,
And I your love were death.
If you were thrall to sorrow,

And I were page to joy,
We'd play for lives and seasons,
With loving looks and treasons,
And tears of night and morrow,
And laughs of maid and boy;
If you were thrall to sorrow,
And I were page to joy.

If you were April's lady,

And I were lord in May, We'd throw with leaves for hours, And draw for days with flowers, Till day like night were shady,

And night were bright like day; If you were April's lady,

And I were lord in May.

THE wild November comes at last
Beneath a veil of rain;

The night-wind blows its folds aside,
Her face is full of pain.

The latest of her race, she takes

The Autumn's vacant throne: She has but one short moon to live, And she must live alone.

A barren realm of withered fields:
Bleak woods of fallen leaves:
The palest morns that ever dawned:
The dreariest of eves:

It is no wonder that she comes, Poor month! with tears of pain: For what can one so hopeless do But weep, and weep again!

J. T. TROWBRIDGE.

[U. s. A.]

AT SEA.

THE night was made for cooling shade
For silence, and for sleep;
And when I was a child, I laid
My hands upon my breast, and prayed
And sank to slumbers deep.
Childlike, as then, I lie to-night,
And watch my lonely cabin-light.

Each movement of the swaying lamp
Shows how the vessel reels,
And o'er her deck the billows tramp,
And all her timbers strain and cramp
With every shock she feels;

It starts and shudders, while it burns,
And in its hingéd socket turns.

Now swinging slow, and slanting low,
It almost level lies:

And yet I know, while to and fro
I watch the seeming pendule go

With restless fall and rise,
The steady shaft is still upright,
Poising its little globe of light.

O hand of God! O lamp of peace!
O promise of my soul!

Though weak and tossed, and ill at ease
Amid the roar of smiting seas,

The ship's convulsive roll,
I own, with love and tender awe,
Yon perfect type of faith and law.

A heavenly trust my spirit calms,
My soul is filled with light;
The ocean sings his solemn psalms;
The wild winds chant; I cross my palms;
Happy, as if to-night,
Under the cottage roof again,

I heard the soothing summer rain.

ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN (FLORENCE PERCY).

[U. s. A.]

IN THE DEFENCES.

AT WASHINGTON,

ALONG the ramparts which surround the

town

I walk with evening, marking all the

while

How night and autumn, closing softly down,

Leave on the land a blessing and a smile.

In the broad streets the sounds of tumult cease,

The gorgeous sunset reddens roof and spire,

The city sinks to quietude and peace,

Sleeping, like Saturn, in a ring of fire;

Circled with forts, whose grim and threatening walls

Frown black with cannon, whose abated breath

Waits the command to send the fatal balls Upon their errands of dismay and death.

And see, directing, guiding, silently Flash from afar the mystic signal-lights, As gleamed the fiery pillar in the sky Leading by night the wandering Israelites.

The earthworks, draped with summer weeds and vines,

The rifle-pits, half hid with tangled briers,

But wait their time; for see, along the lines

Rise the faint smokes of lonesome

picket-fires,

Where sturdy sentinels on silent beat Cheat the long hours of wakeful lone

liness

With thoughts of home, and faces dear and sweet,

And, on the edge of danger, dream of bliss.

Yetata word, how wild and fierce a change Would rend and startle all the earth

and skies

With blinding glare, and noises dread and strange,

And shrieks, and shouts, and deathly agonies.

The wide-mouthed guns would war, and hissing shells

Would pierce the shuddering sky with fiery thrills,

The battle rage and roll in thunderous swells,

And war's fierce anguish shake the solid hills.

But now how tranquilly the golden gloom Creeps up the gorgeous forest-slopes, and flows

Down valleys blue with fringy asterbloom,

An atmosphere of safety and repose.

Mushroomed with tents, the sudden

289

growth of war;

The frosty autumn air, that blights and chills,

Yet brings its own full recompense therefor;

Rich colors light the leafy solitudes,

And far and near the gazer's eyes behold The oak's deep scarlet, warming all the woods,

And spendthrift maples scattering their gold.

The pale beech shivers with prophetic

woe,

The towering chestnut ranks stand blanched and thinned, Yet still the fearless sumach dares the foe, And waves its bloody guidons in the wind.

Where mellow haze the hill's sharp outline dims,

Bare elms, like sentinels, watch silently, The delicate tracery of their slender limbs Pencilled in purple on the saffron sky.

Content and quietude and plenty seem Blessing the place, and sanctifying all; And hark! how pleasantly a hidden stream Sweetens the silence with its silver fall!

The failing grasshopper chirps faint and shrill,

The cricket calls, in massy covert hid, Cheery and loud, as stoutly answering still

The soft persistence of the katydid.

With dead moths tangled in its blighted bloom,

The golden-rod swings lonesome on its throne,

Forgot of bees; and in the thicket's gloom, The last belated peewee cries alone. The hum of voices, and the careless laugh Of cheerful talkers, fall upon the ear; The flag flaps listlessly adown its staff; And still the katydid pipes loud and

near.

And now from far the bugle's mellow throat

Pours out, in rippling flow, its silver tide;

Peace reigns; not now a soft-eyed nymph that sleeps

Unvexed by dreams of strife or con

queror,

But Power, that, open-eyed and watchful, keeps

Unwearied vigil on the brink of war.

Night falls; in silence sleep the patriot bands;

The tireless cricket yet repeats its tune, And the still figure of the sentry stands In black relief against the low full

moon.

EDNA DEAN PROCTOR.

[U. s. A.] OUR HEROES.

THE winds that once the Argo bore
Have died by Neptune's ruined shrines,
And her hull is the drift of the deep sea
floor,

Though shaped of Pelion's tallest pines.
You may seek her crew in every isle,
Fair in the foam of Egean seas,
But out of their sleep no charın can wile
Jason and Orpheus and Hercules.

And Priam's voice is heard no more
By windy Ilium's sea-built walls;
From the washing wave and the lonely
shore

No wail goes up as Hector falls.
On Ida's mount is the shining snow,
But Jove has gone from its brow away,
And red on the plain the poppies grow
Where Greek and Trojan fought that day.

Mother Earth! Are thy heroes dead?
Do they thrill the soul of the years no

more?

Gone?-in a nobler form they rise; Dead?- we may clasp their hands in ours, And catch the light of their glorious eyes, And wreathe their brows with immortal flowers.

Wherever a noble deed is done,

There are the souls of our heroes stirred;
Wherever a field for truth is won,
There are our heroes' voices heard.

Their armor rings on a fairer field

Than Greek or Trojan ever trod,

Leave him to God's watching eye,

Trust him to the hand that made him. Mortal love weeps idly by:

God alone has power to aid him.
Lay him low, lay him low,
In the clover or the snow!
What cares he? he cannot know:
Lay him low!

wield,

[U. s. A.]

THE HOUSE IN THE MEADOW.

IT stands in a sunny meadow,

The house so mossy and brown, With its cumbrous old stone chimneys, And the gray roof sloping down.

The trees fold their green arms round it,
The trees a century old;
And the winds go chanting through
them,

And the sunbeams drop their gold.

The cowslips spring in the marshes,
The roses bloom on the hill,
And beside the brook in the pasture
The herds go feeding at will.

Within, in the wide old kitchin,
The old folks sit in the sun,
That creeps through the sheltering wood-
bine,

Till the day is almost done.

Their children have gone and left them; They, sit in the sun alone!

And the old wife's ears are failing

As she harks to the well-known tone

That won her heart in her girlhood,

That has soothed her in many a care, And praises her now for the brightness Her old face used to wear.

She thinks again of her bridal,

How, dressed in her robe of white, She stood by her gay young lover In the morning's rosy light.

O, the morning is rosy as ever,

But the rose from her cheek is fled;