So close we are, and yet so far apart, O Love! Love! Love! sweet Love! So close, I feel your breath upon my O Love, what was our sin that we So far that though for years and CAROLINE ATHERTON MASON. Sing, bloom, because ye must and not for praise. If only we who covet the fair boon Of well-earned fame, and wonder where it lies Wonld read the secret in your simple ways! But in the porch and o'er the graves Glad rings the southward robin's glee; And sparrows fill the autumn air While on the graves of drab and gray The red and gold of autumn lie; And wilful Nature decks the sod In gentlest mockery. LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON. MY SAINT. Он, long the weary vigils since you left me In your far home, I wonder, can you know To what dread uttermost your loss bereft me, Or half it meant to me that you should go? This world is full, indeed, of fair hopes perished, And loves more fleet than this poor fleeting breath; But that deep heart in which my heart was cherished Must surely have survived what we call death. They cannot cease our own true dead to love us, And you will hear this far-off cry of mine, Though you keep holiday so high above us, Where all the happy spirits sing and shine. Steal back to me to-night, from your far dwelling, Beyond the pilgrim moon, beyond the sun; They will not miss your single voice for swelling Their rapture-chorus- you are only one. prey Shut from it by a floating plank I lie; Through this round window search the faithless sky, The hungry waves that fain would rend and slay, The live-long, blank, interminable way, Blind with the sun and hoarse with the wind's cry Of wild, unconquerable mutiny, Until night comes more terrible than day. No more at rest am I than wind and wave; My soul cries with them in their wild despair, I, who am Destiny's impatient slave, Who find no help in hope, nor ease in prayer, And only dream of rest, on some dim shore Where sea and storms and life shall be no more. With eglantine and myrtle on his breast; And leave him there, their pleasant scents among, And chant a sweet and melancholy song About the charms of which he was possest; And how of all things he was loveliest, And to compare with aught were him to wrong. Leave him, beneath the still and solemn stars. That gather and look down from their far place, With their long calm our brief woes to deride, Until the sun the morning's gate unbars, And mocks, in turn, our sorrows with his face And yet, had Love been Love, he had not died. FROM A WINDOW IN CHAMOUNI. LONG waited for, the lingering sun arose: Hid was the low east, flushed with crimson shame, By stately hills to which his glory came THE GOLD UNDER THE ROSES. "OH where hae ye been, my ain Johnnie? Where hae ye been wi' your little spade?" "I hae been to dig up a pot o' money Amang the roses white and red." "O dear, my Johnnie, my ain Johnnie, Hae ye digged my roses red and sweet? What did ye find, my little laddie? What gaed wrang? and what gars ye greet?" "I fand nae aucht but ane auld penny A thistle upon its grimy head; And the sweet white roses, the sweet red roses, Are a' uprooted and withered and dead." "Ah, my wee mannie, my ain Johnnie! Tak tent the lesson be wisely sped; For gold or gear waste not life's sweetness, Better love's roses white and red." Because I grasp at things that are And men of every land and speech, If but they have Thee in their not mine, And might undo me, sight, Give, from thy treasure-house of Are bound to Thee, and each to each, goods divine, Through thee, by countless threads of light. GEORGE DENNISON PRENTICE. THE RIVER IN THE MAMMOTH CAVE. O DARK, mysterious stream, I sit by thee In awe profound, as myriad wander ers Have sat before. I see thy waters move From out the ghostly glimmerings of my lamp Into the dark beyond, as noiselessly As if thou wert a sombre river drawn Upon a spectral canvas, or the stream Of dim Oblivion flowing through the lone And shadowy vale of death. There is no wave To whisper on thy shore, or breathe a wail, Wounding its tender bosom on thy sharp |