'And oh!' she said, 'it's well this

That I thought to have fared,— Not to have lighted at the kirk

But stopped in the kirkyard.

way

For it's oh and oh I prayed to God,
Whose rest I hoped to win,

That when to-night at your board-head

You'd bid the feast begin,

This water past your window-sill
Might bear my body in.'

Now make the white bed warm and soft And greet the merry morn.

The night the mother should have died The young son shall be born.

THE STREAM'S SECRET.

WHAT thing unto mine ear

Wouldst thou convey, what secret thing,

O wandering water ever whispering?
Surely tny speech shall be of her.

Thou water, O thou whispering wanderer,
What message dost thou bring?

Say, hath not Love leaned low This hour beside thy far well-head,

And there through jealous hollowed fingers saia

The thing that most I long to know,

Murmuring with curls all dabbled in thy flow And washed lips rosy red?

He told it to thee there

Where thy voice hath a louder tone;

But where it welters to this little moan

His will decrees that I should hear.

Now speak: for with the silence is no fear,

And I am all alone.

Shall Time not still endow

One hour with life, and I and she Slake in one kiss the thirst of memory?

Say, stream; lest Love should disavow Thy service, and the bird upon the bough Sing first to tell it me.

What whisperest thou? Nay, why Name the dead hours? I mind them well. Their ghosts in many darkened doorways well With desolate eyes to know them by.

That hour must still be born ere it can die

Of that I'd have thee tell

But hear, before thou speak!

Withhold, I pray, the vain behest

That while the maze hath still its bower for quest My burning heart should cease to seck.

Be sure that Love ordained for souls more meek

His roadside dells of rest.

Stream, when this silver thread

In flood-time is a torrent brown,

May any bulwark bind thy foaming crown?

Shall not the waters surge

and spread

And to the crannied boulders of their bed

Still shoot the dead drift down?

Let no rebuke find place

In speech of thine: or it shall prove

That thou dost ill expound the words of Love,
Even as thine eddy's rippling race
Would blur the perfect image of his face

I will have none thereof.

O learn and understand

That 'gainst the wrongs himself did wreak
Love sought her aid; until her shadowy cheek
And eyes beseeching gave command;

And compassed in her close compassionate hand
My heart must burn and speak.

For then at last we spoke

What eyes so oft had told to eyes

Through that long-lingering silence whose half-sigh

Alone the buried secret broke,

Which with snatched hands and lips' reverberate stroke Then from the heart did rise.

But she is far away

Now; nor the hours of night grown hoar

Bring yet to me, long gazing from the door,
The wind-stirred robe of roseate gray
And rose-crown of the hour that leads the day
When we shall meet once more.

Dark as thy blinded wave

When brimming midnight floods the glen,Bright as the laughter of thy runnels when The dawn yields all the light they crave; Even so these hours to wound and that to save Are sisters in Love's ken.

Oh sweet her bending grace

Then when I kneel beside her feet;

And sweet her eyes' o'erhanging heaven; and sweet

The gathering folds of her embrace;

And her fall'n hair at last shed round my face
When breaths and tears shall meet.