JOHN VANCE CHENEY.

[Born at Groveland, New York, 1848. Author of Thistledrift (1887, New York, F. A. Stokes & Co.), and Wood Blooms (New York, 1888, F. A. Stokes & Co.), with whose kind permission the poems quoted below are given.]

WAITING.

THE fields fold in silence the ripened sheaves,
The bright moon breaks on the swinging leaves,
The dark's great daisies are blowing above,
O leap to my side, my Love, my Love!

You have said not a gem in the blue below,
But, on my neck, but would lose the glow;
You have said no bloom in the blue above
Is fit for my bosom, Love, my Love.

You have likened my song to the song of the bird,
My sigh to the tree's the night wind stirred:
Like the moan of the pine, of the lone wild dove,
My song, my sighing, to-night, my Love.

The fields fold in glory the golden sheaves,
The full moon silvers the swinging leaves:
As the white cloud waits for the wind above,
I'm waiting for you, my Love-my Love.

OUR MOTHER.

WHEN the first man stood forth in Paradise,
And the first woman came to grace her bowers,
The conscious garden glowed with thousand flowers,
With light-wild, laughing light, in thousand eyes
Of beauty. Lovelier than young morning lies
On hill-tops, hovered round the wondering hours;
And splendors richer than the red west showers
Fell wide on Eden, all glory and surprise.

And does Our Mother love us, now, the less,
And why we fail her, does she understand?
For him that comes with trust and tenderness,
Eden still blossoms from her very sand:

Some flower-believe it-blossoming but to bless,
Will wait to wither in the last man's hand.

GREAT IS TO-DAY.

OUT in a world that's gone to weed!

The great tall corn is still strong in his seed ;

Plant her breast with laughter, put song in your toil,

The heart is still young in the mother soil:

There's sunshine and bird-song, and red and white clover, And love lives yet, world under and over.

The light's white as ever, sow and believe,

Clearer dews did not glisten round Adam and Eve,
Never bluer heavens nor greener sod

Since the round world rolled from the hand of God.

There's a sun to go down, to come up again,

There are new moons to fill when the old moons wane.

Is wisdom dead since Plato's no more,

Who'll that babe be, in yon cottage door?

While your Shakspeare, your Milton takes his place in the tomb

His brother is stirring in the good mother-womb:
There's glancing of daisies and running of brooks,
Ay, life enough left to write in the books.

The world's not all wisdom, nor poems, nor flowers,
But each day has the same good twenty-four hours,
The same light, the same night. For your Jacobs, no

tears;

They see the Rachels at the end of the years:

There's waving of wheat, and the tall strong corn
And his heart blood is water that sitteth forlorn.

SNOWFLAKES.

FALLING all the night-time,

Falling all the day,
Silent into silence,

From the far-away,-
Never came like glory
To the April leas,
Never summer blossoms

Thick and white as these.

Falling all the night-time,
Falling all the day,
Stilly as the spirits

Come from far-away,

Snowflakes, winged snowflakes,

Fancy, following, sees
Souls of flowers flutt'ring

Over winter leas.

SPRING SONG.

INVISIBLE hands from summer lands

Have plucked the icicles one by one;

And sly little fingers, reached down from the sun, Lay hold on the tips of the grass in the sands. And O, and O

Where is the snow!
The crow is calling,
Showers are falling.

Up, up and out of your garments gray,
Ho willow and weed, each secret seed;
The music of waters is heard in the mead,
And surly old winter has hied him away!

And O, and O

Where is the snow!
The snake is crawling
Showers are falling.

LOVES OF LEAVES AND GRASSES.

THE little leaves, ah me!
Coquetting in the tree!

Swaying in the sunny weather,

Now, they steal together,

Now, flutter free, as fain
Never to kiss again.

Yon grass-there, too, I see
Suspicious gallantry :

Each spear unto his sweeting
Whispers a secret greeting,
Then primly, in the sun,
Smiles over what he's done.

Sweet spring-time in the tree,
In fields where grasses be!
So perfect is his vesture,
So pretty every gesture,
I ween no leaf or blade

But wins his dainty maid.

SONG OF THE GLOAMING.

THE toad bas the road, the cricket sings,
The heavy beetle spreads her wings:
The bat is the rover,

No bee on the clover,
The day is over,

And evening come.

The brake is awake, the grass aglow,

The star above, the fly below:

The bat is the rover,

No bee on the clover,

The day is over,

And evening come.

The stream moves in dream, the low winds tune,
'Tis vespers at the shrine of June:

The bat is the rover,

No bee on the clover,
The day is over,
And evening come.

HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN.

[Born at Fredericksværn, Norway, 23d September 1848. Author of Gunnar; A Norse Romance (New York, 1874); A Norseman's Pilgrimage (1875); Tales from Two Hemispheres (Boston, 1876); Falconberg (1878); Goethe and Schiller; their Lives and Works (1878); Ilka on the Hill-Top, and other Stories (1881); Queen Titania (1882); A Daughter of the Philistines (Boston, 1884); The Story of Norway (1886); The Light of Her Countenance (1889); Vagabond Tales (1889); Idylls of Norway (1882). The poems given are from the last volume, and are published with the kind permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.

THE LOST HELLAS.

O FOR a breath of myrtle and of bay,

And glints of sunny skies through dark leaves flashing And dimpling seas beneath a golden day,

Against the strand with soft susurrus plashing!

And fair nude youths, with shouts and laughter dashing Along the shining beach in martial play!

And rearing 'gainst the sky their snowy portals,

The temples of the glorious Immortals!

Thus oft thou risest, Hellas, from my soul-
A vision of the happy vernal ages,

When men first strove to read life's mystic scroll,
But with the torch of joy lit up its pages;
When with untroubled front the cheerful sages
Serenely wandered toward their shadowy goal,
And praised the gods in dance of stately measure,
And stooped to pluck the harmless bud of pleasure.