Bee-time and moth-time, add the amount;
White heat and honey, who keeps the count?

Gone some fine evening, a spark out-tost!
The world no darker for one star lost!

Bee to the blossom, moth to the flame;
Each to his passion; what's in a name !

HABEAS CORPUS.

My body, eh? Friend Death, how now?
Why all this tedious pomp of writ?
Thou hast reclaimed it sure and slow
For half a century, bit by bit.

In faith thou knowest more to-day

Than I do, where it can be found!
This shrivelled lump of suffering clay,
To which I now am chained and bound,

Has not of kith or kin a trace

To the good body once I bore; Look at this shrunken, ghastly face: Didst ever see that face before?

Ah, well, friend Death, good friend thou art; Thy only fault thy lagging gait,

Mistaken pity in thy heart

For timorous ones that bid thee wait,

Do quickly all thou hast to do,

Nor I nor mine will hindrance make;

I shall be free when thou art through;
I grudge thee nought that thou must take.

Stay! I have lied; I grudge thee one,
Yes, two I grudge thee at this last,—
Two members which have faithful done
My will and bidding in the past.

I grudge thee this right hand of mine,
I grudge thee this quick-beating heart;
They never gave me coward sign,

Nor played me once a traitor's part.
I see now why in olden days

Men in barbaric love or hate
Nailed enemies' hands at wild crossways,
Shrined leaders' hearts in costly state:
The symbol, sign, and instrument

Of each soul's purpose, passion, strife,
Of fires in which are poured and spent
Their all of love, their all of life.
O feeble, mighty human hand!

O fragile, dauntless human heart!
The universe holds nothing planned
With such sublime, transcendent art!
Yes, Death, I own I grudge thee mine
Poor little hand, so feeble now;
Its wrinkled palm, its altered line,
Its veins so pallid and so slow-

(Unfinished here.)

Ah, well, friend Death, good friend thou art;
I shall be free when thou art through.
Take all there is-take hand and heart;
There must be somewhere work to do.

A LAST PRAYER.

FATHER, I scarcely dare to pray,
So clear I see, now it is done,
That I have wasted half my day,

And left my work but just begun ;
So clear I see that things I thought
Were right or harmless were a sin;
So clear I see that I have sought,
Unconscious, selfish aims to win;

So clear I see that I have hurt

The souls I might have helped to save;
That I have slothful been, inert,

Deaf to the calls thy leaders gave.

In outskirts of thy kingdoms vast,
Father, the humblest spot give me ;
Set me the lowliest task thou hast ;
Let me repentant work for thee!

ROSE HAWTHORNE LATHROP.

[Born at Lenox, Massachusetts, 20th May 1851. Author of Along the Shore, published, in 1888, by Ticknor & Co., now Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, with whose kind permission the poems quoted are given.]

FRANCIE.

I LOVED a child as we should love
Each other everywhere;
I cared more for his happiness
Than I dreaded my own despair.

An angel asked me to give him,
My whole life's dearest cost;
And in adding mine to his treasures
I knew they could never be lost.

To his heart I gave the gold,

Though little my own had known;
To his eyes what tenderness

From youth in mine had grown!

I gave him all my buoyant
Hope for my future years;
I gave him whatever melody
My voice had steeped in tears.

Upon the shore of darkness

His drifted body lies,

He is dead, and I stand beside him,
With his beauty in my eyes.

I am like those withered petals
We see on a winter day,
That gladly give their colour
In the happy summer away.

I am glad I lavished my worthiest
To fashion his greater worth;
Since he will live in heaven,

I shall lie content in the earth.

DOROTHY.

DEAR little Dorothy, she is no more!

I have wandered world-wide, from shore to shore;
I have seen as great beauties as ever were wed;
But none can console me for Dorothy dead.

Dear little Dorothy! How strange it seems

That her face is less real than the faces of dreams;
That the love which kept true, and the lips which so

spoke,

Are more lost than my heart, which died not when it broke!

LOOKING BACKWARD.

GREY towers make me think of thee,
Thou girl of olden minstrelsy,
Young as the sunlight of to-day,
Silent as tasselled boughs of May!

A wind-flower in a world of harm,
A hair-bell on a turret's arm,
A pearl upon the hilt of Fame

Thou wert, fair child of some high name.
The velvet page, the deep-eyed knight,
The heartless falcon, poised for flight,
The dainty steed and graceful hound,
In thee their keenest rapture found

But for old ballads, and the rhyme

And writ of genius o'er the time

When keeps had newly reared their towers,
The winning scene had not been ours.

O chivalry! Thy age was fair,
When even knaves set out to dare
Their heads for any barbarous crime,
And hate was brave, and love sublime.

The bugle-note I send so far

Across Time's moors to thee, sweet star,
Where stands thy castle in its mist,
Hear, if the wandering breezes list!

THE OUT-GOING RACE.

THE mothers wish for no more daughters;
There is no future before them.

They bow their heads and their pride
At the end of the many tribes journey.

The mothers weep over their children
Loved and unwelcome together,

Who should have been dreamed, not born,
Since there is no road for the Indian.

The mothers see into the future,
Beyond the end of that Chieftain

Who shall be the last of the race
Which allowed only death to a coward.

The square, cold cheeks, lips firm-set,

The hot, straight glance, and the throat-line, Held like a stag's on the cliff,

Shall be swept by the night-winds, and vanish!