HAVE you not heard the poets tell How came the dainty Babie Bell

Into this world of ours? The gates of heaven were left ajar: With folded hands and dreamy eyes, Wandering out of Paradise, She saw this planet, like a star,

She touched a bridge of flowers, -

those feet

So light they did not bend the bells
Of the celestial asphodels!

They fell like dew upon the flowers,
Then all the air grew strangely sweet!
And thus came dainty Babie Bell
Into this world of ours.

even,

Its bridges, running to and fro,
O'er which the white-winged Angels

go,

Bearing the holy Dead to heaven.

The swallows built beneath the eaves;

Like sunlight in and out the leaves,

The robins went the livelong day;

The lily swung its noiseless bell, And o'er the porch the trembling vine

Seemed bursting with its veins of
wine.

How sweetly, softly, twilight fell!
O, earth was full of singing-birds,
And opening spring-tide flowers,
When the dainty Babie Bell

Came to this world of ours!

O Babie, dainty Babie Bell, How fair she grew from day to day! What woman-nature filled her eyes, What poetry within them lay:

Those deep and tender twilight eyes,

So full of meaning, pure and bright

As if she yet stood in the light Of those oped gates of Paradise. And so we loved her more and more; Ah, never in our hearts before

Was love so lovely born.
We felt we had a link between
This real world and that unseen,

The land beyond the morn.
And for the love of those dear eyes,
For love of her whom God led forth,
(The mother's being ceased on earth
When Babie came from Paradise,)
For love of Him who smote our lives,
And woke the chords of joy and
pain,

We said, Dear Christ! Our hearts bent down

Like violets after rain.

And now the orchards, which were white

And red with blossoms when she came,

Were rich in autumn's mellow prime:

The clustered apples burnt like flame,

The soft-cheeked peaches blushed and fell,

The ivory chestnut burst its shell, The grapes hung purpling in the grange:

And time wrought just as rich a change

In little Babie Bell.

UNSUNG.

As sweet as the breath that goes
From the lips of the white rose,
As weird as the elfin lights
That glimmer of frosty nights,
As wild as the winds that tear
The curled red leaf in the air,
Is the song I have never sung.

In slumber, a hundred times
I have said the mystic rhymes,
But ere I open my eyes
This ghost of a poem flies;
Of the interfluent strains
Not even a note remains:
I know by my pulses' beat
It was something wild and sweet,
And my heart is strangely stirred
By an unremembered word!

From out the dripping ivy-leaves, Antiquely-carven, gray and high, A dormer, facing westward, looks Upon the village like an eye:

And now it glimmers in the sun, A globe of gold, a disc, a speck: And in the belfry sits a dove With purple ripples on her neck.

PURSUIT AND POSSESSION. WHEN I behold what pleasure is Pu suit,

What life, what glorious eagerness it is;

Then mark how full Possession falls from this,

How fairer seems the blossom than the fruit

I am perplext, and often stricken mute

Wondering which attained the higher bliss,

The wingéd insect, or the chrysalis
It thrust aside with unreluctant foot.
Spirit of verse that still elud'st my
art,

Thou airy phantom that dost ever haunt me,

O never, never rest upon my heart, If when I have thee I shall little want thee!

Still flit away in moonlight, rain, and dew, Will-o'-the-wisp, that I may still pursue!

through the gray.

Till we awake ill fate can do no ill

The resting heart shall not take up again

The heavy load that yet must make it bleed;

For this brief space the loud world's

voice is still,

No faintest echo of it brings us pain. How will it be when we shall sleep indeed?

MASKS.

Black Tragedy lets slip her grim disguise

And shows you laughing lips and roguish eyes;

But when, unmasked, gay Comedy

appears,

How wan her cheeks are, and, what heavy tears!

THE ROSE.

Fixed to her necklace, like another gem,

A rose she wore the flower June made for her;