Agnes

She left me marveling why my soul
Was sad that she was glad;

At all the sadness in the sweet,

The sweetness in the sad.

Still, still I seemed to see her, still
Look up with soft replies,

And take the berries with her hand,
And the love with her lovely eyes.

Nothing begins, and nothing ends,
That is not paid with moan;
For we are born in others' pain,
And perish in our own.

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Francis Thompson [1859?-1907]

AGNES

I SAW her in childhood- —a bright, gentle thing,
Like the dawn of the morn, or the dews of the spring:
The daisies and hare-bells her playmates all day;
Herself as light-hearted and artless as they.

I saw her again-a fair girl of eighteen,

Fresh glittering with graces of mind and of mien.
Her speech was all music; like moonlight she shone;
The envy of many, the glory of one.

Years, years fleeted over-
r-I stood at her foot:
The bud had grown blossom, the blossom was fruit.

A dignified mother, her infant she bore;

And looked, I thought, fairer than ever before.

I saw her once more-'twas the day that she died;
Heaven's light was around her, and God at her side;
No wants to distress her, no fears to appal-

O then, I felt, then she was fairest of all!

Henry Francis Lyte [1793-1847]

THE GYPSY GIRL

PASSING I saw her as she stood beside
A lonely stream between two barren wolds;
Her loose vest hung in rudely gathered folds
On her swart bosom, which in maiden pride
Pillowed a string of pearls; among her hair
Twined the light bluebell and the stone-crop gay;
And not far thence the small encampment lay,
Curling its wreathed smoke into the air.
She seemed a child of some sun-favored clime;
So still, so habited to warmth and rest;
And in my wayward musings on past time,
When my thought fills with treasured memories,
That image nearest borders on the blest

Creations of pure art that never dies.

Henry Alford [1810-1871]

FANNY

A SOUTHERN BLOSSOM

COME and see her as she stands,
Crimson roses in her hands;

And her eyes

Are as dark as Southern night,

Yet than Southern dawn more bright,

And a soft, alluring light

In them lies.

None deny if she beseech
With that pretty, liquid speech
Of the South.

All her consonants are slurred,
And the vowels are preferred;
There's a poem in each word
From that mouth,

Even Cupid is her slave;
Of her arrows, half he gave

Somebody's Child

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Her one day

In a merry, playful hour.

Dowered with these and beauty's dower,

Strong indeed her magic power,

So they say.

Venus, not to be outdone
By her generous little son,
Shaped the mouth

Very like a Cupid's bow.

Lack-a-day! Our North can show
No such lovely flowers as grow

In the South!

Anne Reeve Aldrich [1866-1892]

SOMEBODY'S CHILD

JUST a picture of Somebody's child,-
Sweet face set in golden hair,
Violet eyes, and cheeks of rose,
Rounded chin, with a dimple there,

Tender eyes where the shadows sleep,
Lit from within by a secret ray,—
Tender eyes that will shine like stars
When love and womanhood come this way:

Scarlet lips with a story to tell,

Blessed be he who shall find it out,

Who shall learn the eyes' deep secret well,
And read the heart with never a doubt.

Then you will tremble, scarlet lips,

Then you will crimson, loveliest cheeks:
Eyes will brighten and blushes will burn
When the one true lover bends and speaks.

But she's only a child now, as you see,
Only a child in her careless grace:
When Love and Womanhood come this way
Will anything sadden the flower-like face?

Louise Chandler Moulton [1835-1908]

EMILIA

HALFWAY up the Hemlock valley turnpike,
In the bend of Silver Water's arm,
Where the deer come trooping down at even,
Drink the cowslip pool, and fear no harm,
Dwells Emilia,

Flower of the fields of Camlet Farm.

Sitting sewing by the western window
As the too brief mountain sunshine flies,
Hast thou seen a slender-shouldered figure
With a chestnut braid, Minerva-wise,
Round her temples,

Shadowing her gray, enchanted eyes?

When the freshets flood the Silver Water,

When the swallow flying northward braves Sleeting rains that sweep the birchen foothills Where the windflowers' pale plantation waves— (Fairy gardens

Springing from the dead leaves in their graves),—

Falls forgotten, then, Emilia's needle;

Ancient ballads, fleeting through her brain,
Sing the cuckoo and the English primrose,
Outdoors calling with a quaint refrain;
And a rainbow

Seems to brighten through the gusty rain.

Forth she goes, in some old dress and faded,
Fearless of the showery shifting wind;

Kilted are her skirts to clear the mosses,
And her bright braids in a 'kerchief pinned,
Younger sister

Of the damsel-errant Rosalind.

While she helps to serve the harvest supper
In the lantern-lighted village hall,
Moonlight rises on the burning woodland,
Echoes dwindle from the distant Fall.
Hark, Emilia!

In her ear the airy voices call.

To a Greek Girl

Hidden papers in the dusty garret,
Where her few and secret poems lie,-
Thither flies her heart to join her treasure,
While she serves, with absent-musing eye,
Mighty tankards

Foaming cider in the glasses high.

"Would she mingle with her young companions!"
Vainly do her aunts and uncles say;
Ever, from the village sports and dances,
Early missed, Emilia slips away.

Whither vanished?

With what unimagined mates to play?

Did they seek her, wandering by the water,
They should find her comrades shy and strange:
Queens and princesses, and saints and fairies,
Dimly moving in a cloud of change:—
Desdemona;

Mariana of the Moated Grange.

Up this valley to the fair and market

When young farmers from the southward ride,

Oft they linger at a sound of chanting

In the meadows by the turnpike side;
Long they listen,

Deep in fancies of a fairy bride.

Ellen Angus French [18

TO A GREEK GIRL

WITH breath of thyme and bees that hum,

Across the years you seem to come,-
Across the years with nymph-like head,
And wind-blown brows unfilleted;
A girlish shape that slips the bud

In lines of unspoiled symmetry;
A girlish shape that stirs the blood
With pulse of Spring, Autonoël

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