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Small is the worth

Of beauty from the light retired;
Bid her come forth-

Suffer herself to be desired,

And not blush so to be admired.

Then die, that she

The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee,-

How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair.

EDMUND WALLER.

Yet though thou fade,

From thy dead leaves let fragrance rise
To teach the maid

That goodness time's rude hand defies,
That virtue lives when beauty dies.

HENRY KIRKE WHITE.

[This latter stanza was written by Kirke White on the margin of a borrowed volume of Waller's poems.]

H

Under the Violets.

ER hands are cold, her face is white;
No more her pulses come and go;
Her eyes are shut to life and light:
Fold the white vesture, snow on snow,
And lay her where the violets blow.

But not beneath a graven stone,
To plead for tears with alien eyes;
A slender cross of wood alone

Shall say that here a maiden lies,
In peace, beneath the peaceful skies.

UNDER THE VIOLETS.

And gray old trees of hugest limb

Shall wheel their circling shadows round,
To make the scorching sunlight dim

That drinks the greenness from the ground,
And drop the dead leaves on her mound.

When o'er their boughs the squirrels run,
And through their leaves the robins call,
And ripening in the autumn sun

The acorns and the chestnuts fall,
Doubt not that she will heed them all.

For her the morning choir shall sing
Its matins from the branches high;
And every minstrel voice of spring,
That thrills beneath the April sky,
Shall greet her with its earliest cry.

When, turning round their dial track,
Eastward the lengthening shadows pass,
Her little mourners clad in black,

The crickets, sliding through the grass,
Shall pipe to her an evening mass.

At last the rootlets of the trees

Shall find the prison where she lies,
And bear the buried dust they seize
In leaves and blossoms to the skies;
So may the soul that warmed it rise!

If any, born of kindlier blood,

Should ask: What maiden sleeps below?

Say only this: A tender bud,

That tried to blossom in the snow,

Lies withered where the violets blow.

OLIVER W. HOLMES.

401

Desiderium.

IN MEMORIAM W. W. A.

HE shattered water plashes down the ledge;

THE

The long ledge slants and bends between its walls,

And shoots the current over many an edge

Of shelvy rock, in thin and foamy falls,

With the same streaming light and numerous sound,
As when his musing way he duly hither wound.

Up by this path along the streamlet's brink,
Into the cool ravine his footsteps wore;
That was in other days-I bow and think

In sadness of the wealthy days of yore,
The fair far days, so wholly gone away,

When love, and hope, and youth before us boundless lay.

He was a kind of genius of the glen,

The soul of sunshine in its heart of gloom; Nature's great mansion, wide to other men,

Here for the gentlest guest reserved a room,

Where she, in secret from the general throng,

Welcomed him fleeing oft, and cheered him lingering long.

But hospitable Nature seeks him now,

Through her wide halls or cloistered cells in vain ;

The wistful face, the early-wrinkled brow,

The peace that touched and purified the pain,

The slender form, dilate with noble thought,

The woman's welcoming smile for all fair things he brought;

The light, quick step, elastic but not strong,

Alert with springing spirit and tempered nerve-—

Type of the heart direct that sped along

Swiftly where duty led, and did not swerve

For count of odds, or dread of earthly loss,

Buoyed with the costliest strength to bear the heaviest cross;

OUR BABY.

These tokens of that gracious presence here,

O Nature, you and I together mourn; But you and I, O Nature, have our cheer

403

Concerning him that helps our loss be borneYou mould his dust to keepsake grass and flower, What warmed his dust moulds me to forms of finer power. WILLIAM C. WILKINSON.

Our Baby.

HEN the morning, half in shadow,

WH

Ran along the hill and meadow,

And with milk-white fingers parted
Crimson roses, golden-hearted;
Opening over ruins hoary

Every purple morning-glory,

And outshaking from the bushes

Singing larks and pleasant thrushes;
That's the time our little baby,
Strayed from Paradise, it may be,
Came with eyes like heaven above her,
O, we could not choose but love her!

Not enough of earth for sinning,
Always gentle, always winning,
Never needing our reproving,
Ever lively, ever loving;
Starry eyes and sunset tresses,

White arms, made for light caresses,

Lips, that knew no word of doubting,
Often kissing, never pouting;
Beauty even in completeness,
Overfull of childish sweetness;

That's the way our little baby,
Far too pure for earth, it may be,
Seemed to us, who while about her
Deemed we could not do without her.

When the morning, half in shadow,
Ran along the hill and meadow,
And with milk-white fingers parted
Crimson roses, golden hearted;
Opening over ruins hoary
Every purple morning-glory,
And outshaking from the bushes
Singing larks and pleasant thrushes;
That's the time our little baby,
Pining here for heaven, it may be,
Turning from our bitter weeping,
Closed her eyes as when in sleeping,
And her white hands on her bosom
Folded like a summer blossom.

Now the litter she doth lie on,
Strewed with roses, bear to Zion;
Go, as past a pleasant meadow,
Through the valley of the shadow;
Take her softly, holy angels,
Past the ranks of God's evangels;
Past the saints and martyrs holy
To the Earth-born, meek and lowly,
We would have our pleasant blossom
Softly laid in Jesus' bosom.

PHOEBE CAREY.

N

The River Path.

O bird-song floated down the hill,
The tangled bank below was still;

No rustle from the birchen stem,

No ripple from the water's hem.

The dusk of twilight round us dread,
We felt the falling of the dead:

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