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.

Her lissome form more perfect grew, And in her features we could

trace,

In softened curves, her mother's face!

Her angel-nature ripened too. We thought her lovely when she came,

But she was holy, saintly now; Around her pale angelic brow We saw a slender ring of flame!

God's hand had taken away the seal,
That held the portals of her speech;
And oft she said a few strange words
Whose meaning lay beyond our
reach.

She never was a child to us,
We never held her being's key;
We could not teach her holy things:
She was Christ's self in purity.

It came upon us by degrees:
We saw its shadow ere it fell,
The knowledge that our God had sent
His messenger for Babie Bell.
We shuddered with unlanguaged
pain,

And all our hopes were changed to fears,

And all our thoughts ran into tears
Like sunshine into rain.
We cried aloud in our belief,

66

'O, smite us gently, gently, God' Teach us to bend and kiss the roČ And perfect grow through grief." Ah, how we loved her, God can te“· Her heart was folded deep in ours. Our hearts are broken, Babie Bell! At last he came, the messenger,

The messenger from unseen lands And what did dainty Babie Bell?

She only crossed her little hands, She only looked more meek and fair!

We parted back her silken hair:
We wove the roses round her brow,
White buds, the summer's drifted

DESTINY.

But..

I wonder what day of the week,

weighed down

Each with its loveliness as with a

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!

I strive, but I strive in vain,
To recall the lost refrain.
On some miraculous day
Perhaps it will come and stay;
In some unimagined Spring
I may find my voice, and sing
The song I have never sung.

RENCONTRE.

TOILING across the Mer de Glace
I thought of, longed for thee;
What miles between us stretched,
alas!

What miles of land and sea!

My foe, undreamed of, at my side
Stood suddenly, like Fate.
For those who love, the world is wide,
But not for those who hate.

THE FADED VIOLET.

WHAT thought is folded in thy leaves! What tender thought, what speechless pain!

I hold thy faded lips to mine,
Thou darling of the April rain!

I hold thy faded lips to mine,
Though scent and azure tint are fled-
O dry, mute lips! ye are the type
Of something in me cold and dead;

Of something wilted like thy leaves;
Of fragrance flown, of beauty dim;
Yet, for the love of those white hands,
That found thee by a river's brim -

That found thee when thy dewy mouth

Was purpled as with stains of wine —
For love of her who love forgot,
I hold thy faded lips to mine.

That thou shouldst live when I am dead,

When hate is dead, for me, and

gem,

of it:

churchyard wall.