ONE kiss from all others prevents me,
And sets all my pulses astir,

And burns on thy lips and torments me: 'Tis the kiss that I fain would give her.

One kiss for all others requites me,
Although it is never to be,

And sweetens my dreams and invites me: "T is the kiss that she dare not give me.

Ah, could it be mine, it were sweeter
Than honey bees garner in dream,
Though its bliss on my lips were fleeter
Than a swallow's dip to the stream.

And yet, thus denied, it can never
In the prose of life vanish away;
O'er my lips it must hover forever,
The sunshine and shade of my day.

THE BROKEN TRYST.

SUNDAY-SCHOOL CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH OF THE DISCIPLES.

"WHAT means this glory round our feet," The Magi mused, "more bright than morn ?"

And voices chanted clear and sweet, "To-day the Prince of Peace is born!"

What means that star," the Shepherds said, "That brightens through the rocky glen ?

And angels, answering overhead, Sang, "Peace on earth, good-will to men!"

"Tis eighteen hundred years and more

Since those sweet oracles were dumb; We wait for Him, like them of yore;

Alas, He seems so slow to come!

But it was said, in words of gold

No time or sorrow e'er shall dim, That little children might be bold

In perfect trust to come to Him.

All round about our feet shall shine A light like that the wise men saw, If we our loving wills incline

To that sweet Life which is the Law.

If a dead leaf startle behind me, I think 't is your garment's hem,

The simple faith of shepherds then, And, clasping kindly hand in hand, Sing, "Peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Might I whirl away with them!

"To-day the Prince of Peace is born!"

MY PORTRAIT GALLERY.

OPT round my hall of portraiture I gaze, By Memory reared, the artist. wise and holy,

From stainless quarries of deep-buried days.

There, as I muse in soothing melancholy, Your faces glow in more than mortal youth,

Companions of my prime, now vanished wholly,

The loud, impetuous boy, the low-voiced maiden,

Now for the first time seen in flawless truth.

Ah, never master that drew mortal breath Can match thy portraits, just and generous Death,

Whose brush with sweet regretful tints is

laden!

Thou paintest that which struggled here below

Half understood, or understood for woe, And with a sweet forewarning

Mak'st round the sacred front an aureole glow

Woven of that light that rose on Easter morning.

PAOLO TO FRANCESCA.

I WAS with thee in Heaven: I cannot tell If years or moments, so the sudden bliss, When first we found, then lost, us in a kiss,

Abolished Time, abolished Earth and Hell,

Left only Heaven. Then from our blue there fell

The dagger's flash, and did not fall amiss, For nothing now can rob my life of this,

That once with thee in Heaven, all else is well.

Us, undivided when man's vengeance came,

God's half-forgives that doth not here divide;

And, were this bitter whirl-blast fanged

To me 't were summer, we being side by side:

with flame,

This granted, I God's mercy will not blame, For, given thy nearness, nothing is denied.

Dull

Yet

here to claim remembrance were, methinks,

were the soul without some joy in fame;

NIGHTWATCHES.

WHILE the slow clock, as they were miser's gold,

Counts and recounts the mornward steps of Time,

The darkness thrills with conscience of each crime

By Death committed, daily grown more bold.

Once more the list of all my wrongs is told,

And ghostly hands stretch to me from my prime

Helpless farewells, as from an alien clime;

For each new loss redoubles all the old. This morn 't was May; the blossoms were astir

With southern wind; but now the boughs are bent

With snow instead of birds, and all things freeze.

How much of all my past is dumb with her,

And of my future, too, for with her

THE EYE'S TREASURY.

GOLD of the reddening sunset, backward thrown

In largess on my tall paternal trees, Thou with false hope or fear didst never

tease

His heart that hoards thee; nor is childhood flown

From him whose life no fairer boon hath known

Than that what pleased him earliest still should please.

And who hath incomes safe from chance as these,

Gone in a moment, yet for life his own? All other gold is slave of earthward laws;

This to the deeps of ether takes its flight, And on the topmost leaves makes glorious pause

Of parting pathos ere it yield to night: So linger, as from me earth's light withdraws,

Dear touch of Nature, tremulously bright!

TO A LADY PLAYING ON THE CITHERN.

So dreamy-soft the notes, so far away They seem to fall, the horns of Oberon Blow their faint Hunt's-up from the good-time gone;

Or, on a morning of long-withered May, Larks tinkle unseen o'er Claudian arches gray,

That Romeward crawl from Dreamland; and anon

My fancy flings her cloak of Darkness

on,

To vanish from the dungeon of To-day. In happier times and scenes I seem to be,

And, as her fingers flutter o'er the strings,

The days return when I was young as she,

And my fledged thoughts began to feel their wings

PESSIMOPTIMISM.

YE little think what toil it was to build A world of men imperfect even as this, Where we conceive of Good by what we miss,

Of Ill by that wherewith best days are filled;

A world whose every atom is self-willed, Whose corner-stone is propt on artifice, Whose joy is shorter-lived than woman's kiss,

Whose wisdom hoarded is but to be spilled.

Yet this is better than a life of caves, Whose highest art was scratching on a bone,

Or chipping toilsome arrowheads of flint; Better, though doomed to hear while Cleon raves,

To see wit's want eterned in paint or stone,

And wade the drain-drenched shoals of daily print.

THE BRAKES.

WHAT countless years and wealth of brain were spent

To bring us hither from our caves and huts,

And trace through pathless wilds the deep-worn ruts

Of faith and habit, by whose deep indent Prudence may guide if genius be not lent,

Genius, not always happy when it shuts Its ears against the plodder's ifs and buts,

Hoping in one rash leap to snatch the

event.

The coursers of the sun, whose hoofs of flame

Consume morn's misty threshold, are

exact

As bankers' clerks, and all this starpoised frame,

One swerve allowed, were with convulsion rackt;

This world were doomed, should Dulness

A FOREBODING.

WHAT were the whole void world, if thou wert dead,

Whose briefest absence can eclipse my day,

And make the hours that danced with Time away

Drag their funereal steps with muffled head?

Through thee, meseems, the very rose is red,

From thee the violet steals its breath in May,

From thee draw life all things that grow not gray,

And by thy force the happy stars are sped.

Thou near, the hope of thee to overflow Fills all my earth and heaven, as when in Spring,

Ere April come, the birds and blossome know,

And grasses brighten round her feet to

cling;

fail, to tame