Oh, stars that watch in the purple sky,

Sweet moon so pale and pure,
Awaken these happy sleepers to

The woe coming swift and sure.
For death is here-oh, gruesome rain!

There's a dirge in your solemn roar, With the minor strain of the wailing wind Chording its deep chant o'er.

In mockery glows the coming sun

On desolate, empty streets,

Where the dead-cart and its driver grim

Are the only life one meets.

And shrieks ring here, and sobs moan there, And the sexton digs all day

Where the dead-carts leave their lonely loads, 'Mid the heaps of fresh-dug clay.

In the cottage low 'neath the china tree
Now no girlish mother sings,
While the scented jasmine's starry spray
Blows in on the breeze's wings.
And the boyish father, too, is gone,
And the baby sleeps for aye,
Though the roses bloom like paradise
Under the summer sky.

Oh, winter wind! gray, gruesome storm!
Where are my vanished friends?
Where drifts the current of all the years?
Say whither my own life tends.

Are those voices dead forever and aye,
Or waiting for me somewhere?

Will the whole of our vanishing life but be
Memory's pictures painted on air?

ATTUNE.

There's a festival of music

All unheralded begun,

Where was only dew and silence
At the setting of the sun.
But you hear the wee musicians
Playing now where'er you go,
And their castanets are beating,

And their viols thrumming low;
How they rasp their tiny fiddles
With a shrill insistent bow,
And pick their airy banjoes

Where the rippling grasses flow,
With a vibrant din and clamor
Mark their measures fast and slow.
- The Crickets' Festival.

ST

STEPHEN MARION WATSON.

TEPHEN MARION, son of Stephen and Elizabeth (Andrews) Watson was born in Saco, Maine, January 22nd, 1836, where he passed his boyhood on a farm. He is the oldest of four children, descended from purely English stock. His mother died when he was quite young, and his father, being much away from home, left him with the farm hands who took little interest in the boy, so his aged grandparents were the company he most enjoyed. Although occupations of the farm were distasteful to him, young Watson was obliged to assist in its management, and he received little. advantage for education beyond the town schools till he was nearly grown, when he was sent to the village to prepare himself for an academic course, which he received under the charge of Dr. N. T. True. After teaching school for some time he removed to Boston, Mass., where he remained several years. He married Miss Almira Fogg, of his native State, and returned to Saco, where he became interested in a historical institution and was made its librarian, but he soon after resigned this position for a similar one in the Public Library in Portland, which he held from 1874 to 1891. In 1884 he commenced the publication of the Maine Historical and Genealogical Recorder, a quarterly journal devoted to the interests which its name implies. W. H. S.

REFLECTIONS. (SUNSET.)

THE setting sun o'er Venice threw
A royal cloak of purple hue;
Here behold immortal Titian
Drape the child of a Patrician.

The grand canal in waves of gold, Stirred by the breeze, majestic rolled; The grimy walls of old St. Mark Caught the glow like a shining spark,

And flung its gleams with lightning flash
To palace, hovel, roof and sash,
Till turret, dome and pointed spire
Burned with the gorgeous sunset fire.

Mirrored in all her water-bands,
In awful silence Venice stands,
Old and gray; yet with magic touch
What grandeur can be made of such!

M

MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON.

RS. MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON was born in Philadelphia, Pa., in 1825. She is a daughter of the late Dr. George Junkin, who at the outbreak of the war was president of Washington College, in Lexington, Va. He died in 1868. In her young womanhood she became the wife of Col. Preston, connected with the Virginia Military Institute. She began to write verses when a child. Her first published work appeared in Sartain's Magazine in 1849 and 1850. In 1856 she published her novel, "Silverwood, a Book of Memories." She sympathized with the South in the Civil War, and many of her fugitive poems, printed before the war in southern journals breathed her spirit of resistance to the North. In 1865 she published a volume of verse, "Beechenbrook," devoted to the Civil War, and containing her "Slain in Battle” and "Stonewall Jackson's Grave," with many other lyrics on the war. In 1870 she published a second volume of verse, "Old Songs and New," which contains the most admirable of her productions. She has contributed art-poems to a number of leading magazines, and her ballads are particularly fine pieces of work. She was one of the most prominent contributors to the Southern Literary Messenger. Her attainments are varied, and she has made excellent translations from both ancient and modern languages. Her recent publications "Cartoons" (Boston, 1875), "For Love's Sake: Poems of Faith and Comfort" (New York, 1886), "Colonial Ballads, Sonnets and Other Verse" (Boston, 1887), "A Handful of Monographs, Continental and English" (New York, 1887).

are

LADY YEARDLEY'S GUEST.

(1654).

H. A. V.

'TWAS a Saturday night, midwinter,
And the snow with its sheeted pall
Had covered the stubbled clearings
That girdled the rude-built "Hall.”
But high in the deep-mouthed chimney,
'Mid laughter and shout and din,
The children were piling yule-logs
To welcome the Christmas in.

"Ah, so! We'll be glad to-morrow," The mother half musing said,

As she looked at the eager workers, And laid on a sunny head

A touch as of benediction,
"For Heaven is just as near
The father at far Patuxent

As if he were with us here.

"So choose ye the pine and holly, And shake from their boughs the snow; We'll garland the rough-hewn rafters

As they garlanded long ago, Or ever Sir George went sailing

Away o'er the wild sea-foam, In my beautiful English Sussex,

The happy old walls at home."

She sighed. As she paused, a whisper Set quickly all eyes astrain: "See! See!"-and the boy's hand pointed, "There's a face at the window-pane!" One instant a ghastly terror

Shot sudden her features o'er; The next, and she rose unblenching, And opened the fast-barred door. "Who be ye that seek admission?

Who cometh for food and rest? This night is a night above others

To shelter a straying guest." Deep out of the snowy silence

A guttural answer broke:

"I came from the great Three Rivers,
I am Chief of the Roanoke."

Straight in through the frightened children,
Unshrinking the red man strode,
And loosed on the blazing hearthstone,
From his shoulder, a light-born load;
And out from the pile of deer-skins,
With look as serene and mild
As if it had been in its cradle,
Stepped softly a four-year child.
As he chafted at the fire his fingers,
Close pressed to the brawny knee,
The gaze that the silent savage

Bent on him was strange to see;
And then, with a voice whose yearning
The father could scarcely stem,
He said, to the chidren pointing,
"I want him to be like them!

"They weep for the boy in the wigwam:
I bring him, a moon of days,
To learn of the speaking paper;
To hear of the wiser ways
Of the people beyond the water;

To break with the plough the sod;
To be kind to papoose and woman;
To pray to the white man's God.