17

Near this a course leads to the sunny side
Where streaming emblems of the Fates divide.
A tranquil eddy marks the favored place
Where wavelets kiss and part with fitting grace.

So still the waters glide, the distant sound
Of buzzing industry is scarcely drowned
By murmurs wakened or the rapid's plash,
While there the dancing sunlit crestings flash.

When near these placid, blending, parting ways
You stand, and on the wall of breakers gaze,
Uncounted Furies hasten to their lair,
To wail wild tragic scenes enacted there.

Near Clotho's stream, and swaying to its trend,
Some raveled, scattered threads lead on and bend
Where Iris rings the Fates' white billowed spray
To seal the gladness of the spinster's day.

From this amazing, bright, enchanted place,
Through arbored vistas, yon your eyes may trace
The grandest signet of Jehovah's power
That one shall dare approach in life's brief hour.

While there you need not shudder at the sight
Of cloistral walls that climb upon the right,
Where sacred myths are with religion taught,
And rites and legends warp the woof of thought.

No one should chide you, nor objection make,
If only beaten paths you choose to take;
While these and other tracks you may pursue,
No tasks like these are you compelled to do.

The thicket tempts you where Claytonia smiles,
And soonest violets attempt their wiles;
Where Erythronium to Phoebus talks,
And Trilliums brighten dim and devious walks;

And where sweet Cicely and Columbine
In silence worship at their chosen shrine,
Or in the shadows of the Beeches dance,
And to the piping of the Wood-Thrush prance.
Or you may venture where the Sumac grows
And reddens Autumn's fringes while it glows,
And where fantastic shapes, like Goblins, freeze,
Yet seem to vivify the burdened trees.

No hackneyed claim here hence shall honored be,
Of unearned bonus or a beggar's fee,
For efforts merely of a suasive voice
To drag a pilgrim from his pathway's choice.
Through all the lawful ways your steps may reach
A goal beyond our island's shifting beach—
The Sister Isles-the Graces, shall they be?
The Isles of Faith and Hope and Charity?

VALE SUBSTANTIA.

FAREWELL! The gate is down, the captive free!
'Twas sorrowful to part. I did not scorn
My casemate, though it seemed sometimes forlorn;
I would for aye have gladly held to thee,
Vain edge of vortex, transient rim of me!

If thou wert armed for strife, thy natal morn
Proclaimed thy mission-peace. No bugle-horn
Through thine embrasures smote a troubled sea;
But zephyrs, fragrant of the eager rose,
Which swayed about the merlon's mossy side,
Brought high content where we were wont to
doze,

Unfoiled by murmurs from the moaning tide. Farewell, sad crumbling walls; I could not stay; Farewell! I go beyond,-God lends the way!

MISSING LINKS OF MEMORY.

THE hour when first their eyes beheld the light
None may recall; the years from youth to age,
With here some lost and there unlettered page,
Record but futile phantom forms of night.
Slow recollection falters, stalks alone,

A seeming rambler in a misty way,
Who, seeking tokens there of dawning day,
A hidden rhizoma grasps, or scriptured stone.
The fabric firm of memory is here;

Though dropped seem many loops, yet gathered still

They shall be all; the web the warp shall fill, The endless pattern form; nor should we fear, But gladly follow up the thread; methinks There are in Nature's woof no missing links.

ALLEN G. BIGELOW.

A SOUL attuned to amaranthine strains
Finds purer harmonies than dreamed before;
The valiant spirit, freed from binding chains,
Is sweetly welcomed to the further shore.
And yet we weep; bereft we seem to-night
Of consolation as the darkening hour
Enfolds in gloom our spirits, and the light
Seems hid to loving hearts by fitful Power.

Restrain, we may not, the regretful tear,
Yet hopes, which fervently his heart allured,
Are ours to cherish, while upon his bier

We place the tribute of a flower, assured
That he a sweeter, happier place has found,
Where, coming back, his own untrammeled voice,
In the soft echoes that undying sound,

Records that we in his loved songs rejoice.

E

EBEN PEARSON DORR.

BEN PEARSON DORR, who has occasionally during several years past contributed some modest ventures in verse to the columns of the Buffalo Times, the Review and Quips, is a young newspaper man on the Times' staff, and a grandson of the late Captain E. P. Dorr, of Buffalo. His efforts are marked chiefly by a strong sympathy with nature and acquaintance with secrets of the woods and fields. Mr. Dorr is president of the Buffalo Naturalists' Field Club and recording secretary of the Society of Natural Sciences. He was born in Buffalo and comes on his father's side from the noted New England families of Dorr, Prince and Pearson, and on his mother's side from the Schoolcraft and Johnston families. Henry R. Schoolcraft was his maternal grand-uncle. He is but a few generations descended from the celebrated Ojibway chief Wabojeeg of Lake Superior, through the marriage of John Johnston, Esq., to Wabojeeg's daughter, the fair Oshagushcadawaqua.

The Catholic Union and Times said editorially of Mr. Dorr: "He is a young man, but he has done and is doing fine literary work. There is an ease, a grace, a naturalness and sincerity about his efforts that at once commend them to the appreciative critic, and their spontaneity is one of their delightful features." N. A. G.

The gorgeous red rose has shed its seeds,
Its upward growth is blocked with weeds.
A thicket of grasses, dank, forlorn,
No sign of the rose but a hindering thorn
That plucks your sleeve when forcing through
The jungle of tares where the red rose grew.

THE BLUE JAY.

THE jay, he sings a scanty lay,

As boy who would a fiddle play,
Strikes one bar from tuneful harp,
Then screeches into discord sharp.
Though boy to task again can turn,
The bird, alas, may never learn.
Creator placed within his throat
A song that is a single note,
Yet sweet this mellow minor chord,
Prelude, perhaps it pleased the Lord,
To song reserved for other shore;
Now vaguely hinted—nothing more.

CLOUDLAND.

O! VAPOROUS mountains, isles of mist,
Against a sea of purest velvet blue,
Golden fleece of Perseus, sun-kissed,
I love on summer days to gaze at you.
Far-off Cordilleras of the sky

Stretch on through countless miles of airy space; In the snowy depths of cloud on high

I sometimes think I see a God-like face,

A terrible face, yet just, divine,

That watches o'er earth's trials and Babel's towers.

Oft His will forbids the sun to shine;

The wrath of God rolls endless, and man cowers.

SEEKING THE LIGHT.

FREED from the prison of its earthly cell,
The moth wings into light as if by spell;
Freed from the bonds of earthly care and strife,
The human soul wings to the eternal life,
Unending day illumed by light of one,—
A greater light than that of noon-time sun.

NIAGARA'S SUNSET.

THE setting sun descends the western sky;
In peace and quiet all things earthly lie.
From shores of somber isles the last rays glint,
Painting o'er lighter clouds with ev'ry tint
A sea of fire, which glows and fades away
Into that dreamy hour 'twixt night and day.

H'

HENRY A. VAN FREDENBERG.

ENRY A. VAN FREDENBERG was born in Montague, Sussex county, New Jersey, December 29th, 1849. He is descended on his mother's side from the DeWitts, and on his father's side from the Van Fredenbergs, two Holland families that came to this country in 1650. His parents were the late Aaron and Maria DeWitt Van Fredenberg. His family settled in Sparrowbush, Orange county, New York, in his infancy, and he was educated in the school in that village and in Professor A. B. Wilbur's seminary, in Port Jervis, N. Y. His early life was full of hard work, as his whole life has been. He began work as a schoolteacher, at an early age, and for some years followed that occupation in New York and New Jersey. He supplemented his short school training by wide reading and hard study, including a partial course in the classics and in several modern languages. He was naturally inclined to literary work and soon began to do newspaper work on local journals and on Boston, New York and Philadelphia papers. He finally left the school-room for the editorial sanctum and edited successively the Deckertown, N. J., Independent, the Washington, N. J., Star, the Port Jervis, N. Y., Daily Union and Orange County Farmer, and the Mauch Chunk, Pa., Coal Gazette and Daily Times. Impairment of hearing incapacitated him for active. work in daily journalism, and in 1885 he removed to Buffalo, where he has since edited the Lumber World, the Milling World, the Iron Industry Gazette and two other class journals. His work has covered political, literary and technical productions. His published poetical works are few in number. He contributed to Dixie, of Atlanta, Ga., when that journal was a literary periodical, and his verse has been widely copied. Caring little for publicity, he has accumulated the poetical work of years, and now has a volume of verse ready for the press. He has made a study of poetical form, and he does not believe in the careless versification that usually is called "singing by ear." He is a busy man and a prolific writer, quiet and retiring, and inclined to look on the sunny side of life. C. W. M.

THE MAIDEN WHO WINS.

(BALLADE.)

Aн, maiden sweet with the drooping eye, And the roselike cheek and tawny hair, And the siren feint of a smothered sigh, And the luring ruse of a languid air,

Thou seemest coy, but the maids who dare In the lists with thee are aye outdone;

Men turn from the sun's too ardent glare: The maiden who wins is she who's won.

The rose that brushes the passer-by

May be the sweetest, may be most fair, But he who's hurt the thorn will spy, And love flies ever from open snare; The half-hid bloom is the one he'd bear, The bloom that shrinks from the scorching sun. 'Tis the unworn charm will longest wear: The maiden who wins is she who's won.

O, timid blossom, there's none to vie With thee in the lists, so have no care. Thy prince is coming, he draweth nigh! Nay, flutter not so, but coyly spare

A first love kiss! 'Tis his guerdon rare! Such kiss is pure as the prayer of a nun,

'Tis a kiss by which he'll ever swear: The maiden who wins is she who's won.

ENVOY.

Rose, ever of open wiles beware;

The prey the uncovered snare will shun. Never the moss from thy veiled face tear: The maiden who wins is she who's won.

NOTHING ENDS.

(KYRIELLE.)

THE withered rose shall be rose once more,
The wrecked ship sails again from the shore,
The bow that's broken anew shall bend:
Nothing began, and nothing shall end.

The dead man lives as a man again,
The Now we know is a once-known Then,
The foe that lives is a buried friend:
Nothing began, and nothing shall end.

Sand on the desert? Not so, not so!
'Tis all that hath been in nature's flow,
And it doth newly to all things tend:
Nothing began, and nothing shall end.

Faded love? Only delusion vain!
The fallen rain shall be sometime rain,
And the arrow shot again shall rend:
Nothing began, and nothing shall end.

Mournful death? 'Tis a mockery mad!
The earth-closed eyes over there ope glad,
And the earth-furled wings e'er joyward wend:
Nothing began, and nothing shall end.

21