To bring us news, and she never came back. Since that old ship went out of the bay With my great-hearted brother on her deck; I watched him till he shrank to a speck, And his face was toward me all the way. Bright his hair was, a golden brown, The time we stood at our mother's knee; That beauteous head, if it did go down, Carried sunshine into the sea. Out in the fields one summer night Of the corn-leaves rustling, and of the shade Of the candle shone through the open door, The first half hour, the great yellow star By the fork of a tall red mulberry-tree, Which close to the edge of our flax field grew From which it tenderly shook the dew In its hand-breadth of shadow day after day. The berries we gave her she would n't eat, So slim and shining, to keep her still. AS THROUGH THE LAND AT EVE. 273 Do you think, sir, if you try, You can paint the look of a lie? Of the urchin that's likest me. I think 't was solely mine indeed, But that's no matter,— paint it so ; The eyes of our mother (take good heed) Nor the fluttering bird, held fast by the legs, I felt my heart bleed where the glance went, as though Things that are fairest, things most sweet, The mother, the lads with their bird at her knee; ALICE CARY. As through the Land at Eve we went. As S through the land at eve we went, And plucked the ripened ears, We fell out, my wife and I, Oh, we fell out I know not why, And kissed again with tears. For when we came where lies the child There above the little grave, Oh, there above the little grave, We kissed again with tears. ALFRED TENNYSON. Ο In the Shadow. UR brightest fancies serve as rays As mists from smoothest waters rise, Our sky shows darkest through the rifts; The dust we are about us lifts, And rises with our purest prayer. JACOB A. HOEKSTRA. I My Babes in the Wood. KNOW a story, fairer, dimmer, sadder, Than any story printed in your books. You are so glad? It will not make you gladder; "Is it a fairy story?" Well, half fairy — You had a baby sister and a brother, Sweeter than all things else except each other Older yet younger - gone from human sight! A GOOD TIME GOING. And I, who loved them, and shall love them ever, And think with yearning tears how each light hand Poor slightly golden heads! I think I missed them Sometimes I fancy that they may have perished I fancy, too, that they were softly covered Whose nursling wings in far home sunshine hovered, 275 Their names were what yours are. At this you wonder, Their pictures are your own, as you have seen; And my bird-buried darlings, hidden under Lost leaves - why, it is your dead selves I mean! MRS. S. M. B. PIATT. A Good Time going! RAVE singer of the coming time, Sweet minstrel of the joyous present, Cry, God be with him, till he stands His feet among the English daisies! 'Tis here we part; - for other eyes The busy deck, the fluttering streamer, The deep blue desert, lone and drear, His home! the Western giant smiles, And twirls the spotty globe to find it ; This little speck the British Isles? 'Tis but a freckle, never mind it! He laughs, and all his prairies roll, Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles, And ridges stretched from pole to pole Heave till they crack their iron knuckles! But Memory blushes at the sneer, And Honor turns with frown defiant, And Freedom, leaning on her spear, Laughs louder than the laughing giant : "An islet is a world," she said, "When glory with its dust has blended, And Britain keeps her noble dead Till earth and seas and skies are rended!" Beneath each swinging forest-bough Some arm as stout in death reposes, From wave-washed foot to heaven-kissed brow Her valor's life-blood runs in roses; Nay, let our brothers of the West Write smiling in their florid pages, One half her soil has walked the rest Hugged in the clinging billow's clasp, From sea-weed fringe to mountain heather, |