SARAH HELEN WHITMAN.

The toiling, suffering sons of earth

Are drowned in sweetest slumber.

"The student rests his weary brain,
And waits the fresher morrow;
I ease the patient of his pain,

The mourner of his sorrow.

"I bar the gates where cares abide,
And open Pleasure's portals
To visioned joys; thus, far and wide,
I earn the praise of mortals."

"Alas!" replied the other, "mine Is not a task so grateful; Howe'er to mercy I incline,

To mortals I am hateful.

"They call me 'Kill-joy,' every one,
And speak in sharp detraction
Of all I do; yet have I done
Full many a kindly action."

while

Thine office is berated,

"T is only by the vile and weak That thou art feared and hated.

"And though thy work on earth has given

To all a shade of sadness;

Consider every saint in heaven
Remembers thee with gladness!"

233 Tinting the wild grape with her dewy fingers

Till the cool emerald turns to amethyst:

"True!" answered Sleep, "but all the The moist winds breathe of crispód

leaves and flowers

In the damp hollows of the woodland

sown,

Mingling the freshness of autumnal showers

With spicy airs from cedarn alleys blown.

In the soft light of an autumnal day, When Summer gathers up her robes of

glory,

And like a dream of beauty glides

away.

Kindling the faint stars of the hazel, shining

How through each loved, familiar path
she lingers,
Serenely smiling through the golden
mist,

To light the gloom of Autumn's mouldering halls

With hoary plumes the clematis entwin

ing

SARAH HELEN WHITMAN.

[U. S. A.]

A STILL DAY IN AUTUMN.

I LOVE to wander through the wood-Or lands hoary

Where o'er the rock her withered garland falls.

Warm lights are on the sleepy uplands waning

Beneath soft clouds along the horizon rolled,

Till the slant sunbeams through their fringes raining

Bathe all the hills in melancholy gold.

Beside the brook and on the umbered meadow,

Where yellow fern-tufts fleck the faded ground,

With folded lids beneath their palmy shadow

The gentian nods, in dewy slumbers bound.

Upon those soft, fringed lids the bee sits brooding,

Like a fond lover loath to say farewell, with shut wings through silken folds intruding,

Creeps near her heart his drowsy tale to tell.

I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;

They have builded him an altar in the I hearing get, who had but ears,

evening dews and damps;

And sight, who had but eyes before;

ELIZABETH LLOYD HOWELL.

I moments live, who lived but years, And truth discern, who knew but learning's lore.

Now chiefly is my natal hour,
And only now my prime of life,
Of manhood's strength it is the flower,
'Tis peace's end, and war's beginning
strife.

It comes in summer's broadest noon,
By a gray wall, or some chance place,
Unseasoning time, insulting June,
And vexing day with its presuming face.

I will not doubt the love untold
Which not my worth nor want hath
bought,

Which wooed me young, and wooed me
old,

And to this evening hath me brought.

Afflicted and deserted of my kind;
Yet I am not cast down.

I am weak, yet strong;
I murmur not that I no longer see;
Poor, old, and helpless, I the more
belong,

Father supreme! to thee.

O merciful One!

When men are farthest, then thou art most near;

When friends pass by me, and my weakness shun,

Thy chariot I hear.

Thy glorious face

Is leaning toward me; and its holy

- C. F. ALEXANDER.

light Shines in upon my lonely dwelling.

place,

And there is no more night.

237

It is nothing now,

ELIZABETH LLOYD HOWELL. When heaven is opening on my sight

less eyes?

[U. S. A.]

When airs from paradise refresh my brow,

The earth in darkness lies.

MILTON'S PRAYER IN BLINDNESS.

I AM old and blind!

In a purer clime

Men point at me as smitten by God's My being fills with rapture, -waves of

frown;

thought Roll in upon my spirit, strains sublime Break over me unsought.

I have naught to fear;

This darkness is the shadow of thy wing;
Beneath it I am almost sacred; here
Can come no evil thing.

O, I seem to stand

Trembling, where foot of mortal ne'er hath been,

Wrapped in the radiance of thy sinless land,

Which eye hath never seen!

Visions come and go:

Shapes of resplendent beauty round me
throng;

From angel lips I seem to hear the flow
Of soft and holy song.

Give me my lyre!

I feel the stirrings of a gift divine:
Within my bosom glows unearthly fire,
Lit by no skill of mine.

C. F. ALEXANDER.

THE BURIAL OF MOSES.
By Nebo's lonely mountain
On this side Jordan's wave,
In a vale in the land of Moab
There lies a lonely grave.
And no man knows that sepulchre,
And no man saw it e'er,

For the angels of God upturned the sod,
And laid the dead man there.