Ah, strange and savage where he shines, The sun seems staring through those pines That once the vanished home could bless With intimate, sweet loneliness. The ignorant, elastic sod The feet of them that daily trod The very fire-place knows them not. For in the weedy cellar, thick an ease Dost thou, too, lose the thought of these? Yet I, although I know not who Oh, glorious gift of brotherhood! That makes us live with those long dead, Hereafter! No regret can rob And, though the hearth be cracked and cold, Though ruin all the place enfold, S. WEIR MITCHELL. [U. s. A.] A CAMP IN THREE LIGHTS. AGAINST the darkness sharply lined When sudden flashed the campfire red, Where fragrant hummed the moist swamp-spruce, And tongues unknown the cedar spoke, While half a century's silent growth Went up in cheery flame and smoke. Pile on the logs! A flickering spire Of ruby flame the birch-bark gives, And as we track its leaping sparks, Behold in heaven the North-light lives! An arch of deep, supremest blue, A band above of silver shade, Where, like the frost - work's crystal spears, A thousand lances grow and fade, Or shiver, touched with palest tints Their golden banners up the sky, With faint, swift, silken murmurings, - Our pipes are out, the camp-fire fades, And, lingering, sets in awful light A blackened pine-tree's ghastly cross, Then swiftly pays in silver white The faded fire, the aurora's lose. NIGHT ON LAKE HELEN. I LIE in my red canoe Till, between the stars above And those in the lake's embrace, I seem to float like the dead In the noiselessness of space. Betwixt two worlds I drift, And out of the height above, And out of the deep below, That now and forevermore ANDREW LANG. While the nations fade and die, And the countless years are rolled. But I turn the light canoe, And, darting across the night, Am glad of the paddles' noise And the camp-fire's honest light. ANDREW LANG. HIS CHOICE OF A SEPULCHRE. HERE I'd come when weariest ! Here the breast Of the Windburg's tufted over Deep with bracken; here his crest Takes the west, LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY. Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover. 359 For who would gravely set his face On every hand the roads begin, Then follow you, wherever hie For one or all, or high or low, LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY. [U. S. A.] TEMPTATION. I COME where the wry road leads Scarce hear the flap of the tents, - Gypsies, gypsies, the whole - To be abroad with the rain, And at home with the forest hush, With the crag, and the flower-urn, And the wan sleek mist upcurled; SOMETHING passes in the air, Blithest in the spring it stirs, Something with the May-fly races, Something passes. Something climbs, from bush or croft, Sails, with glistening spars and shrouds, Of the wind, that, whirling by, Or doth breathe a melting strain Painters, fix its fleeting lines; A. MARY F. ROBINSON. MUSIC. BEFORE the dawn is yet the day But in my dream a tune there is And yet I know not an it be Some music in the lane, Or but a song that rose with me From sleep, to sink again. And so, alas, and even so I waste my life away; Nor if the tune be real I know, Or but a dream astray. EDMUND WILLIAM GOSSE. FROM "THE GOLDEN ISLES." SAD would the salt waves be, And dark the gulfs that echo to the seven. stringed lyre, If things were what they seem, If life had no fair dream, No mirage made to tip the dull sea-line with fire. Falling by night and day along our hu- | And he who grasps too much may even man strand, The poet sits and sees Borne on the morning breeze The phantom islands float a furlong from the land. White are their crags, and blue And like a violet shell their cliffs recede from sight: Between their fretted capes Die on the horizon pale, and lapse in liquid light. The poet sits and smiles; He knows the golden isles; He never hopes to win their cliffs, their marble mines, Reefs where their green sea raves, Their felspars full of light, their rosy corallines. All these he oft has sought, He would not have their day He loves their mystery best, and bids their shapes be dim. They solace all his pains; Within their radiant glow he soon forgets the world: They bathe his torrid noons They leave his lingering evenings tenderly impearled. As one who walks all day May turn aside to plunge in some sequestered pool, himself be lost. |