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Helen Fiske Jackson

CORONATION

AT the king's gate the subtle noon Wove filmy yellow nets of sun; Into the drowsy snare too soon

The guards fell one by one.

("H. H.")

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On the king's gate the moss grew gray; The king came not. They called him dead;

And made his eldest son one day

Slave in his father's stead.

MORN

IN what a strange bewilderment do we Awake each morn from out the brief night's sleep.

Our struggling consciousness doth grope and creep

Its slow way back, as if it could not free
Itself from bonds unseen. Then Memory,
Like sudden light, outflashes from its deep
The joy or grief which it had last to keep
For us; and by the joy or grief we see
The new day dawneth like the yesterday;
We are unchanged; our life the same we
knew

Before. I wonder if this is the way
We wake from death's short sleep, to
struggle through

A brief bewilderment, and in dismay
Behold our life unto our old life true.

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Franklin Benjamin Sanborn

SAMUEL HOAR

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ARIANA1

SWEET saint! whose rising dawned upon the sight

Like fair Aurora chasing mists away,
Our ocean billows, and thy western height
Gave back reflections of the tender ray,
Sparkling and smiling as night turned to
day:-

Ah! whither vanished that celestial light?
Suns rise and set, Monadnoc's amethyst
Year-long above the sullen cloud appears,
Daily the waves our summer strand have
kissed,

But thou returnest not with days and years: Or is it thine, yon clear and beckoning star,

Seen o'er the hills that guarded once thy home ?

Dost guide thy friend's free steps that widely roam

Toward that far country where his wishes are ?

AT CHAPPAQUA

Joel Benton

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With rapture still. This breeze once fanned his brow.

This is the peaceful Mecca all men know!

THE SCARLET TANAGER

A BALL of fire shoots through the tamarack
In scarlet splendor, on voluptuous wings;
Delirious joy the pyrotechnist brings,
Who marks for us high summer's almanac.
How instantly the red-coat hurtles back!
No fiercer flame has flashed beneath the sky.
Note now the rapture in his cautious eye,
The conflagration lit along his track.
Winged soul of beauty, tropic in desire,
Thy love seems alien in our northern zone;
Thou giv'st to our green lands a burst of fire
And callest back the fables we disown.
The hot equator thou mightst well inspire,
Or stand above some Eastern monarch's
throne.

1 See BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE, p. 819.

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