Appears there naught for which to weep, She'll weep for naught for his dear sake;

She clasps her sister in her sleep;

Her love in dreams is most awake.
Her soul, that once with pleasure shook
Did any eyes her beauty own,
Now wonders how they dare to look
On what belongs to him alone.
The indignity of taking gifts
Exhilarates her loving breast;
A rapture of submission lifts
Her life into celestial rest.

There's nothing left of what she was,-
Back to the babe the woman dies;
And all the wisdom that she has
Is to love him for being wise.
She's confident because she fears;
And, though discreet when he's away,

If none but her dear despot hears,
She'll prattle like a child at play.
Perchance, when all her praise is said,
He tells the news-a battle won-
On either side ten thousand dead,-
Describing how the whole was done:
She thinks," He's looking on my face!
I am his joy; whate'er I do,
He sees such time-contenting grace
In that, he'd always have me so!"

M

Y life is like the summer rose That opens to the morning sky, But ere the shades of evening close,

Is scattered on the ground-to die!
Yet on the rose's humble bed
The sweetest dews of night are shed,
As if she wept the waste to see -
But none shall weep a tear for me!
My life is like the autumn leaf

That trembles in the moon's pale ray; Its hold is frail-its date is brief, Restless-and soon to pass away! Yet ere that leaf shall fall and fade,

The parent tree will mourn its shadeThe winds bewail the leafless treeBut none shall breathe a sigh for me?

My life is like the prints which feet

Have left on Tampa's desert strand; Soon as the rising tide shall beat,

All trace will vanish from the sand; Yet, as if grieving to efface

All vestige of the human race,

On that lone shore loud moans the sea-
But none, alas! shall mourn for me!
--Richard Henry Wilde.

-Thackeray.

Henceforward, rise, aspire

To all the calms and magnanimities,

The lofty uses and the noble ends,
The sanctified devotion and full work,
To which thou art elect forevermore,
First woman, wife and mother.

*

*

EVE. * ADAM. Whereby sin dieth.

* And first in sin.

And also the bearer of the seed
Raise the majesties

Of thy disconsolate brows, O well-beloved,
And front with level eyelids the To Come,
And all the dark o' the world. Rise, woman, rise

To thy peculiar and best altitudes

Of doing good and of enduring ill,—
Of comforting for ill, and teaching good,

And reconciling all that ill and good
Unto the patience of a constant hope,—

Rise with thy daughters! If sin came by thee,
And by sin, death, -the ransom-righteousness,

The heavenly light and compensative rest,
Shall come by means of thee. Be satisfied;
Something thou hast to bear through womanhood,
Peculiar suffering answering to the sin,-
Some pang paid down for each new human life,
Some weariness in guarding such a life,

Some coldness from the guarded; some mistrust From those thou hast too well served; from those beloved

Too loyally, some treason; feebleness
Within thy heart, and cruelty without,

And pressures of an alien tyranny

With its dynastic reasons of larger bones

And stronger sinews. But, go to! Thy love

Shall chant itself its own beatitudes,

After its own life-working. A child's kiss
Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad;
A poor man served by thee, shall make thee rich;
A sick man helped by thee, shall make thee strong;

A

GAIN 'twas evening-Agnes knelt, Pale, passionless-a sainted one: On wasted cheek and pale brow dwelt The last beams of the setting sun. Alone the damp and cloistered wall Was round her like a sepulcher; And at the vesper's mournful call Was bending every worshiper. She knelt her knee upon the stone, Her thin hand veiled her tearful eye,

As it were sin to gaze upon

The changes of the changeful sky. It seemed as if a sudden thought

Of her enthusiast moments came With the bland eve-and she had sought To stifle in her heart the flame

Of its awakened memory:

She felt she might not cherish, then, The raptures of a spirit, free

And passionate as hers had been, When its sole worship was, to look With a delighted eye abroad; And read, as from an open book,

The written languages of God.

How changed she kneels!-the vile, gray hood,
Where spring flowers twined with raven hair,
And where the jeweled silk hath flowed,
Coarse veil and gloomy scapulaire
And wherefore thus? Was hers a soul,
Which, all unfit for nature's gladness,
Could grasp the bigot's poisoned bowl,
And drain with joy its draughts of madness?
Read ye the secret, who have nursed

In your own hearts intenser feelings.
Which stole upon ye, at the first,
Like bland and musical revealings
From some untrodden paradise,

Until her very soul was theirs;
And from their maddening ecstacies

Ye woke to mournfulness and prayers.

To weave a garland, will not let it wither-
Wondering, I listen to the strain sublime,
That flows, all freshly, down the stream of time,
Wafted in grand simplicity along,

The undying breath, the very soul of song.
-John Greenleaf Whittier.

SHE

HE shrank from all, and her silent mood
Made her wish only for solitude.

Her eye sought the ground as it could not brook
For innermost shame, on another's to look,
And the cheerings of comfort fell on her ear
Like deadliest words, that were curses to hear:-
She still was young, and she had been fair;
But weather stains, hunger, toil and care,
That frost and fever that wear the heart,
Had made the colors of youth depart
From the sallow cheek, save over it came
The burning flush of the spirit's shame.

They were sailing over the salt sea foam,
Far from her country, far from her home;
And all she had left for her friends to keep
Was a name to hide, and a memory to weep!
And her future held forth but the felon's lot-
To live forsaken, to die forgot!

She could not weep, and she could not pray,
But she wasted and withered from day to day,
Till you might have counted each sunken vein,
When her wrist was prest by the iron chain;
And sometimes I thought her large dark eye
Had the glisten of red insanity.

She called me once to her sleeping place,
A strange, wild look was upon her face,
Her eye flashed over her cheek so white,
Like a gravestone seen in the pale moonlight.
And she spoke in a low, unearthly tone-
The sound from mine ear hath never gone!-
"I had last night the loveliest dream:
My own land shone in the summer beam,
I saw the fields of the golden grain,

I heard the reaper's harvest strain,

There stood on the hills the green pine tree, And the thrush and the lark sang merrily.