WHEN WE ARE ALL ASLEEP.

WHEN He returns, and finds all sleeping here,

Some old, some young, some fair, and some not fair, Will He stoop down and whisper in each ear,

"Awaken!" or for pity's sake forbear, Saying, "How shall I meet their frozen stare Of wonder, and their eyes so woebegone? How shall I comfort them in their despair

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If they cry out Too late! let us sleep on'?"

Perchance He will not wake us up, but when
He sees us look so happy in our rest,
Will murmur, 66 Poor dead women and dead men!
Dire was their doom, and weary was their quest.
Wherefore awake them into life again?

Let them sleep on untroubled,

it is best."

ROBERT BUCHANAN.

INEVITABLE CHANGE.

REBUKE me not! I have nor wish nor skill
To alter one hair's breadth in all this house
Of Love, rising with domes so luminous
And air-built galleries on life's topmost hill!
Only I know that fate, chance, years that kill,

Change that transmutes, have aimed their darts at us;

Envying each lovely shrine and amorous

Reared on earth's soil by man's too passionate will.

Dread thou the moment when these glittering towers, These adamantine walls and gates of gems,

Shall fade like forms of sun-forsaken cloud;

When dulled by imperceptible chill hours,
The golden spires of our Jerusalems

Shall melt to mist and vanish in night's shroud!

J. A. SYMONDS.

This is a sonnet of sincere feeling by Mr.

Watts:

THE FIRST KISS.

If only in dreams may Man be fully blest,

Is heav'n a dream? Is she I claspt a dream? Or stood she here even now where dewdrops gleam And miles of furze shine golden down the west? I seem to clasp her still, — still on my breast Her bosom beats, - I see the blue eyes beam :

I think she kiss'd these lips, for now they seem Scarce mine, so hallow'd of the lips they pressed!

Yon thicket's breath

Those birds

can that be eglantine?

can they be morning's choristers?

Can this be Earth? Can these be banks of furze? Like burning bushes fired of God they shine! I seem to know them, though this body of mine Pass'd into spirit at the touch of hers!

Andrew Lang is so well known in America, as a man who writes with enthusiasm and says things strongly and well, that one need hardly put his name under the following:

THE ODYSSEY.

As one that for a weary space has lain
Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine
In gardens near the pale of Proserpine,
Where that Ægean isle forgets the main,
And only the low lutes of love complain,
And only shadows of wan lovers pine,
As such an one were glad to know the brine
Salt on his lips, and the large air again,

So, gladly, from the songs of modern speech

Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free

Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers, And, through the music of the languid hours, They hear, like ocean on a western beach,

The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.

The playful satire, underlying point and deft poise in the following are also quite characteristic of Mr. Dobson:

DON QUIXOTE.

BEHIND thy pasteboard, on thy battered hack,
Thy lean cheek striped with plaster to and fro,
Thy long spear leveled at the unseen foe,
And doubtful Sancho trudging at thy back,
Thou wert a figure strange enough, good lack!
To make wiseacredom, both high and low,
Rub purblind eyes, and (having watched thee go)
Despatch its Dogsberrys upon thy track:

Alas, poor Knight! Alas, poor soul possest!
Yet would to-day, when Courtesy grows chill,
And life's fine loyalties are turned to jest,

Some fire of thine might burn within us still!
Ah! would but one might lay his lance in rest,
And charge in earnest were it but a mill!

There is great temptation to prolong this prelude of foreign sonnets, but we must close with Mr. Gosse's curious and musical sonnet, "Alcyone."

A SONNET IN DIALOGUE.

Phoebus. WHAT voice is this that wails above the deep? Alcyone. A wife's, that mourns her fate and loveless

days.

Phoebus. What love lies buried in these waterways?

Alcyone. A husband's, hurried to eternal sleep.

Phoebus. Cease, O beloved, cease to wail and weep!

Alcyone. Wherefore?

Phoebus.

The waters in a fiery blaze
Proclaim the godhead of my healing rays.

Alcyone. No god can sow where fate hath stood to reap. Phoebus. Hold, wringing hands! cease, piteous tears, to fall!

Alcyone. But grief must rain and glut the passionate

sea.

Phoebus. Thou shalt forget this ocean and thy wrong, And I will bless the dead, though past recall. Alcyone. What can'st thou give to me or him in me? Phoebus. A name in story and a light in song.

The literature of America is so young that the diffusion of the sonnet form through it need hardly be considered chronologically. The men who brought the sonnet to perfection and popularity in this country are either still living or have but recently passed away, so that the historical view of American sonnets is a brief one at best. It is a matter for pride that the earliest of our native writers of the sonnet, as he has long been reputed to be, was so admirable a figure as Colonel David Humphreys. He mingled both literary and patriotic ambitions, was a Yale graduate, a soldier and diplomat.

It is evident that people did not take the leisure to write many sonnets in the early days of the republic. Such things could be obtained from England, and meanwhile there was plenty of more onerous work to be done in making of laws, hewing of forests, and building of states. The sonnet being a product of leisurely culture, and generally preceded by simpler forms of verse, it is not sur

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prising, then, that there were no prominent writers of the sonnet before the patriarchal group of poets who fathered the melodious period of our own time. In this group were the accomplished Percival, the gifted Dana, the painter Allston, the versatile Willis, the dignified Bryant. But even of these it must be noted that Dana was not a sonneteer. Many of the older poets wrote only the Shakespearean or some irregular form of sonnet, Bryant declaring that he failed to see the superior melody of the Italian form. Indeed, there are a number of prominent American poets who are not sonneteers. Emerson could not bind to so rigid and intricate a form a muse that must "aye climb for its rhyme." Poe's sonnets were few, and not noteworthy when compared with his other verse. The idea of Walt Whitman writing a sonnet is calculated to bring a smile; and this list might be extended. So it must not be expected that a sonnet anthology will wholly represent the poets of the time nor exactly measure the poetic capacity of those who are included. The men, then, who have really been pioneers in the revival of the sonnet in our literature, are poets like Longfellow, Boker, Lowell, Bayard Taylor, and Aldrich. It would only be fair to mention with them such poets among women as Mrs. Botta, Mrs. Dorr, Mrs. Preston, Mrs. Oakes Smith, etc. But closely following these is such an array of sonnet-writers the young and the middle-aged poets of to-day that one would have to mention scores of names to represent the group.

It must be admitted that the sonnet in America has grown of its own vitality. Until recent years there has been little written on the subject to stim