Ah me! 'tis a luxurious dalliance-this,

In the embrace of death.

What have I cared for kingdoms lost and won,
Or fierce-fought Roman battles long since past;
What have I cared for all the crimes I've done,
Since I could hold him fast?

And I have held him captive in a snare,
A willing captive kneeling at my feet-
Bound in the glorious tresses of my hair,
So shall my rest be sweet.

O thou! for whom I died in all my grace,
In all the splendour of my queenly charms,
Through dark I spring, my hands before my face,
Into thy waiting arms.

1

-"Hartford Courant."

THE RAIN.

THE rain, the rain, the rain,

It gushed from the skies and streamed Like awful tears, and the sick man thought How pitiful it seemed:

And he turned his face away,

And stared at the wall again,

His hopes nigh dead and heart worn out.

Oh, the rain, the rain, the rain.

The rain, the rain, the rain,

And the broad stream brimmed the shores,

And ever the river crept over the reeds,

And the roots of the sycamores:

A corpse swirled by in the drift,

Where the boat had snapped its chain

And a hoarse-voiced mother shrieked and raved.
Oh, the rain, the rain, the rain.

The rain, the rain, the rain,

Pouring with never a pause,

Over the fields and the green byways

How beautiful it was

And the new made man and wife

Stood at the window pane

Like two glad children kept from school.

Oh, the rain, the rain, the rain.

-James Whitcomb Riley.

GOLDEN BRIDGES.

GOLDEN bridges shall be
All my songs to me,
O'er which Love may wander,
Sweetest one, to thee.

And the dream-god's pinions
Every night shall bear

Me to thy loving heart—

Joy betide, or care.

-From the German of Geibel.

THE LIGHTS OF HOME.

In many a village window burn

The evening lamps;

They shine amid the dews and damps,

Those lights of home!

Afar the wanderer sees them glow,

Now night is near;

They gild his path with radiance clear,

Sweet lights of home.

Ye lodestones that for ever draw

The weary heart,

In stranger lands or crowded mart,

O! lights of home.

When my brief day of life is o'er,

Then may I see

Shine from the heavenly house for me,

Dear lights of home.

-H. J. King.

A PRAYER.

O SOUL! however sweet

The goal to which I hasten with swift feet,
If, just within my grasp,

I reach, and joy to clasp,

And find there one whose body I must make
A footstool for that sake,
Though ever and for ever denied,
Grant me to turn aside!

O, howsoever dear

The love I long for, seek, and find anear
So near, so dear, the bliss

Sweetest of all that is,

If I must win by treachery, or art,

Or wrong one other heart,

Though it should bring me death, my soul that day Grant me to turn away!

That in the life so far

And yet so near, I be without a scar

Of wounds dealt others! Greet with lifted eyes

The pure of paradise!

So I may never know

The agony of tears I caused to flow!

-Ina D. Coolbrith

ON THE BRIDGE

Then.

BELOW, the starlit stream,

Above, the starlight beaming,

Arm-clasped, we stood between the gleams,
And life and love were wrapped in dreams-
Were we but dreaming?

Now.

The silver stars above,

The silver water under,

I by the water, she o'er the stars,

Looking this way through the silver bars-
Which star, I wonder?

-Clarence T. Urmy.

THE ARROW AND THE SONG.
I SHOT an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
-H. W. Longfellow.

HER PICTURE.

I SEE her now-the fairest thing
That ever mocked man's picturing.
I picture her as one who drew

Aside life's curtain and looked through
The mists of life's mystery

As from wood to open sea.

The soft, wide eyes of wonderment

That trustingly looked you through and through : The sweet, arched mouth a bow new bent,

That sent love's arrow swift and true.

The sweet, arched mouth! The Orient
Hath not such pearls in al lher stores :
Not all her storied, spice-set shores
Has fragrance such as it hath spent.

I picture her as one who knew
How rare is truth to be untrue-
As one who knew the awful sign
Of death, of life, of the divine
Sweet pity of all loves, all hates,
Beneath the iron-footed fates.

I picture ner as seeking peace,
And olive leaves and vine-set land;
While strife stood by on either hand,
And wrung her tears like rosaries.

I picture her as passing rhyme,
As of, yet not a part of, these-
A woman born above her time;
A woman waiting in her place,
With patient pity on her face.

Her face, her earnest baby face;
Her young face, so uncommon wise→→
The tender love-light in her eyes-
Two stars of heaven out of place.

Two stars that sang as stars of old
Their silent eloquence of song,
From skies of glory and of gold,
Where God in purple passed along-
That patient, baby face of hers
That won a thousand worshippers.

That silent, pleading face; among
Ten thousand faces just the one
I still shall love when all is done,
And life lies by, a harp unstrung.

That face, like shining sheaves among;
That face, half hid 'mid sheaves of gold;
That face, that never can grow old,

And yet has never been quite young.

-Joaquin Miller.

THE SWEETEST STORY.

As one in thinking of the dead
Recalls the face, but not the name,

As knowing when the soul has fled
A title goeth as it came-