The twilight of the trees and rocks
Is in the light shade of thy locks;
Thy step is as the wind that weaves
Its playful way among the leaves.

Thine eyes are springs, in whose serene
And silent waters heaven is seen;
Their lashes are the herbs that look
On their young figures in the brook.
The forest depths, by foot unpress'd,
Are not more sinless than thy breast;
The holy peace that fills the air
Of those calm solitudes is there.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

ON AN INTAGLIO HEAD OF
MINERVA.

BENEATH the warrior's helm behold
The flowing tresses of a woman!
Minerva-Pallas-what you will,—
A winsome creature, Greek or Roman.

Minerva? No! 'tis some sly minx
In cousin's helmet masquerading;
If not, then Wisdom was a dame
For sonnets and for serenading.

I thought the goddess cold, austere,

Not made for love's despairs and blisses:
Did Pallas wear her hair like that?
Was Wisdom's mouth so shaped for
kisses?

The nightingale should be her bird,
And not the owl, big-eyed and solemn :
How very fresh she looks,-and yet

She's older far than Trajan's Column ! The magic hand that carved this face, And set this vine-work round it running, Perhaps ere mighty Phidias wrought

Had lost its subtle skill and cunning.

Who was he? Was he glad or sad,

Who knew to carve in such a fashion?

Perchance he 'graved the dainty head For some brown girl that scorn'd his passion.

Perchance, in some still garden-place,

Where neither fount nor tree to-day is, He flung the jewel at the feet

Of Phryne, or perhaps 'twas Lais.

But he is dust; we may not know

His happy or unhappy story:
Nameless, and dead these centuries,
His work outlives him-there's his
glory!

Both man and jewel lay in earth
Beneath a lava-buried city;

The countless summers came and went
With neither haste, nor hate, nor pity.

Years blotted out the man, but left
The jewel fresh as any blossom,
Till some Visconti dug it up,

To rise and fall on Mabel's bosom!

O nameless brother! see how Time
Your gracious handiwork has guarded;
See how your loving, patient art

Has come, at last, to be rewarded.

Who would not suffer slights of men,
And pangs of hopeless passion also,
To have his carven agate-stone
On such a bosom rise and fall so?
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.

DOLCINO TO MARGARET.

THE world goes up and the world goe down,

And the sunshine follows the rain; And yesterday's sneer, and yesterday's frown

Can never come over again,
Sweet wife,

No, never come over again.

For woman is warm, though man be cold,
And the night will hallow the day;
Till the heart which at even was weary

and old

Can rise in the morning gay,
Sweet wife,

To its work in the morning gay.

CHARLES KINGSLEY.

SONNET.

SWEET is the rose, but grows upon a brere ;

Sweet is the juniper, but sharp his

bough;

blew

Soul-animating strains-alas, too few!

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

SONNET.

BECAUSE I oft in dark abstracted guise Seem most alone in greatest company, With dearth of words, or answers quite awry

To them that would make speech of speech

arise,

lands

Shall maids and their lovers remember

the doom

Of her who lies sleeping among the Pearl Islands,

With naught but the sea-star to light up her tomb.

And still, when the merry date-season is burning,

And calls to the palm-groves the young and the old,

turning

At sunset, will weep when thy story is told.

The young village maid, when with flowers she dresses

Her dark-flowing hair for some festival day,

Will think of thy fate till, neglecting her

tresses,

She mournfully turns from the mirror

away.

Nor shall Iran, beloved of her hero! forget thee,

Though tyrants watch over her tears as they start,

Close, close by the side of that hero she'll set thee,

Embalm'd in the innermost shrine of her heart.

Farewell!-be it ours to embellish thy pillow

With everything beauteous that grows in the deep;

Each flower of the rock and each gem of the billow

Shall sweeten thy bed and illumine thy sleep.

Around thee shall glisten the loveliest amber

That ever the sorrowing sea-bird has wept;

With many a shell, in whose hollowwreathed chamber

We, Peris of Ocean, by moonlight have slept.

We'll dive where the gardens of coral lie

darkling,

And plant all the rosiest stems at thy head;

We'll seek where the sands of the Caspian are sparkling,

And gather their gold to strew over thy bed.

Farewell!-farewell!-until Pity's sweet fountain

Is lost in the hearts of the fair and the brave,

Like the stars that gem the sky,

Far apart though seeming near, In our light we scattered lie;

All is thus but starlight here. What is social company

But a babbling summer stream? What our wise philosophy

But the glancing of a dream?

Only when the sun of love

Melts the scattered stars of thought,

Only when we live above

What the dim-eyed world hath taught,

Only when our souls are fed

By the fount which gave them birth, And by inspiration led

Which they never drew from earth,
We, like parted drops of rain,
Swelling till they meet and run,
Shall be all absorbed again,
Melting, flowing into one.

CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRANCH

THE MORNING Street. ALONE I walk the morning street, Filled with the silence vague and sweet: All seems as strange, as still, as dead, As if unnumbered years had fled,

A city of the world's gray prime,
Lost in some desert far from time,
Where noiseless ages, gliding through,
Have only sifted sand and dew,—
Yet a mysterious hand of man
Lying on all the haunted plan,
The passions of the human heart
Quickening the marble breast of Art,—
Were not more strange to one who first
Upon its ghostly silence burst
Than this vast quiet where the tide
Of life, upheaved on either side,
Hangs trembling, ready soon to beat
With human waves the morning street.

Ay, soon the glowing morning flood
Breaks through the charmèd solitude:
This silent stone, to music won,
Shall murmur to the rising sun;
The busy place, in dust and heat,

Shall rush with wheels and swarm with

feet;

The Arachne-threads of Purpose stream
Unseen within the morning gleam;
The life shall move, the death be plain;
The bridal throng, the funeral train,
Together, face to face shall meet
And pass within the morning street.

JOHN JAMES PIATT.

PRE-EXISTENCE.

WHILE sauntering through the crowded street,

Some half-remembered face I meet,

Albeit upon no mortal shore

That face, methinks, has smiled before

Lost in a gay and festal throng,
I tremble at some tender song,—

I must have heard in other stars.
Set to an air whose golden bars

In sacred aisles I pause to share
The blessings of a priestly prayer,—

When the whole scene which greets mine

eyes

In some strange mode I recognize

As one whose every mystic part I feel prefigured in my heart.

At sunset, as I calmly stand, A stranger on an alien strand,

Familiar as my childhood's home
Seems the long stretch of wave and foam.

One sails toward me o'er the bay, And what he comes to do and say

I can foretell. A prescient lore
Springs from some life outlived of yore.

O swift, instinctive, startling gleams
Of deep soul-knowledge! not as dreams
For aye ye vaguely dawn and die,
But oft with lightning certainty

Pierce through the dark, oblivious brain,
To make old thoughts and memories plain:

Thoughts which perchance must travel back

Across the wild, bewildering track

Of countless æons; memories far, High-reaching as yon pallid star,

Unknown, scarce seen, whose flickering grace

Faints on the outmost rings of space!

PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE.