Let Love and Passion be rife, So long as I draw my breath; For Love is the leaven of life, But Peace the endearer of death. FROM "ODE TO THE VINE." Again, O Vine, I turn to thee and take Assurance from thy deathless loveliness, That Love and Beauty ever are awake At Life's veiled fountain-head: and who would press [twain: Tow'rd Truth must go with guidance of these To whom with faith made whole I dedicate my soul, Trusting to them to lay a silver skein Between my hands to guide me to the goal Where dawn shall break, and from mine eyes the darkness roll. George Parsons Lathrop. AMERICAN. The son of a physician and citizen of the United States, Lathrop was born Aug. 25th, 1851, at Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaiian Islands. He received his education in New York and Germany. In 1875-'77 he was assistant edi MUSIC OF GROWTH. Music is in all growing things; Of smallest insects there is stirred If poet from the vibrant strings Laugh not, that he no trumpet blows: SONNET: THE LOVER'S YEAR. Thou art my morning, twilight, noon, and eve, THE SUNSHINE OF THINE EYES. The sunshine of thine eyes, (O still, celestial beam!) Whatever it touches it fills With the life of its lambent gleam. The sunshine of thine eyes, Oh, let it fall on me! Though I be but a mote of the air, I could turn to gold for thee! Francis W. Bourdillon. Bourdillon, one of the younger English poets, was born in 1852. While yet an undergraduate at Worcester College, Oxford, he won reputation as a poet by two graceful stanzas, eight lines in all, entitled "Light." They were speedily translated into the principal languages of Europe. Rarely has a poet won his spurs on so small a venture in verse. Bourdillon is the author of "Among the Flowers, and other Poems," a volume of 176 pages, published in London, in 1878, by Marcus Ward & Co. A native of Woolbedding, in Sussex, he dedicates his poems to it as embracing "the influences, memories, and affections that for all men haunt the name of home." LIGHT. The night has a thousand eyes, And the day but one; Yet the light of the bright world dies With the dying sun. The mind has a thousand eyes, And the heart but one; Yet the light of a whole life dies When its day is done. There's a cottage o'ershadowed by leaves, Growing fairer than art, Where, under the low sloping eaves No false hand the swallow bereaves; 'Tis the home of my heart. And there, on the slant of the lea, And there in the rapturous spring, When the morning rays dart O'er the plain, and the morning birds sing, For there at the casement above, Will blush the fair face of my love:- And no one smiles as he used to smile; It is 'way, 'way back in the weary years His aged head lay on my breast And I dug a grave 'neath the very sod When I went fishing with dad. The world has given me wealth and fame, Uncheered by the love of child or wife, My limbs are weary, my eyes are dim; And side by side, it will be my wish, NOW AND EVER. Ask what you will, my own and only love; Your least wish sways me as from worlds above, Who art the only she, And in one girl all womanhood to me. Yet some things e'en to thee I cannot yield,― On the still morning on the woodside field Who wast the only she, And in one girl all womanhood to me. We had talked long, and then a silence came; To his nest a white dove floated like a flame, And in one girl all womanhood to me. Since when, my heart lies by her heart-nor now Nor the most love-skilled angel choose; so thou That there by the stream where they used to fish, And in one girl all womanhood to me. Close by him I would like to be, Elizabeth Henry Miller. AMERICAN. Born in Lexington, Va., Dec. 2d, 1859, Miss Miller can count among her ancestry some historic names: on her father's side, that of Jonathan Dickinson, founder and first President of Princeton College; while her mother, a daughter of Governor McDowell of Virginia, and niece of William C. Preston, the eloquent South Carolina Senator, had for grandfather the gallant Gen. William Campbell, who won the battle of King's Mountain in 1783; and for grandmother, Elizabeth Henry, a sister of Patrick Henry, of whom every school-boy knows. Miss Henry was quite as remarkable in intellectual respects as her illustrious brother, whom she resembled in many of her traits. Thus Miss Miller, who was named after her, may be said to be entitled to her intellectual endowments by the law of heredity. The specimen of her poems which we subjoin was written by her before she had reached her twelfth year. Elaine and Dora Goodale. AMERICANS. Among the precocious poets, Elaine Goodale (born Oct. 9th, 1863), and Dora Read Goodale (born Oct. 29th, 1866), will long be remembered. Their home, which bears the appropriate name of "Sky Farm," is in South Egremont, Mass., on the very summit of the highest of the Berkshire Hills. Both mother and father have the poetical gift; but the songs of the children have been as unprompted as those of the young thrush. Their first volume, "Apple-blossoms: Verses of Two Children," was published in 1878 by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. In the Preface, the parents say: "These verses are, above all else, fresh and spontaneous, the almost unconscious outflow of two simple, wholesome lives, in their earliest youth." PAPA'S BIRTHDAY. O dear Sky Farm! O rare Sky Farm! In one harmonious voice; |