Each keenest sense turned into keen distaste,
Hunger not satisfied but kept alive

Breathing in languor half a century.—Armgart.

Armgart.-Now I am fallen dark; I sit in gloom, Remembering bitterly. Yet you speak truth;

I wearied you, it seems; took all your help
As cushioned nobles use a weary serf,

Not looking at his face.

Walpurga.

O, I but stand

As a small symbol for a mighty sum-
The sum of claims unpaid for myriad lives.
I think you never set your loss beside
That mighty deficit. Is your work gone-
The prouder queenly work that paid itself
And yet was overpaid with men's applause:
Are you no longer chartered, privileged,
But sunk to simple woman's penury,
To ruthless Nature's chary average—
Where is the rebel's right for you alone?
Noble rebellion lifts a common load;

But what is he who flings his own load off
And leaves his fellows toiling? Rebel's right?
Say rather, the deserter's. O, you smiled
From your clear height on all the million lots
Which yet you brand as abject.

Armg.

I was blind

With too much happiness: true vision comes

Only, it seems, with sorrow.

Were there one

This moment near me, suffering what I feel,
And needing me for comfort in her pang-

Then it were worth the while to live; not elsc.

Walp.-One-near you-why, they throng! you hardly stir

But your act touches them. We touch afar.

For did not swarthy slaves of yesterday

Leap in their bondage at the Hebrews' flight,

Which touched them through the thrice millennial

dark?

But you can find the sufferer you need

With touch less subtle.

Armg.

Who has need of me?

Walp.-Love finds the need it fills.

Leo.

We must bury our dead joys

And live above them with a living world.

Armgart.-Dear Leo, I will bury my dead joy.

Leo.-Mothers do so, bereaved; then learn to love Another's living child.

To take the little corpse, and lay it low,

And say, 'None misses it but me.'

END OF ARMGART."

VARIOUS POEMS.

PRESENTIMENT of better things on earth
Sweeps in with every force that stirs our souls
To admiration, self-renouncing love,

Or thoughts, like light, that bind the world in one:
Sweeps like the sense of vastness, when at night
We hear the roll and dash of waves that break
Nearer and nearer with the rushing tide,
Which rises to the level of the cliff
Because the wide Atlantic rolls behind
Throbbing respondent to the far-off orbs.

-0

A Minor Prophet.

I cannot choose but think upon the time
When our two lives grew like two buds that kiss
At lightest thrill from the bee's swinging chime,
Because the one so near the other is.

Brother and Sister.

O may I join the choir invisible

Of those immortal dead who live again

In minds made better by their presence : live
In pulses stirred to generosity,

In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn

For miserable aims that end with self,

In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues.

So to live is heaven.

O May I Join.

Two lovers by a moss-grown spring:
They leaned soft cheeks together there,
Mingled the dark and sunny hair,
And heard the wooing thrushes sing.

O budding time!

O love's blest prime !

Two wedded from the portal stept :
The bells made happy carollings,
The air was soft as fanning wings,
White petals on the pathway slept.

O pure-eyed bride!

O tender pride!

Two faces o'er a cradle bent,

Two hands above the head were locked;

These pressed each other while they rocked,

Those watched a life that love had sent.

O solemn hour!

O hidden power!

Two parents by the evening fire:
The red light fell about their knees
On heads that rose by slow degrees
Like buds upon the lily spire.

O patient life!

O tender strife!

The two still sat together there,

The red light shone about their knees;
But all the heads by slow degrees

Had gone and left that lonely pair.

O voyage fast!

O vanished past!

The red light shone upon the floor
And made the space between them wide;
They drew their chairs up side by side,
Their pale cheeks joined, and said, "Once more!"

O memories!

O past that is!

Two Lovers.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.