But let me read thy lesson right or no, Of one good gift from thee my heart is sure;

Old I shall never grow

While thou each year dost come to keep me pure

With legends of my childhood; ah, we

owe

Well more than half life's holiness to these

Nature's first lowly influences,

At thought of which the heart's glad doors burst ope,

In dreariest days, to welcome peace and

hope.

-James Russell Lowell.

PHILIP, MY KING

"Who bears upon his baby brow the round
And top of sovereignty.”

OOK at me with thy large

brown eyes,

L Philip, my king!

For round thee the purple
shadow lies

Of babyhood's royal dignities.
Lay on my neck thy tiny hand
With Love's invisible sceptre laden;
I am thine Esther, to command

Till thou shalt find thy queen-handmaiden,

Philip, my king!

O, the day when thou goest a-wooing,
Philip, my king!

When those beautiful lips 'gin suing,
And, some gentle heart's bars undoing,
Thou dost enter, love-crowned, and there
Sittest, love-glorified!-Rule kindly,
Tenderly over thy kingdom fair;

For we that love-ah! we love so
blindly,

Philip, my king!

I gaze from thy sweet mouth up to thy

brow,

Philip, my king!

The spirit that there lies sleeping now May rise like a giant, and make men bow As to one heaven-chosen amongst his

peers.

My Saul, than thy brethren higher and fairer,

Let me behold thee in future years!
Yet thy head needeth a circlet rarer,
Philip, my king!

A wreath, not of gold, but palm. One day,

Philip, my king!

Thou too must tread, as we trod, a way
Thorny, and cruel, and cold, and gray;
Rebels within thee and foes without
Will snatch at thy crown. But march
on, glorious,

Martyr, yet monarch! till angels shout, As thou sitt'st at the feet of God victorious,

"Philip, the king!"

-Dinah Maria Craik Mulock.

THE THREE FISHERS

T

HREE fishers went sailing

away to the West

Away to the West as the sun went down;

Each thought on the woman

who loved him the best,

And the children stood watching them out of the town;

For men must work and women must

weep,

And there's little to earn and many to keep,

Though the harbor-bar be moaning.

Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower

And trimmed the lamps as the sun went down;

They looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower,

And the night-rack came rolling up, ragged and brown.

But men must work and women must

weep,

Though storms be sudden and waters deep,

And the harbor-bar be moaning.

Three corpses lay out on the shining

sands

In the morning gleam as the tide went down,

And the women are weeping and wringing their hands

For those who will never come back to