THE ROSE IN THE JOURNAL.

ROSE, whose matchless beauty

Poets love to praise,

Bind the day that brought him

To the other days;

To the homely duties;

To the things that are,

Like dark weights of nature

Linked to sun and star.

Then the curtain lifted

Of the tent so gray

Showed him fresh and blooming

As careering Day,

Ere his steeds are wearied

With the noontide heat,

Ere the lengthening shadows

Press his loitering feet.

Like an Angel's garment Caught in fluttering grasp; Like a kingly jewel

Set in costliest clasp;

Like a sudden vision

Of the joys that were,

When the shadows darken

And the end draws near,

Thus among my treasures, Rosebud, thou shalt lie,

With thy beauty withering

Only to the eye.

Roses grow immortal

On the brow of Fame:

These, with all best glories,

Deathless keep thy name.

A DREAM OF DISTANCE.

COLDLY sunk, as the pearl in the wave,

Is the love I have borne to thee:

Over its stillness the waters lave

Darkly, silently, heavily.

All the chances under the sun

Scarce can give that the sunken pearl

See the light of the star she loves,
Lifted out of the water's whirl.

Of all the chances under the sun,
For that one I'll ne'er seek nor pray :
Let me lie where the tides move on;
Thou, bright Lucifer, keep thy way!

For the mystical pulse of life

Holds in sympathy divine

Things apart, like the star and pearl; Things akin, like thy soul and mine.

FAME AND FRIENDSHIP.

THE world doth name thee now, and idle men
Exalt their critic skill in praising thee:

At all their words my heart doth bound again;
And praise begetteth praise, as this should be.

Yet I remember with a jealous love

What time thine unmined wealth lay less in view ;
And I was fain the envious clods to move,
And point the hidden diamonds clear as dew.

Methought men's souls, unquestioning of art,
Were then as void of pulse as stock or stone;
Yet, gathering all thy glories in my heart,
My slender trump uplifted them alone.