rock.
See him stand as dumb as death.
If you could,
Would you care to stir or shock
Him, think you, by a blow or breath,
From his mood?

Arms of velvet, lips of love,
Oh! the wave.
See her creeping to his feet
Trustfully.
None shall know the sign he gave.
Death since then, were all too sweet.
Let her die.

Lift thine eyes upon the sea,
Soul of stone.
Rather (wouldst thou breathe or move?)
I would be
A warm wave, faithful, wasted, thrown,
Spent and rent and dead with love,
Than be thee.

PARTED.

Oh, never a word he answered,
And never a word spake she!
They turned their faces each from each,
And looked upon the sea.

The hands that cannot clasp for life,
Must quickly severed be.
The love that is not large enough
To live eternally,

In true love's name, for fair love's fame,
Must die before its bloom;
For it, in all God's earth or heaven,
There is no garden-room.

Though all the wine of life be lost,
Try well the red grape's hue.
Holy the soul that cannot taste
The false love for the true.

And blessed aye the fainting heart
For such a thirst shall be—
Yet never a word they spoke, and looked
Upon the bitter sea.

AN APRIL GUST.

It shall be as it hath been.
All the world is glad and green—
Hush! Ah, hush! There cannot be
April now for you and me.

Put your finger on the lips
Of your soul; the wild rain drips;
The wind goes diving down the sea;
Tell the wind, but tell not me.

Yet if I had aught to tell,
High as heaven, or deep as hell,
Bent the fates awry or fit,
I would find a word for it.

Oh, words that neither sea nor land
Can lift their ears to understand!
Wild words, as dumb as death or fear,
I dare to die, but not to hear!

THE ANSWER.

"That we together may sail,
Just as we used to do."
Carleton's Ballads.

And what if I should be kind?
And what if you should be true?
The old love could never go on,
Just as it used to do.

The wan, white hands of the waves
That smote us swift apart,
Will never enclasp again,
And draw us heart to heart.

The cold, far feet of the tides
That trod between us two,
Can never retrace their steps,
And fall where they used to do.

Oh, well the ships must remember,
That go down to the awful sea,
No keel that chisels the current
Can cut where it used to be.

Not a throb of the gloom or the glory
That stirs in the sun or the rain,
Will ever be that gloom or glory
That dazzled or darkened—again.

Not a wave that stretches its arms,
And yearns to the breast of the shore,
Is ever the wave that came trusting,
And yearning, and loving, before.

The hope that is high as the heavens,
The joy that is keen as pain,
The faith that is free as the morning,
Can die—but can live not again.

And though I should step beside you,
And hand should reach unto hand,
We should walk mutely—stifled—
Ghosts in a breathless land.

And what if I should be kind?
And though you should be true?
The old love could never, never
Love on as it used to do.

THORNS.

As we pass by the roses,
Into your finger-tip
Bruise you the thorn.
Quick at the prick you start,
Crying, "Alas, the smart!
Farewell, my pleasant friend,
Wisely our way we wend
Out of the reach of roses."

Oh, we pass by the roses!
Where does the red drop drip?
Where is the thorn?
What though 'tis hid and pressed
Piercing into my breast?
Scathless, I stretch my hand;
Strong as their roots I stand,
And dare to trust the roses.

THE INDIAN GIRL.

A PICTURE BY WALTER SHIRLAW.

She standeth silent as a thought
Too sacred to be uttered; all
Her face unfurling like a flower
That at a breath too near will shut.
Her life a little golden clock
Whose shining hands, arrested, stay
Forever at the hour of Love.

She doubts, she dares, she dreams—of what?
I ask; she, shrinking, answers not,
She swims before me, dim, a cup
Of waste, untasted tenderness.
I drink, I dread, until I seem
(Myself unto myself) to be
He whom she chose, and charmed—and missed,
On some faint Asiatic day
Of languorous summer, ages since.

SEALED.

"Shall I pour you the wine," she said,
"The wine that is rare and red?
Sweeter the cup for the drop."—
"But why do you shrink and stop?"

"The seal of the wine
Has a sacred sign;
I am afraid," she said.

"I love and revere
You more for your fear,
Than I do for your wine," he said.

GUINEVERE.

Of Guinevere from Arthur separate,
And separate from Launcelot and the world,
And shielded in the convent with her sin,
As one draws fast a veil upon a face
That 's marred, but only holds the scar more close
Against the burning brain—I read to-day
This legend; and if other yet than I
Have read, or said, how know I? for the text
Was written in the story we have learned,
Between the ashen lines, invisible,
In hieroglyphs that blazed and leaped like light
Unto the eyes. A thousand times we read;
A thousand turn the page and understand,
And think we know the record of a life,
When lo! if we will open once again
The awful volume, hid, mysterious,
Intent, there lies the unseen alphabet—
Re-reads the tale from breath to death, and spells
A living language that we never knew.

This that I read was one short song of hers,
A fragment, I