I wonder if you give your mind

At all to angels. "Which?" you say?

Why, angels of the hymn-book kind,

Not imitation ones in clay.

I often do. They fascinate

My fancy to a strange degree;

And meditating much of late

There came two serious points to me.

You notice in the Holy Writ

Angels are never feminine;

But, wheresoever they may flit,

He came, he spake, he gave the sign.

The men who wrote of them were sage,

And knew their subject out and out;

But we live in a wicked age,

That twists the angels' sex about.

And painters paint them girls. And then

The question sets one's brains afire—

Why choristers on earth are men,

If women form the heavenly choir?

And if they do paint here or there

A man among the cherubim,

I claim to know why not a hair

May grow upon the face of him?

I know the Roman Church decreed

"A priest shall wear a shaven face."

But what of angels? There indeed

Razor and strop seem out of place.

Then why this hairless cheek and chin?

I ask, and Echo answers Why?

Have angel-cheeks no roots within?

—Here comes my keeper. So, good-bye!

Julia, I deemed that I had wed

Not thine, but only thee;

A child I wept my mother sped,

Thou'st given thine to me.

She came as wandering sea-birds come

To rest upon a spar

Of ships that trail the lights of home

Where homeless billows are.

From Aix-les-Bains to Harrogate,

From Bath to Tunbridge Wells,

She's sojourned in Imperial state,

Yet here content she dwells.

Content—and yet no truce with truth

Such Roman mothers know;

Quick to detect the faults of youth,

And prompt to tell us so.

I knew not I possess'd the charms

Her wandering will to bind,

To keep me from my