ELLEN LOUISE (CHANDLER) MOULTON.

MOULTON, ELLEN LOUISE (CHANDLER), an American novelist and poet; born at Pomfret, Conn., April 10, 1835. At fifteen she began to contribute to periodicals, under the name of "Ellen Louise." In 1855 she published "This, That, and the Other," a volume made of stories, essays, and poems. She has contributed largely, in prose and verse, to various periodicals. Her books are "Juno Clifford," a novel (1855); "My Third Book" (1859); "Bed-Time Stories" (1873); "Some Women's Hearts" (1874); "More Bed-Time Stories" (1875); "Poems" (1877); "Swallow Flights and Other Poems" (1878); "New Bed-Time Stories" (1880); "Random Rambles" (1881); "Firelight Stories" (1883); "Ourselves and Our Neighbors" (1887); "In the Garden of Dreams" (1890); "Stories Told at Twilight" (1890); "Swallow Flights" (1892); "In Childhood's Country" (1896); "Lazy Tours in Spain and Elsewhere" (1896).

HAS LAVISH SUMMER BROUGHT THE ROSE?

HAS lavish Summer brought the Rose?

Why did my heart not know,

When every lavish wind that blows
Made haste to tell me so?

And all the birds went mad with glee,
And sang from morn till night:
And then the stars came out to see
What made the world so bright?

But I missed something from the time,
And so I did not guess

The meaning of the summer's rhyme
Or the warm wind's caress.

Can gladness be where She is not?
Can roses bud and blow?

Does all the world but me forget

What now we must forego?

Since with them comes no more the face
That was the June's delight.

COME, SLEEP!

COME, Sleep, and kiss mine eyelids down -
Let me forget

Hope's treachery, and Fortune's frown,
And Life's vain fret.

And would you hold me fast, dear Sleep,
I need not wake,

Since they are dead who used to weep
For my poor sake.

AT REST.

-

SHALL I lie down to sleep, and see no more
The splendid affluence of earth and sky
The proud procession of the stars go by-
The white moon sway the sea, and woo the shore
The morning lark to the far Heaven soar —

The nightingale with the soft dusk draw nigh-
The summer roses bud and bloom and die
Will Life and Life's delight for me be o'er?

Nay! I shall be, in my low, silent home,
Of all Earth's gracious ministries aware-
Glad with the gladness of the risen day,
Or gently sad with sadness of the gloam,

Yet done with striving, and foreclosed of care

"At Rest, at Rest!" what better thing to say?

WHEN WE CONFRONT THE VASTNESS OF THE NIGHT.

WHEN We confront the vastness of the Night,
And meet the gaze of her eternal eyes,

How trivial seem the garnered gains we prize;
The laurel wreath we flaunt to envious sight;
The flower of Love we pluck for our delight;
The mad sweet music of the heart that cries
An instant on the listening air, then dies —
How short the day of all things dear and bright!

The Everlasting mocks our transient strife;
The pageant of the Universe whirls by
This little sphere with petty turmoil rife-
Swift as a dream, and fleeting as a sigh-
This brief delusion that we call our life,

Where all we can accomplish is to die.

WERE BUT MY SPIRIT LOOSED UPON THE AIR.

WERE but my spirit loosed upon the air ·

By some High Power that could Life's chain unbind Set free to seek what most it longs to find To no proud court of kings would I repair;

I would but climb once more a narrow stair

When day was wearing late, and dusk was kind, And one should greet me to my failings blind, Content so I but shared his twilight there.

Nay, well I know he waits not as of old

I could not find him in the old-time place -
I must pursue him, made by sorrow bold,

Through worlds unknown, in far celestial race,
Whose mystic round no traveller has told-
From star to star - until I see his face.

WHEN I WANDER AWAY WITH DEATH.

THIS life is a fleeting breath,

And whither and how shall I go
When I wander away with Death
By a path that I do not know?

Shall I find the throne of the Moon,
And kneel with her lovers there,
To pray for a cold sweet boon

From her beauty cold and fair?

Or shall I make haste to the Sun,
And warm at his passionate fire

My heart by sorrow undone,

And sick with a vain desire?

Shall I steal into Twilight-Land,

When the Sun and the Moon are low,

And hark to the furtive band

Of the winds that whispering go

Telling and telling again,

And crooning with scornful mirth
The secrets of women and men

They overheard on the Earth?

Will the dead birds sing once more;
And the nightingale's note be sad
With the passion and longing of yore,
And the thrushes with joy go mad?

Nay, what though they carol again,
And the flowers spring to life at my feet,
Can they heal the sting of my pain,

Or quicken a dead heart's beat?

THE only bit of real estate I ever owned was "a Castle in Spain." I have long been familiar with its aspect. I have seen its shining turrets in the crimson of sunset skies. I have heard faint music, on winds blowing from the East, which I felt sure was caught from harps in its high windows; and mysterious scents have reached me now and then, wafted, doubtless, from its far-off gardens.

From my childhood I had longed to visit my Spanish estates as pertinaciously as Columbus longed to set forth from those shores of Spain to discover this far-off new world in which I thus discontentedly abode. But tales of expense, difficulty, and danger have been rife about the pleasant paths of Spain. "You will find it such a fatiguing journey," said one. hotels are poor, the railway trains crawl, and you'll be poisoned with garlic."

"The

"Ban

"And you'll not be free from danger," said another. dits have been banished from the rest of the civilized world to

1 Copyright, 1896, by Roberts Brothers. Used by permission of Little, Brown & Co.

survive in Spain. They may take possession of your train any fine day. You'll still find the robber purse,' which Washington Irving speaks of, a necessary precaution."

"And then the expense," croaked a third. "You can't go without a courier, and he 'll pillage you right and left.”

"And then you'll never find your castle, you know." But it was only Mrs. Gradgrind who said that; and I did not mind Mrs. Gradgrind.

Suddenly, in Paris, I made up my mind to go. Four other rash ladies came to the same resolution; and we looked about for a courier. We chose him at last for his pious face. He was the Vicar of Wakefield, in German, at least, that is how he impressed me; but the Wise Woman of our party said he was a Sunday-school superintendent off home duty, and disposed to treat us with a sort of paternal care, as if we had been the lambs of his flock.

It was a frowning October morning when we left Paris, and by the time we got to Tours it rained most spitefully. We defied the rain, however, and drove about the town, and back and forth across the beautiful river, which flows through Tours as the Arno flows through Florence. We went to the cathedral, and lingered under the great tent-like cedar of Lebanon in the Archbishop's garden, and then drove out through the sullen rain to that Plessis la Tour which the readers of "Quentin Durward" know.

The next day it rained still, and it rained all day long, while on we journeyed. We drove through a pouring rain at night to our hotel in Bordeaux, and started away from it the next morning in the same cheerful condition of the weather. But the sky had cleared before we got to Biarritz; and after that the sun shone on us for seven weeks to come, with only one brief and appropriate interruption.

Biarritz the beautiful! No wonder the Empress Eugenie built her villa there in the days of her glory. Part of that villa is a restaurant now, and looks like "a banquet hall deserted," or it did in the late October when the Biarritz season was coming to an end; but there is hardly a more superb view in Europe than can be seen from its windows. Biarritz, like Tours, is a place to go back to; but we had little time to linger there. Were we not en route for Spain, the country of beauty and of bandits, of love and of fear?

Whatever fault may be found with Madrid as to its situa