A CHILLY NIGHT.

I rose at the dead of night,
And went to the lattice alone
To look for my mother's ghost
Where the ghostly moonlight shone.

My friends had failed one by one,
Middle-aged, young, and old,
Till the ghosts were warmer to me
Than my friends that had grown so cold.

I looked and I saw the ghosts
Dotting plain and mound:
They stood in the blank moonlight,
But no shadow lay on the ground;
They spoke without a voice

And they leaped without a sound.

I called: "O my mother dear,”-
I sobbed: "O my mother kind,
Make a lonely bed for me

And shelter it from the wind:

"Tell the others not to come
To see me night or day:
But I need not tell my friends
To be sure to keep away."

My mother raised her eyes,

They were blank and could not see: Yet they held me with their stare,

While they seemed to look at me.

She opened her mouth and spoke,
I could not hear a word,
While my flesh crept on my bones
And every hair was stirred.

She knew that I could not hear
The message that she told,
Whether I had long to wait

Or soon should sleep in the mould: I saw her toss her shadowless hair And wring her hands in the cold.

I strained to catch her words,
And she strained to make me hear;
But never a sound of words
Fell on my straining ear.

From midnight to the cockcrow
I kept my watch in pain,
While the subtle ghosts grew subtler
In the sad night on the wane.

From midnight to the cockcrow
I watched till all were gone,
Some to sleep in the shifting sea

And some under turf and stone: Living had failed and dead had failed, And I was indeed alone.

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.

A SONG OF SNOW-TIME.

Now wends the track across the snow That once went through the daisies; Long lines of frost are lying low

Where once were fairy mazes

Where once the gorse was all aflame
In moorland nooks and hollows-
Where once the crying cuckoo came,
And lightly-skimming swallows.
O earth, thou doest all things right!
Thy very desolation

Is but a prelude to the light
Of love and new creation.

I gaze across a land of snow

I catch the skylark's greeting

I breathe the breath of flowers-I know The pulse of June is beating.

ARTHUR L. SALMON.

PAN.

Hush! Pan is sleeping

In forest deep on leafy bed:
Oh, softly tread.

Hum lullaby, O drowsy bee:
In charmed silence every tree
His watch is keeping.

Oh, softly tread: great Pan is sleeping.
Hark! Pan is waking!

A shiver through the leaves is creeping
Before the breeze.

Oh, see the Hamadryads peeping
Behind the trees.

Their trunks glow ruddy in the sun,
And hark! the blackbirds one by one
The silence breaking

With flute-like note; for Pan is waking.
ETHEL R. BARKER.
Academy.

Versailles.

INTROSPECTIVE.

I wish it were over the terrible pain,
Pang after pang again and again;
First the shattering ruining blow,
Then the probing steady and slow.
Did I wince? I did not faint:
My soul broke but was not bent:
Up I stand like a blasted tree

By the shore of the shivering sea.

On my boughs neither leaf nor fruit.
No sap in my uttermost root;
Brooding in an anguish dumb
On the short past and the long to come.
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.