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Ah! each sailor in the port
Knows that I have ships at sea,
Of the waves and winds the sport,
And the sailors pity me.
Oft they come and with me walk,
Cheering me with hopeful talk,
Till I put my fears aside,
And, contented, watch the tide
Rise and fall, rise and fall.

I have waited on the piers,
Gazing for them down the bay,
Days and nights for many years,
Till I turned heart-sick away.
But the pilots, when they land,
Stop and take me by the hand,
Saying, "You will live to see
Your proud vessels come from sea,
One and all, one and all."

So I never quite despair,

Nor let hope or courage fail;

And some day, when skies are fair,
Up the bay my ships will sail.

I shall buy then all I need, -
Prints to look at, books to read,
Horses, wines, and works of art,

Everything - except a heart

That is lost, that is lost.

Once, when I was pure and young,
Richer, too, than I am now,
Ere a cloud was o'er me flung,

Or a wrinkle creased my brow,
There was one whose heart was mine;
But she's something now divine
And though come my ships from sea,
They can bring no heart to me
Evermore, evermore.

ROBERT STEVENSON COFFIN.

LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM.

FROM IRISH MELODIES."

O THE days are gone when beauty bright
My heart's chain wove!

When my dream of life, from morn till night,

Was love, still love!

New hope may bloom,

And days may come,

Of milder, calmer beam,

But there's nothing half so sweet in life

As love's young dream!

O, there's nothing half so sweet in life
As love's young dream!

Though the bard to purer fame may soar,
When wild youth's past;

Though he win the wise, who frowned before,
To smile at last;

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When hearts have once mingled,

Love first leaves the well-built nest;

The weak one is singled

To endure what it once possessed.

O Love! who bewailest

The frailty of all things here,

Why choose you the frailest

For your cradle, your home, and your bier?

Its passions will rock thee

As the storms rock the ravens on high;
Bright reason will mock thee
Like the sun from a wintry sky.

From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home
Leave thee naked to laughter,
When leaves fall and cold winds come.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

WHITTIER

As some tall pine that from a mountain side
O'erlooks a hundred verdant vales below,
And drinks their balm, and hears their waters flow,
While, o'er the lofty summits cloud-allied,
He marks the storm-king in his chariot ride,
And sees athwart the heaven's lurid glow
The thunderbolt in zig-zag splendor go.
How towers his crest, uplift in rugged pride!
But when the waning tempest dies apace,

What reed of Pan, however fine it blew,
Might sweetlier breathe out nature's inmost grace?
So standest thou within our mortal view.
What star serene is now thy dwelling place,
Great soul, high heart, O nobler than we knew?

November, 1892

LOUISE Á. MCGAFFEY

From Belford's Magazine, Chicago

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Five summers ago, when you wooed her, you stood on the self-same plane,

Face to face, heart to heart, never dreaming your souls could be parted again.

She loved you at that time entirely, in the bloom of her life's early May;

And it is not her fault, I repeat it, that she does not love you to-day.

Nature never stands still, nor souls either: they ever go up or go down;

And hers has been steadily soaring, - but how has it been with your own?

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She cannot look down to her lover her love, like her soul, aspires;

The first stanza of this song appears in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, Act iv. Sc. 1.; the same, with the second He must stand by her side, or above her, who

stanza added, is found in Beaumont and Fletchers Bloody

Brother, Act v. Sc. 2.

would kindle its holy fires.

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A word unkind or wrongly taken, O, love that tempests never shook,

A breath, a touch like this has shaken! And ruder words will soon rush in To spread the breach that words begin ; And eyes forget the gentle ray They wore in courtship's smiling day; And voices lose the tone that shed A tenderness round all they said Till fast declining, one by one, The sweetnesses of love are gone, And hearts so lately mingled, seem Like broken clouds, or like the stream, That smiling left the mountain's brow,

;

As though its waters ne'er could sever, Yet, ere it reach the plain below,

Breaks into floods that part forever.

O you, that have the charge of Love,
Keep him in rosy bondage bound,

As in the Fields of Bliss above

He sits, with flowerets fettered round; Loose not a tie that round him clings, Nor ever let him use his wings; For even an hour, a minute's flight Will rob the plumes of half their light. Like that celestial bird, whose nest Is found beneath far Eastern skies, Whose wings, though radiant when at rest, Lose all their glory when he flies!

AUX ITALIENS.

THOMAS MOORE.

AT Paris it was, at the opera there;

Of all the operas that Verdi wrote,

The best, to my taste, is the Trovatore;
And Mario can soothe, with a tenor note,
The souls in purgatory.

The moon on the tower slept soft as snow;
And who was not thrilled in the strangest way,
As we heard him sing, while the gas burned low,
"Non ti scordar di me”?

The emperor there, in his box of state,
Looked grave, as if he had just then seen
The red flag wave from the city gate,
Where his eagles in bronze had been.

The empress, too, had a tear in her eye :
You'd have said that her fancy had gone

again,

For one moment, under the old blue sky, To the old glad life in Spain.

Well there in our front-row box we sat
Together, my bride betrothed and I;
My gaze was fixed on my opera hat,
And hers on the stage hard by.

back

And both were silent, and both were sad;
Like a queen she leaned on her full white arm,
With that regal, indolent air she had;

So confident of her charm!

I have not a doubt she was thinking then
Of her former lord, good soul that he was,
Who died the richest and roundest of men,
The Marquis of Carabas.

I hope that, to get to the kingdom of heaven,
Through a needle's eye he had not to pass;

I wish him well for the jointure given
To my lady of Carabas.

Meanwhile, I was thinking of my first love

As I had not been thinking of aught for years; Till over my eyes there began to move Something that felt like tears.

I thought of the dress that she wore last time,
When we stood 'neath the cypress-trees together,
In that lost land, in that soft clime,
In the crimson evening weather;

Of that muslin dress (for the eve was hot);
And her warm white neck in its golden chain;
And her full soft hair, just tied in a knot,

And falling loose again;

And she looked like a queen in a book that And the jasmine flower in her fair young breast;

night,

With the wreath of pearl in her raven hair,

And the brooch on her breast so bright.

(O the faint, sweet smell of that jasmine flower!) And the one bird singing alone to his nest;

And the one star over the tower.

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