With drooping head and branches The twilight forest grieves, The blue sky is the temple's arch, So Nature keeps the reverent frame THE PRESsed gentIAN. THE time of gifts has come again, Man judges from a partial view, MY PLAYMATE. THE pines were dark on Ramoth hill, The blossoms drifted at our feet, ers, My playmate left her home, And took with her the laughing spring, And, on my northern window-pane,For, more to me than birds or flow- Folly to their wise ignorance. They cannot from their outlook see The frosty breath of autumn blew, So, from the trodden ways of earth, And offer to the careless glance To loving eyes alone they turn Their beauty from the world outside. But deeper meanings come to me, The music and the bloom. She kissed the lips of kith and kin, Who fed her father's kine? She left us in the bloom of May: morns, But she came back no more. I walk, with noiseless feet, the round Still o'er and o'er I sow the spring And reap the autumn ears. She lives where all the golden year There haply with her jewelled hands The wild grapes wait us by the brook, sweet The woods of Follymill. The lilies blossom in the pond, The bird builds in the tree, The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill The slow song of the sea. I wonder if she thinks of them, And how the old time seems. — f ever the pines of Ramoth wood, Are sounding in her dreams. I see her face, I hear her voice: What cares she that the orioles build O playmate in the golden time! The winds so sweet with birch and fern A sweeter memory blow; And still the pines of Ramoth wood EASTER-DAY. OSCAR WILDE. MADONNA MIA. THE silver trumpets rang across the A LILY-GIRL, not made for this And borne upon the necks of men I saw, Like some great god, the Holy Lord of Rome. Priest-like, he wore a robe more white than foam, And, king-like, swathed himself in royal red, Three crowns of gold rose high upon his head: In splendor and in light the Pope passed home. My heart stole back across wide wastes of years To One who wandered by a lonely sea. And sought in vain for any place of rest: "Foxes have holes, and every bird its nest, I, only I, must we der wearily, And bruise my ret, and drink wine salt with ears." world's pain, With brown, soft hair close braided Pale cheeks whereon no love hath left its stain, Red underlip drawn in for fear of love, And white throat, whiter than the silvered dove, Through whose wan marble creeps one purple vein. Yet, though my lips shall praise her without cease, Even to kiss her feet I am not bold, [of awe. Being o'ershadowed by the wings Like Dante, when he stood with Beatrice Beneath the flaming lion's breast, and saw The seventh Crystal, and the Stair of Gold. SONNET. ON HEARING THE DIES IRE SUNG IN THE SISTINE CHAPEL. NAY, Lord, not thus! white lilies in the spring, Sad olive-groves, or silver-breasted dove, Teach me more clearly of Thy life and love Than terrors of red flame and thundering. The empurpled vines dear memories of Thee bring: A bird at evening flying to its nest, Tells me of One who had no place of rest: I think it is of Thee the sparrows sing. Come rather on some autumn afternoon, When red and brown are burnished |