OUR DEAD. OTHING is our own: we hold our pleasures Just a little while, ere they are fled : One by one life robs us of our treasures; Nothing is our own except our Dead. They are ours, and hold in faithful keeping, Cruel life can never stir that sleeping, Cruel time can never seize that prey. Justice pales; truth fades; stars fall from heaven; No true crown of honor can be given, How the Children leave us and no traces Yet we have some little ones, still ours; When our Joy is lost and life will take itThen no memory of the past remains; Save with some strange, cruel sting, to make it Bitterness beyond all present pains. Death, more tender-hearted, leaves to sorrow We shall find, in some far, bright to-morrow, Is Love ours, and do we dream we know it, Bound with all our heart-strings, all our own? Any cold and cruel dawn may show it, Shattered, desecrated, overthrown. Only the dead Hearts forsake us never; So when Fate would fain besiege our city, A WOMAN'S ANSWER. WILL not let you say a Woman's part heart Answers a thousand claims besides your own. I love what do I not love? earth and air Find space within my heart, and myriad things You would not deign to heed are cherished there, And vibrate on its very inmost strings. I love the Summer with her ebb and flow Of light, and warmth, and music, that have nurst Her tender buds to blossoms . . . and you know It was in summer that I saw you first. I love the Winter dearly too,. . . . but then I love the Stars like friends; so many nights I love the Flowers; happy hours lie Shut up within their petals close and fast: You have forgotten, dear; but they and I Keep every fragment of the golden Past. to make I love, too, to be loved; all loving praise I love all good and noble souls; - I heard One speak of you but lately, and for days, Only to think of it, my soul was stirred In tender memory of such generous praise. I love all those who love you; all who owe Well, is my heart so narrow, - I, who spare Love for all these? Do I not even hold My favorite books in special tender care, And prize them as a miser does his gold? The Poets that you used to read to me Because because do you remember why? Will you be jealous? Did you guess before O more a thousand times, than all the rest! THE STORY OF THE FAITHFUL SOUL. FOUNDED ON AN OLD FRENCH LEGEND. HE fettered Spirits linger Their last faint earthly stain, Which Life's imperfect sorrow Yet, on each feast of Mary Yet once -so runs the Legend Rejoiced at Mary's name, And though a great Te Deum "I am not cold or thankless, Or quench my ceaseless pain. "On earth a heart that loved me Still lives and mourns me there, And the shadow of his anguish Is more than I can bear; All the torment that I suffer Is the thought of his despair. "The evening of my bridal A whole year since that day. |