NATURA BENIGNA

WHAT power is this? what witchery wins my fee

To peaks so sheer they scorn the cloaking

snow

All silent as the emerald gulfs below, Down whose ice-walls the wings of twilight beat?

What thrill of earth and heaven-most wild, most sweet

What answering pulse that all the senses know

Comes leaping from the ruddy eastern glow Where, far away, the skies and mountains meet?

Mother, 't is I once more: I know thee well, Yet comes that throb, an ever-new surprise! O Mother and Queen, beneath the olden spell

Of silence, gazing from thy hills and skies! Dumb Mother, struggling with the years to tell

The secret at thy heart through helpless eyes.

THE DEAR OLD TOILING ONE

Он, many a leaf will fall to-night,
As she wanders through the wood!
And many an angry gust will break
The dreary solitude.

I wonder if she's past the bridge,
Where Luggie moans beneath,
While rain-drops clash in planted lines
On rivulet and heath.

Disease hath laid his palsied palm
Upon my aching brow;

The headlong blood of twenty-one
Is thin and sluggish now.

'Tis nearly ten! A fearful night,
Without a single star

To light the shadow on her soul
With sparkle from afar :

The moon is canopied with clouds,
And her burden it is sore;
What would wee Jackie do, if he
Should never see her more?
Ay, light the lamp, and hang it up
At the window fair and free;

"T will be a beacon on the hill
To let your mother see.
And trim it well, my little Ann,
For the night is wet and cold,
And you know the weary, winding way
Across the miry wold.

All drench'd will be her simple gown,
And the wet will reach her skin:

I wish that I could wander down,
And the red quarry win,

To take the burden from her back,
And place it upon mine;

With words of cheerful condolence,

Not utter'd to repine.

You have a kindly mother, dears,
As ever bore a child,

And Heaven knows I love her well
In passion undefil'd.

Ah me! I never thought that she
Would brave a night like this,
While I sat weaving by the fire

A web of fantasies.

How the winds beat this home of ours With arrow-falls of rain;

VASARI tells that Luca Signorelli,
The morning star of Michael Angelo,
Had but one son, a youth of seventeen sum-
mers,
Who died.

That day the master at his

easel Wielded the liberal brush wherewith he painted

At Orvieto, on the Duomo's walls,

Stern forms of Death and Heaven and Hell and Judgment.

Then came they to him, and cried: "Thy son is dead,

Slain in a duel; but the bloom of life Yet lingers round red lips and downy cheek."

Luca spoke not, but listen'd. Next they bore

His dead son to the silent painting-room, And left on tiptoe son and sire alone.

Still Luca spoke and groan'd not; but he rais'd

The wonderful dead youth, and smooth'd his hair,

Wash'd his red wounds, and laid him on a bed,

Naked and beautiful, where rosy curtains Shed a soft glimmer of uncertain splendor

Life-like upon the marble limbs below. Then Luca seiz'd his palette: hour by

hour

LUX EST UMBRA DEI

NAY, Death, thou art a shadow! Even as light

Is but the shadow of invisible God,

And of that shade the shadow is thin Night, Veiling the earth whereon our feet have trod;

So art Thou but the shadow of this life,
Itself the pale and unsubstantial shade
Of living God, fulfill'd by love and strife
Throughout the universe Himself hath
made:

And as frail Night, following the flight of earth,

Obscures the world we breathe in, for a while,

So Thou, the reflex of our mortal birth, Veilest the life wherein we weep and smile :

But when both earth and life are whirl'd away,

What shade can shroud us from God's deathless day?

I went a roaming through the woods alone, And heard the nightingale that made her

moan.

But in my heart and in my brain the cry, The wail, the dirge, the dirge of Death

and Love,

Still throbs and throbs, flute-like, and will not die,

Piercing and clear the night-bird's tune above,