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William Morris.

Morris was born in London in 1834, and educated at Oxford. His first publication (1853) was “The Defence of Guenevere, and other Poems." In 1867 appeared his "Life and Death of Jason," and in 1868-1871, at intervals, "The Earthly Paradise," in four parts. In his skill as a poetical narrator Morris has been compared by Swinburne to Chaucer. His long poems, if deficient in elements of popularity, because of their remoteness from modern themes, show remarkable case and fluency of versification, with beauty of narrative diction.

MARCH.

Slayer of the winter, art thon here again?
O welcome thou that bring'st the summer nigh!
The bitter wind makes not thy victory vain,
Nor will we mock thee for thy faint blue sky.
Welcome, O March! whose kindly days and dry
Make April ready for the throstle's song,
Thou first redresser of the winter's wrong!

Yea, welcome March! and though I die ere June,
Yet for the hope of life I give thee praise,
Striving to swell the burden of the tune
That even now I hear thy brown birds raise,
Unmindful of the past or coming days;
Who sing: "O joy! a new year is begun :
What happiness to look upon the sun!"

Ah, what begetteth all this storm of bliss
But Death himself, who, crying solemnly,
Even from the heart of sweet Forgetfulness,
Bids us "Rejoice, lest pleasureless ye die.
Within a little time must ye go by.

Stretch forth your open hands, and while ye live,
Take all the gifts that Death and Life may give."

Celia Thaxter.

AMERICAN.

Mrs. Thaxter, daughter of Mr. Laighton, once proprietor of Appledore, Isles of Shoals, was born in Portsmouth, N. H., in 1835. She passed the early part of her life, and much of the later, at Appledore, one of a rocky group of small islands about ten miles from the mainland. She has been no idle observer of the moods and colors of the ocean, the habits of the sea-birds, and all the poetical aspects of the rugged scenes amidst which she was bred. The fidelity of her marine descriptions is remarkable. She has published (1868) an excellent account, historical and descriptive, of the Isles. poems are vivid with touches that show the intimacy of her study of external nature.

Her

SONG.

We sail toward evening's lonely star,
That trembles in the tender blue;
One single cloud, a dusky bar
Burnt with dull carmine through and through,
Slow smouldering in the summer sky,
Lies low along the fading west;
How sweet to watch its splendors die,
Wave-cradled thus, and wind-caressed!

The soft breeze freshens; leaps the spray To kiss our cheeks with sudden cheer. Upon the dark edge of the bay

Light-houses kindle far and near, And through the warm deeps of the sky Steal faint star-clusters, while we rest In deep refreshment, thou and I,

Wave-cradled thus, and wind-caressed.

How like a dream are earth and heaven,
Star-beam and darkness, sky and sea;
Thy face, pale in the shadowy even,
Thy quiet eyes that gaze on me!
O realize the moment's charm,

Thou dearest! We are at life's best,
Folded in God's encircling arm,
Wave-cradled thus, and wind-caressed!

THE SAND-PIPER.

Across the narrow beach we flit,

One little sand-piper and I; And fast I gather, bit by bit,

The scattered drift-wood, bleached and dry. The wild waves reach their hands for it,

The wild wind raves, the tide ruus high, As up and down the beach we flitOne little sand-piper and I.

Above our heads the sullen clouds

Scud black and swift across the sky; Like silent ghosts, in misty shrouds Stand ont the white light-houses nigh. Almost as far as eye can reach, I see the close-reefed vessels fly, As fast we flit along the beachOne little sand-piper and I.

I watch him as he skims along,
Uttering his sweet and mournful cry;
He starts not at my fitful song,

Or flash of fluttering drapery :

CELIA THAXTER.-HARRIET P. SPOFFORD.-ELLEN LOUISE MOULTON.

He has no thonght of any wrong,

He scans me with a fearless eye; Staunch friends are we, well-tried and strong, This little sand-piper and I.

Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night,

When the loosed storm breaks furiously? My drift-wood fire will burn so bright! To what warm shelter canst thou fly? I do not fear for thee, though wroth

The tempest rushes through the sky; For are we not God's children both, Thou little sand-piper and I?

Forever let thy tender mist

Lie like dissolving amethyst

Deep in the distaut dales, and shed
Thy mellow glory overhead!

Yet wilt thou wander,-call the thrush,
And have the wilds and waters hush
To hear his passion-broken tune,
Ah, happy day of happy June!

863

Harriet Prescott Spofford.

AMERICAN.

Harriet Elizabeth Prescott, born in Calais, Me., in 1835, was married in 1865 to Richard S. Spofford, Esq., a lawyer, of Newburyport, Mass. She early gave promise of literary ability in a series of remarkable prose tales: "Sir Roland's Ghost" (1860); "The Amber Gods, and other Stories;" "Azarian;" "New England Legends;" "A Thief in the Night," etc. She has been a liberal contributor to the magazines, and there have been several published collections of her prose writings. There is a fine enthusiasm for all that is lovely in nature, flashing out in many of her poems.

A FOUR-O'CLOCK.

Ah, happy day, refuse to go!
Hang in the heavens forever so!
Forever in mid-afternoon,
Ah, happy day of happy June:
Pour out thy sunshine on the hill,
The piny wood with perfume fill,
And breathe across the singing sea
Land-scented breezes, that shall be
Sweet as the gardens that they pass,
Where children tumble in the grass!

Ah, happy day, refuse to go!
Hang in the heavens forever so!
And long not for thy blushing rest
In the soft bosom of the west,
But bid gray evening get her back
With all the stars upon her track!
Forget the dark, forget the dew,
The mystery of the midnight blue,
And only spread thy wide warm wings
While summer her enchantment flings!

Ah, happy day, refuse to go! Hang in the heavens forever so!

Ellen Louise Moulton.

AMERICAN.

Mrs. Moulton, whose maiden name was Chandler, was born in 1835 at Pomfret, Conn., and educated at Mrs. Willard's famed seminary. She began writing for the maga zines at an early age, and when eighteen published a volume entitled "This, That, and the Other," of which ten thousand copies were sold. She contributed largely to the principal American magazines, and was a correspondent of the New York Tribune. She married Mr. Moulton, a well-known newspaper publisher of Boston. A volume of her poems was published in London, and one in Boston (1878).

ALONE BY THE BAY.

He is gone, O my heart, he is gone;
And the sea remains, and the sky;
And the skiffs flit in and out,
And the white-winged yachts go by.

And the waves run purple and green, And the sunshine glints and glows, And freshly across the Bay

The breath of the morning blows.

I liked it better last night,

When the dark shut down on the main, And the phantom fleet lay still,

And I heard the waves complain.

For the sadness that dwells in my heart,
And the rune of their endless woe,
Their longing and void and despair,
Kept time in their ebb and flow.

IN TIME TO COME.

The time will come full soon, I shall be gone,
And you sit silent in the silent place,
With the sad Autumn sunlight on your face:
Remembering the loves that were your own,
Haunted perchance by some familiar tone,-

You will grow weary then for the dead days,
And mindful of their sweet and bitter ways,
Though passion into memory shall have grown.
Then shall I with your other ghosts draw nigh,
And whisper, as I pass, some former word,
Some old endearment known in days gone by,
Some tenderness that once your pulses stirred,—
Which was it spoke to you, the wind or I,
I think you, musing, scarcely will have heard.

Theodore Tilton.

AMERICAN.

Tilton was born in 1835 in the city of New York. He received a good education, and became early in life connected with the Independent, a widely circulated weekly paper. The connection lasted fifteen years. In 1871 he started a new weekly, The Golden Age, which did not meet the success it deserved. He is the author of "The Sexton's Tale, and other Poems," and has shown much versatility as a spirited writer both of prose and verse.

SIR MARMADUKE'S MUSINGS.

I won a noble fame;

But, with a sudden frown, The people snatched my crown, And in the mire trod down My lofty name.

I bore a bounteous purse,
And beggars by the way
Then blessed me day by day;
But I, grown poor as they,
Have now their curse.

I gained what men call friends; But now their love is late, And I have learned too late How mated minds unmate, And friendship ends.

I clasped a woman's breast,
As if her heart I knew,
Or fancied would be true;
Who proved, alas! she, too,
False like the rest.

I am now all bereft,-
As when some tower doth fall,
With battlements and wall,
And gate and bridge and all,-
And nothing left.

But I account it worth

All pangs of fair hopes crossed—

All loves and honors lost

To gain the heavens at cost Of losing earth.

So, lest I be inclined

To render ill for illHenceforth in me instill, O God! a sweet good will To all mankind.

John James Piatt.

AMERICAN.

Piatt, born in Milton, Ind., March 1st, 1835, was educated at Kenyon College. He wrote verses for the Louisville Journal, also for the Atlantic Monthly, before he was twenty-five. In conjunction with Mr. W. D. Howells, he published, in 1860, "Poems of Two Friends;" in 1864, "Nests, and other Poems," part of which were by his wife, Mrs. Sarah M. B. Piatt. In 1869 he published "Western Windows, and other Poems," dedicated to George D. Prentice; and in 1871, “Landmarks, and other Poems." His style is well individualized, and formed on no particular model. Mrs. Piatt has written several admirable little poems, generally conveying some pithy moral.

THE FIRST TRYST.

She pulls a rose from her rose-tree,

Kissing its soul to him,Far over years, far over dreams And tides of chances dim.

He plucks from his heart a poem,
A flower-sweet messenger,—
Far over years, far over dreams,
Flutters its soul to her.

These are the world-old lovers,

Clasped in one twilight's gleam; Yet he is but a dream to her, And she a poet's dream.

THE MORNING STREET.

FROM "WESTERN WINDOWS."

Alone I walk the morning street,
Filled with the silence vague and sweet;
All seems as strange, as still, as dead,
As if unnumbered years had fled,

JOHN JAMES PIATT.—FRANCES LAUGHTON MACE.

865

Letting the noisy Babel lie

Breathless and dumb against the sky;
The light wind walks with me aloue
Where the hot day flame-like was blown,
Where the wheels roared, the dust was beat;
The dew is in the morning street.

Where are the restless throngs that pour
Along this mighty corridor

While the noon shines ?-the hurrying crowd
Whose footsteps make the city loud,-
The myriad faces,-hearts that beat
No more in the deserted street?
Those footsteps in their dreaming maze
Cross thresholds of forgotten days;
Those faces brighten from the years
In rising suns long set in tears;

Those hearts,-far in the Past they beat,
Unheard within the morning street.

A city of the world's gray prime,
Lost in some desert far from Time,
Where noiseless ages, gliding through,
Have only sifted sand and dew,—
Yet a mysterious hand of man
Lying on all the haunted plan,
The passions of the human heart
Quickening the marble breast of Art,—
Were not more strange to one who first
Upon its ghostly silence burst
Than this vast quiet, where the tide
Of life, upheaved on either side,
Hangs trembling, ready soon to beat
With human waves the morning street.

Ay, soon the glowing morning flood
Breaks through the charméd solitude:
This silent stone, to music won,
Shall murmur to the rising sun;

The busy place, in dust and heat,

Shall rush with wheels and swarm with feet;
The Arachne-threads of Purpose stream
Unseen within the morning gleam;
The life shall move, the death be plain;
The bridal throng, the funeral train,
Together, face to face, shall meet,
And pass within the morning street.

THE GIFT OF EMPTY HANDS.
MRS. PIATT.

They were two princes doomed to death,
Each loved his beauty and his breath;

"Leave us our life, and we will bring Fair gifts unto our lord, the king."

They went together. In the dew

A charméd bird before them flew. Through sun and thorn one followed it; Upon the other's arm it lit.

A rose, whose faintest blush was worth
All buds that ever blew on earth,
One climbed the rocks to reach: ah, well,
Into the other's breast it fell.

Weird jewels, such as fairies wear,
When moons go out, to light their hair,'
One tried to touch on ghostly ground;
Gems of quick fire the other found.

One with the dragon fought to gain
The enchanted fruit, and fought in vain;
The other breathed the garden's air,
And gathered precious apples there.

Backward to the imperial gate

One took his fortune, one his fate:
One showed sweet gifts from sweetest lands,
The other torn and empty hands.

At bird, and rose, and gem, and fruit,
The king was sad, the king was mute;
At last he slowly said, "My son,
True treasure is not lightly won.

"Your brother's hands, wherein you see
Only these scars, show more to me
Than if a kingdom's price I found
In place of each forgotten wound."

Frances Laughton Mace.

AMERICAN.

Miss Laughton, who by marriage (1855) became Mrs. Mace, was born in the village of Orono, near Bangor, Me., Jan. 15th, 1836, where her father commenced practice as a physician, but soon removed to Bangor. She has written for Harper's Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, and other well-known periodicals. Her little poem of" Only Waiting" was written when she was eighteen, and first published in the Waterville (Me.) Mail of Sept. 7th, 1854. It was introduced by the Rev. James Martineau, of England, into his collection of "Hymns," and he took pains to have the fact of its authorship thoroughly investigated. The poem had passed into several collections, British and American, as anonymous.

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