Nay, my children, ye were wrong
Thus to mar the Spirit's song.
Haste to-morrow to the glen
When the light is fair and dim
That the sunset giveth,
Tell the Spirit that for him,
Him too the Saviour liveth."
On the morrow when the sun
To the western gates had run,
Forth there stepped those children bright
Hearkening for the Water-Sprite.
Soon they heard him wailing low
In his sad extreme of woe,
Underneath the alder-tree
Weeping in his misery.

Softly drew the children near,
Softly spake: “Oh, Spirit, hear,

Our sire this comfort giveth :
God has sent his Son to be

The world's Redeemer, then for thee

See the Redeemer liveth!

Then the Spirit wept no more,
Golden-stringed lyre he strung,
Soon melodious echoes rung
From the farther, wooded shore.
Gloriously he played and sung,
Whilst the sun withdrew his light,
Slowly rose behind the trees

Orion and the Pleiades,

And still went singing on the joyful Water-Sprite.

UNDER DEEP APPLE BOUGHS.

THE garden-shadows are flecked with the glory of light.
In the light, the tulips flame; in the dark, fern fronds

uncurl;

And each red apple-bloom bursts its beauty into white,

As if a ruby should break, and shatter into a pearl.

They flutter slowly downward, and fall, soft as a snowshower,

Here at our feet their loveliness finds an end.
Was it worth to make such beauty only for one hour;

Do you grieve for the fate of the blossoms, O my friend?

When Autumn stands in the land, with full and bounteous bosom,

Honey-sweet fruit shall hang, ripening and red on the wall,

Shall girlhood's gift of versing be but a barren blossom? Wait, heart. Thy fruit shall set, when the flowers of fancy fall.

A WASTED DAY.

HERE in the dusky garden-plot I sit,
Laid in my lap are globed chrysanthemums,
Round which the gold-barred bee incessant hums,
And purple-wingèd butterflies still flit.

The night is near, the evening lamp is lit,

I have let day go by in dreamy thought,

But holding one poor day as less than nought.
Have let it pass, taking no count of it.

But soon shall come a time, I know not when,

I shall go forth alone into the dark,

When my strained eyes no more on earth shall see
The face of lover or of friend; and then

At the bed-foot where I lie, stiff and stark,
This wasted Day shall stand, and laugh at me.

PESSIMISM.

NOT Spring-too lavish of her bud and leaf-
But Autumn, with sad eyes and brow austere,
When fields are bare, and woods are brown and sere,
And leaden skies weep their exhaustless grief :
Spring is so much too bright, since Spring is brief.

And in our hearts is autumn all the year,

Least sad when the wild pastures are most drear, And fields grieve most robbed of the last gold sheaf.

For when the plough goes down the brown wet field,
A delicate doubtful throb of hope is ours-
What if this coming Spring at last should yield

Joy, with her too profuse unasked-for flowers?
Not all our Springs of commonplace and pain
Have taught us now that autumn hope is vain.

THE LAST ENVOY.

THIS wind, that through the silent woodland blows,
O'er rippling corn and dreaming pasture goes
Straight to the garden where the heart of spring
Faints in the heart of summer's earliest rose.

Dimpling the meadow's grassy green and grey,
By furze that yellows all the common way,

Gathering the gladness of the flowering broom,
And too persistent fragrance of the may-

Gathering whatever is of sweet and dear,
The wandering wind has passed away from here,
Has passed to where within your garden waits
The concentrated sweetness of the year.

And in your leafed enclosure as you stood,
Training your flowers to new beatitude—

Ah! did you guess the wind that kissed your hair Had kissed my forehead in this solitude

Had kissed my lips, and gathered there the heat
It breathed upon your mouth, my only sweet—
Had gathered from my eyes the tender thought
That drooped your eyes, and stirred your pulses' beat?