But set a springe for him, “ mio ben,"

My only good, my first last love !-
Though Christ knows well what sin is, when

He sees some things done they must move
Himself to wonder. Let her pass.

I think of her by night and day.
Must I too join her ... out, alas ! ...

With Giulio, in each word I say?
And evermore the nightingales !

Giulio, my Giulio !_sing they so,

And you be silent? Do I speak,
And you not hear? An arm you throw

Round some one, and I feel so weak ?
-Oh, owl-like birds! They sing for spite,

They sing for hate, they sing for doom !
They'll sing through death who sing through night,

They'll sing and stun me in the tomb-
The nightingales, the nightingales.

THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY.

FIRST PART.

“ONORA, Onora,”—her mother is calling ;
She sits at the lattice and hears the dew falling
Drop after drop from the sycamores laden
With dew as with blossom, and calls home the maiden,

“Night cometh, Onora.”

She looks down the garden-walk caverned with trees,
To the limes at the end where the green arbour is-

“Some sweet thought or other may keep where it found

her, While, forgot or unseen in the dreamlight around her,

Night cometh-Onora !"

She looks up the forest whose alleys shoot on
Like the mute minster-aisles when the anthem is done,
And the choristers sitting with faces aslant
Feel the silence to consecrate more than the chant :

“ Onora, Onora !”

And forward she looketh across the brown heath

Onora, art coming ?”—what is it she seeth?
Nought, nought but the grey border-stone that is wist
To dilate and assume a wild shape in the mist :

“My dau ter ?” Then over

The casement she leaneth, and as she doth so
She is 'ware of her little son playing below :
“Now where is Onora ?” He hung down his head
And spake not, then answering blushed scarlet-red, -

“At the tryst with her lover.”

But his mother was wroth : in a sternness quoth she,
“As thou play'st at the ball art thou playing with me?
When we know that her lover to battle is gone,
And the saints know above that she loveth but one

And will ne'er wed another?"

Then the boy wept aloud ; 't was a fair sight yet sad
To see the tears run down the sweet blooms he had :
He stamped with his foot, said—“The saints know I lied
Because truth that is wicked is fittest to hide !

Must I utter it, mother ? "

In his vehement childhood he hurried within
And knelt at her feet as in prayer against sin ;

But a child at a prayer never sobbeth as he-
“Oh! she sits with the nun of the brown rosary,

At nights in the ruin

66 The old convent ruin the ivy rots off,
Where the owl hoots by day and the toad is sun-proof,
Where no singing-birds build and the trees gauntand grey
As in stormy sea-coasts appear blasted one way-
But is this the wind's doing ?

“A nun in the east wall was buried alive
Who mocked at the priest when he called her to shrive,
And shrieked such a curse, as the stone took her breath,
The old abbess fell backward and swooned unto death

With an Ave half-spoken.

“I tried once to pass it, myself and my hound,
Till, as fearing the lash, down he shivered to ground-
A brave hound, my mother! a brave hound, ye wot!
And the wolf thought the same with his fangs at her throat

In the pass of the Brocken.

“At dawn and at eve, mother, who sitteth there
With the brown rosary never used for a prayer ?
Stoop low, mother, low! If we went there to see
What an ugly great hole in that east wall must be

At dawn and at even !

“Who meet there, my mother, at dawn and at even ?
Who meet by.that wall, never looking to heaven ?
O sweetest my sister, what doeth with thee
The ghost of a nun with a brown rosary

And a face turned from heaven?

a

“St. Agnes o’erwatcheth my dreams, and erewhile I have felt through mine eyelids the warmth of her smile ;

But last night, as a sadness like pity came o'er her,
She whispered--"Say two prayers at dawn for Onora

The Tempted is sinning.”

Onora, Onora !! They heard her not coming,
Not a step on the grass, not a voice through the gloaming;
But her mother looked up, and she stood on the floor
Fair and still as the moonlight that came there before,

And a smile just beginning :

a

It touches her lips but it dares not arise
To the height of the mystical sphere of her eyes ;
And the large musing eyes, neither joyous nor sorry,
Sing on like the angels in separate glory

Between clouds of amber ;

For the hair droops in clouds amber-coloured till stirred
Into gold by the gesture that comes with a word ;
While-O soft !-her speaking is so interwound
Of the dim and the sweet, 't is a twilight of sound

And floats through the chamber.

“Since thou shrivest my brother, fair mother,” said she, “I count on thy priesthood for marrying of me; And I know, by the hills, that the battle is done, That my lover rides on, will be here with the sun,

’Neath the eyes that behold thee.”

Her mother sat silent-too tender, I wis,
Of the smile her dead father smiled dying to kiss :
But the boy started up pale with tears, passion-wrought
“O wicked fair sister, the hills utter nought !

If he cometh, who told thee?"

“I know by the hills,” she resumed calm and clear “By the beauty upon them, that he is anear :

Did they ever look so since he bade me adieu ?
Oh, love in the waking, sweet brother, is true

As St. Agnes in sleeping !”

Half ashamed and half softened the boy did not speak, And the blush męt the lashes which fell on his cheek : She bowed down to kiss him : dear saints, did he see Or feel on her bosom the BROWN ROSARY,

That he shrank away weeping ?

SECOND PART.

A bed.

ONORA sleeping. Angels, vut not near.

So very

First Angel.
Must we stand so far, and she

fair? Second Angel.

As bodies be First Angel.

And she so mild ? Second Angel.

As spirits when
They meeken, not to God, but men.
First Angel.

And she so young, that I who bring
Good dreams for saintly children, might
Mistake that small soft face to-night,
And fetch her such a blessëd thing
That at her waking she would weep
For childhood lost anew in sleep.

How hath she sinned ?
Second Angel.

In bartering love :
God's love for man's.