Ah! each sailor in the port Knows that I have ships at sea, I have waited on the piers, So I never quite despair, Nor let hope or courage fail; And some day, when skies are fair, That is lost, that is lost. Or a wrinkle creased my brow, ROBERT STEVENSON COFFIN. LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM. FROM IRISH MELODIES." O THE days are gone when beauty bright My heart's chain wove ! When my dream of life, from morn till night, Was love, still love! New hope may bloom, And days may come, Of milder, calmer beam, But there's nothing half so sweet in life As love's young dream! O, there's nothing half so sweet in life Though the bard to purer fame may soar, Though he win the wise, who frowned before, Like the wind through a ruined cell, That ring the dead seaman's knell. When hearts have once mingled, Love first leaves the well-built nest; The weak one is singled To endure what it once possessed. O Love! who bewailest The frailty of all things here, Why choose you the frailest For your cradle, your home, and your bier Its passions will rock thee As the storms rock the ravens on high; PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY WHITTIER 4: As some tall pine that from a mountain side O'erlooks a hundred verdant vales below, What reed of Pan, however fine it blew, Might sweetlier breathe out nature's inmost grace? November, 1892 LOUISE A. McGAFFEY From Belford's Magazine, Chicage TAKE, O, TAKE THOSE LIPS AWAY.* That so sweetly were forsworn ; Lights that do mislead the morn; Hide, O, hide those hills of snow Which thy frozen bosom bears, SHAKESPEARE and JOHN FLETCHER. WHY SO PALE AND WAN? WHY so pale and wan, fond lover? Pr'y thee, why so pale? Will, when looking well can't move her, Looking ill prevail? Pr'y thee, why so pale? Why so dull and mute, young sinner? Pr'y thee, why so mute? Will, when speaking well can't win her, Saying nothing do 't? Pr'y thee, why so mute? Quit, quit, for shame! this will not move, This cannot take her : If of herself she will not love, Nothing can make her : The devil take her! SIR JOHN SUCKLING OUTGROWN. NAY, you wrong her, my friend, she's not fickle; her love she has simply outgrown : One can read the whole matter, translating her heart by the light of one's own. Can you bear me to talk with you frankly? There is much that my heart would say ; And you know we were children together, have quarrelled and "made up" in play. And so, for the sake of old friendship, I venture to tell you the truth, As plainly, perhaps, and as bluntly, as I might in our carlier youth. The first stanza of this song appears in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, Act iv. Sc. 1.; the same, with the second He stanza added, is found in Beaumont and Fletcher's Bloody Brother, Act v. Sc. 4. : cannot look down to her lover her love, like her soul, aspires; must stand by her side, or above her, who would kindle its holy fires. Now farewell! For the sake of old friendship JULIA C. R. Dorr. ALAS HOW LIGHT A CAUSE MAY MOVE. FROM "THE LIGHT OF THE HAREM." ALAS! how light a cause may move That stood the storm when waves were rough, Like ships that have gone down at sea, - a look, A something light as air, A breath, a touch like this has shaken! As though its waters ne'er could sever, Yet, ere it reach the plain below, Breaks into floods that part forever. O you, that have the charge of Love, He sits, with flowerets fettered round ;- Of all the operas that Verdi wrote, The best, to my taste, is the Trovatore ; The moon on the tower slept soft as snow; The emperor there, in his box of state, The empress, too, had a tear in her eye: You'd have said that her fancy had gone back again, For one moment, under the old blue sky, Well there in our front-row box we sat My gaze was fixed on my opera hat, And both were silent, and both were sad ;- So confident of her charm! I have not a doubt she was thinking then I hope that, to get to the kingdom of heaven, Meanwhile, I was thinking of my first love As I had not been thinking of aught for years; Till over my eyes there began to move Something that felt like tears. I thought of the dress that she wore last time, Of that muslin dress (for the eve was hot); And falling loose again; And she looked like a queen in a book that And the jasmine flower in her fair young breast; night, With the wreath of pearl in her raven hair, And the brooch on her breast so bright. (O the faint, sweet smell of that jasmine flower!) And the one bird singing alone to his nest ; And the one star over the tower. |