Staining her lips in crimson wine, and laughed
To feel the vinous bubbles froth and burst
In veins whose sparkling blood was meet to be
An angel's habitation. Cup on cup

I drained in fulness-careless as a god-
A haggard bearded head upon a breast

In tumult like a sun-kissed bed of flowers.

*

*

*

*

*

Three days and nights the vision dwelt with me, Three days and nights we dozed in dreadful state, Looked piteously upon by sun and star;

But the third night there passed a homeless sound
Across the city underneath my tower,

And lo! there came a roll of muffled wheels,
A shrieking and a hurrying to and fro
Beneath, and I gazed forth. Then far below
I heard the people shriek, "A pestilence !"

*

*

*

*

*

I turned to her, the partner of my height:

She, with bright eyeballs sick with wine, and hair Gleaming in sunset, on a couch asleep.

And lo! a horror lifted up my scalp,

The pulses plunged upon the heart, and fear
Froze my wide eyelids. Peacefully she lay
In purple stole arrayed, one little hand
Bruising the downy cheek, the other still
Clutching the dripping goblet, and the light,
With gleams of crimson on the ruinous hair,
Spangling a blue-veined bosom, whence the robe
Fell back in rifled folds; but dreadful change
Grew pale and hideous on the waxen face,
And in her sleep she did not stir, nor dream.

Richard Chenevix Trench.

BE PATIENT.

BE patient! O, be patient! Put your ear against the

earth;

Listen there how noiselessly the germ o' the seed has birth

How noiselessly and gently it upheaves its little way, Till it parts the scarcely broken ground, and the blade stands up in the day.

Be patient! O, be patient! The germs of mighty thought Must have their silent undergrowth, must underground be

wrought;

But as sure as there's a power that makes the grass appear, Our land shall be green with liberty, the blade-time shall be here.

Be patient! O, be patient!—go and watch the wheat-ears grow

So imperceptibly that ye can mark nor change nor throe— Day after day, day after day, till the ear is fully grown, And then again day after day, till the ripened field is brown.

Be patient! O, be patient!-though yet our hopes are

green,

The harvest-fields of freedom shall be crowned with sunny

sheen.

Be ripening! be ripening!-mature your silent way,

Till the whole broad land is tongued with fire on freedom's

harvest day!

Miss Adelaide Anne Proctor.

A DOUBTING HEART.

WHERE

HERE are the swallows fled?
Frozen and dead,

Perchance, upon some bleak and stormy shore.

O doubting heart!

Far over purple seas,

They wait, in sunny ease,

The balmy southern breeze,

To bring them to their northern home once more.

Why must the flowers die?
Prisoned they lie

In the cold tomb, needless of tears or rain.

O doubting heart!

They only sleep below

The soft white ermine snow,

While winter winds shall blow,

To breathe and smile upon you soon again.

The sun has hid its rays

These many days:

Will dreary hours never leave the earth?

O doubting heart!

The stormy clouds on high

Veil the same sunny sky

That soon (for spring is nigh)

Shall wake the summer into golden mirth.

Fair hope is dead, and light

Is quenched in night.

What sound can break the silence of despair? O doubting heart!

The sky is overcast,

Yet stars shall rise at last, Brighter for darkness past, And angels' silver voices stir the air.

THE END.