In the gray of the winter morning,
The sun like a ball of flame

Sent up like a toy by a whistling boy,
The mite of a coffin came.

He reckoned it only a plaything-
A drum or a horse-and-cart-

The box that had space, O Father of Grace!
To bury a mother's heart!

Twas only a shaller coffin,
And yet so awful deep!

I placed it there by the poor wife's chair,

And I thinks, "At last she'll weep."
But she rose with never a murmur,
As calm as a spectre thin,
And-waxy
She places the baby in.

and cold and so light to hold—

Then, moving with noiseless footfall,
She reaches from box and shelf

The little one's mug, and the china pug,
And the doll that was as big as herself.
Then-Oh! it was dreadful to watch her-
All white in her crape-black gown,

With her own cold hands, my Mary stands
And fastens the coffin down.

I carried the plaything coffin,
Tucked under my arm just so;

And she stood there at the head of the stair,
And quietly watched us go.

So parson he comes in his nightgown.
And says that as grass is man;

And earth had trust of the pinch of dust
That was Alexandriana Ann.

I was trying to guess the riddle

I never could answer pat

What the wisdom and love as is planning above
Could mean by a life like that;

And I'd got my foot on the doorstep.
When, scaring my mournful dream,

Shrill, wild, and clear, there tore on my car

The sound of a maniac scream.

The scream of a raving maniac,
But, Father of death and life!

I listened and knew, the madness through,
The voice of my childless wife.
One moment I clutched and staggered,
Then down on my bended knee,

And up to the sky my wrestling cry
Went up for my girl and me.

I went to her room, and found her;

She sat on the floor, poor soul!

Two burning streaks on her death-pale cheeks, And eyes that were gleeds of coal.

And now she would shriek and shudder,

And now she would laugh aloud,

And now for a while with an awful smile,
She'd sew at a little shroud.

And then, through the day and darkness,
And all through the endless night,

I sat at her side while she shrieked and cried,
And I thought it would ne'er be light.
And still the blackness thronging
With shapes that was dread to see,
My shuddering cry to the God on high
Went up for my girl and me.

At last through the winder, morning
Came glittering, cold and pale;

And, faint but clear, to my straining ear
Was carried a feeble wail.

I went to the door in wonder,

And there, in the dawning day,

All swaddled and bound in a bundle round,
A sweet little baby lay.

It lay on the frosty door-step,

A peart little two-months' child;
Dumbfounded and slow, I raised it so,
And it looked in my face and smiled.
And so, as I kissed and loved it,

I grajuly growed aware

As the Father in bliss had sent us this,
In answer to wrestling prayer.

In wonder and joy and worship,

With tears that were soft and blest,

I carried the mite, and, still and light,

I laid it on Mary's breast.

I didn't know how she'd take it,

So goes on an artful track:

"The little 'un cried for her mother's side,
And the hangels has sent her back!"

And then, I shall ne'er forget it,
Though spared for a hundred years-
The soft delight on her features white,
The rush of her blissful tears.

The eyes that were hard and vacant

Grew wonderfully sweet and mild,

As she cries, "Come, rest on your mother's breast, My own little hangel child!"

And so from that hour my darling

Grew happy and strong and well;

And the joy that I felt as to God I knelt

Is what I can noways tell.

There's parties as sneers and tells you

There's nothing but clouds up there;

I answers 'em so: "There's a God, I know,
And a Father that heareth prayer."

And what if my Mary fancies

The babe is a child of light

Our own little dear sent back to us here?
And mayn't she be somewheres right?
Here, Mary, my darling, Mary!

A friend has come to town;

Don't mind for her nose nor changing her clo'es,

But bring us the hangel down.

ILLILEO.

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY.

Illileo, the moonlight seemed lost across the valesThe stars but strewed the azure as an armor's scattered scales;

The airs of night were quiet as the breath of silken sails,

And all your words were sweeter than the notes of nightingales.

Illileo Legardi, in the garden there alone,
With your figure carved of fervor, as the Psyche

carved of stone,

There came to me no murmur of the fountain's undertone

So mystically, musically mellow as your own. You whispered low, Illileo-so low the leaves were mute,

And the echoes faltered breathless in your voice's vain pursuit;

And there died the distant dalliance of the serenader's lute:

And I held you in my bosom as the husk may hold the fruit.

Illileo, I listened. I believed you. In my bliss, What were all the worlds above me since I found you thus in this?—

Let them reeling reach to win me-even Heaven I would miss,

Grasping earthward!—I would cling here, though I clung by just a kiss.

And blossoms should grow odorless-and lilies all aghast

And I said the stars should slacken in their paces through the vast,

Ere yet my loyalty should fail enduring to the last.

So vowed I. It is written. It is changeless as the past.

Illileo Legardi, in the shade your palace throws Like a cowl about the singer at your gilded porti

COS,

A man goes with the music that may vex the high

repose

Of a heart that fades and crumbles as the crimson of a rose.

ASTARTE.

ROBERT BULWER LYTTON.

When the latest strife is lost, and all is done with, Ere we slumber in the spirit and the brain,

We drowse back in dreams, to the days that life begun with,

And their tender light returns to us again.

I have cast away the tangle and the torment
Of the cords that bound my life up in a mesh;
And the pulse begins to throb that long lay dor-

mant

'Neath their pressure, and the old wounds bleed afresh.

I am touched again with shades of early sadness, Like the summer-cloud's light shadow in my hair;

I am thrilled again with breaths of boyish glad

ness,

Like the scent of some last primrose on the air. And again she comes with all her silent graces, The lost woman of my youth, yet unpossessed; And her cold face, so unlike the other faces

Of the women whose dead lips I since have pressed.

The motion and the fragrance of her garments

Seem about me, all the day long, in the room; And her face with its bewildering old endearments,

Comes at night, between the curtains, in the gloom.

When vain dreams are stirred with sighing, near the morning,

To my own her phantom lips I feel approach; And her smile, at eve, breaks o'er me without warning

From its speechless, pale, perpetual reproach. When life's dawning glimmer yet had all the tint there

Of the orient, in the freshness of the grass (Ah, what feet since then have trodden out the print there!)

Did her soft, her silent footsteps fall, and pass. They fell lightly, as the dew falls, 'mid ungathered Meadow flowers, and lightly lingered with the

dew.

But the dew is gone, the grass is dried 'and with. ered,

And the traces of those steps have faded too. Other footsteps fall about me,-faint, uncertain, In the shadow of the world, as it recedes; Other forms peer through the half-uplifted curtain Of that mystery which hangs behind the creeds! What is gone, is gone forever. And new fashions May replace old forms which nothing can restore;

But I turn from sighing back departed passions, With that pining at the bosom as of yore.

I remember to have murmured, morn and even, "Though the earth dispart these earthlies, face from face,

Yet the heavenlies shall surely join in heaven, For the spirit hath no bonds in time or space.