438

T is the hour for souls,

will and love,

Be lightened to redemption.

The world's old,

But the old world waits the

hour to be renewed

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

THE UNBIDDEN GUEST.

individual growth

hall,

And music is sounding its joyous call,

multitude

In new dynasties of the race of men;

Developed whence, shall grow spontaneously New churches, new ceremonies, new laws Admitting freedom, new societies

the fair,

With the flower-wreathed brow and the

braided hair.

I come, but so noiseless shall be my way Through the smiling crowds of the young and gay

new.

My Romney! Lifting up my hand in his,
As wheeled by seeing spirits toward the east,
He turned instinctively where faint and fair
Along the tingling desert of the sky,
Beyond the circle of the conscious hills,
Were laid in jasper-stone as clear as glass
The first foundations of that new, near day
Which should be builded out of heaven to

God.

He stood a moment with erected brows,

In silence, as a creature might who gazedStood calm and fed his blind, majestic eyes Upon the thought of perfect noon. And

when

I saw his soul saw, "Jasper first," I said;

Of me, the unseen, the unbidden guest; Not an undertone on the ear shall swell, Smiting your hearts like a funeral-knell.

I come! Let the music's echoing note
Still through the air of your ballroom
float;

Let the starry lamps soft radiance throw
On the rose-touched cheek and the brow of

snow:

Not a freezing pulse, not a thrill of fear, Shall tell that the king of the grave is

near;

Not a pallid face, not a rayless eye,
Shall whisper of me as I hurry by
Marking the doomed I shall summon away
To their low dark cells in the house of clay.

We have met before. Ay, I wandered here
In the festal hours of the parted year,
And many a beautiful form has bowed

To the sleep that dwells in the damp white shroud :

| My voice shall be sweet in the maiden's ear As the voice of her lover whispering near, And my footstep so soft by the infant's bed He will deem it his mother's anxious tread, And his innocent eyes will gently close

green,

E'en while she lived an awe was cast

Around her loveliness;

It seemed as if, whene'er she passed, A spirit came to bless.

A child upraised its tiny hands,

And cried, “Oh, weep no more!
Mother, behold! an angel stands
Before our cottage door."

We would not bring her back to life
With word or charm or sign,
Nor yet recall to scenes of strife

A creature all divine;

We would not even ask to shred

One tress of golden gleam That o'er that fair and perfect head

Sheds a refulgent beam.

No! Lay her with her shining hair

Around her flowing bright;
We would not keep of one so rare
Memorials in our sight.

Too harsh a shade would seem to lie

On all things here beneath

If we beheld one token by

Of her who sleeps in death.

CATHERINE A. WARFIELD and ELEANOR P. LEE.

CANZONET.

FROM THE PORTUGUESE OF LUIS DE CAMOENS.

Hope, that buds in lover's heart,
Lives not through the scorn of years;
Time makes Love itself depart;
Time and scorn congeal the mind;
Looks unkind

Freeze affection's warmest tears.

Time shall make the bushes green : Time dissolve the winter snow; Winds be soft and skies serene; Linnets sing their wonted strain; But again

Blighted love shall never blow.

WH

Translation of LORD STRANGFORD.

GALILEO.

HY wrapped he not a martyr's robe
Around his lofty form?

Why bore he not with dauntless brow

The bursting of the storm?

Why cringed the mind that proudly soared
Where others gazed dismayed
With servile will before the power

Whose grasp was on him laid?

They tell us it was fear that bowed
His mighty spirit when
He stooped beneath the rusty links
Of Superstition's chain;
The dungeon-cell was dark, and light
Was pleasant to his eye,
And, holy tho' the truth, for it

He did not dare to die.

FLO

Cheerily the linnets sing;

Winds are soft and skies serene :

Time, however, soon shall throw

Winter's snow

O'er the buxom breast of Spring.

Who ventured out abroad, Unpiloted, thro' pathless space

By angels only trod

Who wandered with unfailing flight Creation's vastness o'er,