A WOMAN'S SHORTCOMINGS

SHE HAS LAUGHED as softly as is she sighed,
She has counted six and over,
Of a purse well filled, and a heart well tried-
Oh each a worthy lover!
They "give her time"; for her soul must slip
Where the world has set the grooving:
She will lie to none with her fair red lip-
But love seeks truer loving.

She trembles her fan in a sweetness dumb,
As her thoughts were beyond recalling,
With a glance for one, and glance for some,
For her eyelids rising and falling;
Speaks common words with a blushful air,
Hears bold words, unreproving;
But her silence says-what she never will swear-
And love seeks better loving.

Go, lady, lean to the night-guitar,
And drop a smile to the bringer,
Then smile as sweetly, when he is far,
At the voice of an indoor singer.
Bask tenderly beneath tender eyes;
Glance lightly on their removing;
And join new vows to old prejuries-
But dare not call it loving.

Unless you can think, when the song is done,
No other is soft in the rhythm;
Unless you can feel, when left by one,
That all men else go with him;
Unless you can know, when unpraised by his breath,
That your beauty itself want proving;
Unless you can swear, "For life, for death!"-
Oh fear to call it loving!

Unless you can must in a crowd all day,
On the absent face that fixed you;
Unless you can love, as the angels may,
With the breadth of heaven betwixt you;
Unless you can dream that his faith is fast,
Through behoving and unbehoving;
Unless you can die when the dream is past-
Oh never call it loving!

--Elizabeth Barrett Browning

FIDELIS

YOU have taken back the promise
That you spoke so long ago;
Taken back the heart you gave me-
I must even let it go.
Where Love once has breathed, Pride dieth;
So I struggled, but in vain,
First to keep the links together,
Then to piece the broken chain.

But it might not be-so freely
All your friendship I restore,
And the heart that I had taken
As my own forevermore.
No shade or reproach shall touch you,
Dread no more a claim from me-
But I will not have you fancy
That I count myself as free.

I am bound by the old promise;
What can break that golden chain?
Not even the words that you have spoken,
Or the sharpness of my pain:
Do you think, because you fail me
And draw back your hand todat,
That from out the heart I gave you
My strong love can fade away?

It will live. No eyes may see it;
In my soul it will lie deep,
Hidden from all; but I shall feel it
Often stirring in its sleep.
So remember that the friendship
Which you now think poor and vain,
Will endure in hope and patience,
Till you ask for it again.

Perhaps in some long twilight hour,
Like those we have known of old,
When past shadows gather round you,
And your present friends grow cold,
You may stretch your hands our towards me-
Ah! You will-I know not when-
I shall nurse my love and keep it
Faithfully, for you, till then.

--Adeliade Anne Procter

THE LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMP

"THEY made her a grave too cold and damp
For a soul so warm and true;
And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,
Where all night long, by a firefly lamp,
She paddles her white canoe.
And her firefly lamp I soon shall see,
And her paddle I soon shall hear;
Long and loving our life shall be,
And I'll hide the maid in a cypress tree,
When the footstep of death is near."

Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds,-
His path was rugged and sore,

Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds,
Through many a fen where the serpent feeds,
And man never trod before.

And when on earth he sank to sleep,
If slumber his eyelids knew,
He lay where the deadly vine doth weep
Its venomous tear, and nightly steep
The flesh with blistering dew!

And near him the she-wolf stirr'd the brake,
And the cooper-snake breathed in his ear,
Till he starting cried, from his dream awake,
"Oh when shall I see the dusky Lake,
And the white canoe of my dear?"

He saw the Lake, and a meteor bright
Quick over its surface play'd,-
"Welcome," he said, "my dear one's light!"
And the dim shore echo'd for many a night
The name of the death-cold maid.

Till he hollow'd a boat of the birchen bark,
Which carried him off from shore;
Far, far he follow'd the meteor spark,
The wind has high and the clouds were dark,
And the boat return'd no more.

But oft, from the Indain hunter's camp,
This lover and maid so true
Are seen at the hour of midnight damp
To cross the Lake by a firefly lamp,
And paddle their white canoe!"

--Thomas Moore

CREED

I BELIEVE if I should die,
And you should kiss my eyelids when I lie
Cold, dead, and dumb to all the world contains,
The folded orbs would open at thy breath,
And, from its exile in the isles of death,
Life would come gladly back along my veins.

I believe if I were dead,
And you upon my lifeless heart should tread,
Not knowing what the poor clod chanced to be,
It would find sudden pulse beneath the touch
Of him if ever loved in life so much,
And throb again-warm, tender, true to thee.

I believe if on my grave,
Hidden in woody depths or by the wave,
Your eyes should drop some warm tears of regret,
From every salty seed of your dear grief
Some fair, sweet blossom would leap into leaf
To prove death could not make me love forget.

I believe if I should fade
Into those mystic realms where light is made,
And you should long once more my face to see,
I would come forth upon the hills of night
And gather stars, like fagots, till thy sight,
Led by their beacon blaze, fell full on me.

I believe my faith in thee,
Strong as my life, so nobly placed to be,
I would as soon expect to see the sun
Fall like a dead king from his height sublime,
His glory stricken from the throne of time,
As thee unworth the worship thou has won.

I believe who hath not loved
Hath half the sweetness of his life unproved;
Like one who, with the grape within his grasp,
Drops it with all its crimson juice unpressed,
And all its luscious sweetness left unguessed,
Out from his careless and unheeding clasp.

I believe love, pure and ture,
Is to the soul a sweet, and immortal dew
That gems life's petals in its hours of dusk.
The waiting angels see and recognize
The rich crown jewel, Love, of Paradise,
When life falls from us like a withered husk.

--Mary Ashley Townsend