ht
Of thy nightly taper:
Gone, as 'fore the sunshine bright,
Early morning's vapor.

Kiss its lips so mute and cold,
Cold as chiselled marble,
They will now to harp of gold
Glad Hosannas warble.

At the last they sweetly smiled,
Told it not for gladness;
Would'st thou now recall thy child
To a world of sadness?

It is hard to gather up,
Ties so rudely riven;
But thou'lt find this bitter cup
For thy weal was given.

Kiss again its hands so white,
Kiss its marble forehead;
Soon the grave will hide from sight,
That thou only borrowed.

Thou will meet thy child again,
Where no death or sorrow
Bring their sad to-day of pain,
And their dread to-morrow.

FOOTNOTES:

[L] This poem, in an unfinished form, was published some months ago in
_Sartain's Magazine_. It has since been re-written for the
_International_, and is now much more than before deserving of the
applause with which it was received.

THE AMBITIOUS BROOKLET.

BY A. OAKEY HALL.

CHAPTER I.

_How the Brooklet was born; and lodged; and wandered off one
rainy day._

There was once a Brooklet born of a modest spring that circled through a
smiling meadow. All the hours of the Spring, and the Summer, and the
Autumn, kept she her musical round; greeting the sun at his rising,
together with the meadow-larks which came to dip their beaks in the
sparkling water-drops; and singing to the moon and stars all night, as
she bore their features within her bosom, in grateful remembrance of
their beauty. The laborer in the field hard by often came to visit her,
and wet his honest, toil-browned brow with her cooling drops; and often,
too, the laborer's daughter came at sunset time to sit by a mossy stone,
with so lovely a face that the Brooklet, as she mirrored the features of
the beautiful visitor, leaped about the pebbles with ripplings of
admiration.

And so this Brooklet lived on, only ceasing her merry flow and circling
journey when the bushes by her side became white with snow, and when the
rabbits from the brushwood fence at her head came out to stand upon the
slippery casing that the Brooklet often saw spreading over her, and
shutting out the warm sunshine by day, and at nightfall blurring the
radiance of moon and stars.

One stormy spring day the Brooklet seemed to rise higher among the twigs
of the alder-bushes th