Thou art the last rose of the year,
By gusty breezes rudely fanned:
The dying Summer holds thee fast
In the hot hollow of her hand.

Thy face pales, as if looking back
Into the splendor of thy past
Had thrilled thee strangely, knowing that
This one long look must be the last.

Thine essence, that was heavenly sweet,
Has flown upon the tricksy air:
Fate's hand is on thee; drop thy leaves,
And go among the things that were.

Be must and mould, be trampled dust,
Be nothing that is fair to see:
One day, at least, of glorious life
Was thine of all eternity.

Be this a comfort: Crown and lyre,
And regal purple last not long:
Kings fall like leaves, but thy perfume
Strays through the years like royal song.

JAMES MAURICE THOMPSON.

A PRINCESS OF THULE.

BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF "THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON."

CHAPTER XIX.

A NEW DAY BREAKS.

Was this, then, the end of the fair and beautiful romance that had
sprung up and blossomed so hopefully in the remote and bleak island,
amid the silence of the hills and moors and the wild twilights of the
North, and set round about, as it were, by the cold sea-winds and the
sound of the Atlantic waves? Who could have fancied, looking at those
two young folks as they wandered about the shores of the island, as they
sailed on the still moonlight nights through the channels of Loch Roag,
or as they sang together of an evening in the little parlor of the house
at Borvabost, that all the delight and wonder of life then apparently
opening out before them was so soon and so suddenly to collapse, leaving
them in outer darkness and despair? All their difficulties had been got
over. From one side and from another they had received generous help,
friendly advice, self-sacrifice to start them on a path that seemed to
be strewn with sweet-smelling flowers. And here was the end--a wretched
girl, blinded and bewildered, flying from her husband's house and
seeking refuge in the great world of London, careless whither she went.

Whose was the fault? Which of them had been mistaken up there in the
North, laying the way open for a bitter disappointment? Or had either of
them failed to carry out that unwritten contract entered into in the
halcyon period of courtship, by which two young people promise to be and
remain to each other all that they then appeared?

Lavender, a