n say,--
A stranger one--one Allen Gray,--
No braver hero ever died
Than he whose love she lost through pride.

Unselfish, earnest, daring, brave,
All but himself he tried to save;
Heedless of death and danger--why?
One heart alone could make reply.

One spirit that had vainly sought
Rest from a hungry surge of thought;
Fierce retribution!--thus to be
Tortured by praise of Graham Lee!

Hero! but not for her to claim--
There was the anguish, there the shame:
How little yielding 'twould have cost
To call him still her own, though lost.

But she had cast away the right,
And, mutely wretched, heard that night,
With stormy heart and tearless cheek,
His praise whose name she dared not speak.

Few knew that they were lovers--none
That their two hearts had pulsed as one;
So the world called her cold and changed;
Friends thought her haughty and estranged.

The current of her life's May-time
Ran chill beneath a crust of rime;
And lovers wore, for Daisy's sake,
The icy chains they could not break.

A yearning sadness in her face
But added to that nameless grace,
That spell by which some women reign
In hearts they never strove to gain.

Love fell on her superb repose
Like warm light on a sculptured rose,
As if--beguiled--to flush apart
The chiselled whiteness of its heart.

The voice of passion to her soul
Swept, as the storm-voiced surges roll
Up toward a star-like beacon steep,
Dashed backward rayless to the deep.

As fire-fly lighting up a maze
Of cobwebs with its dying blaze;
Held by a grim black spider fast--
Flashing with glory to the last.

Thus tangled in a cruel fate,
Dared through her folly, feared too late,
The light of Daisy's lost love made
The past fall back in deepest shade.

Strong natures suffer more than those
Who, bowing down, parade their woes
For a brief season, and then rise:
The brave heart uncomplaining dies.

So after years that inner gloom
Had only softened