ne save me.

I left him, orphaned, in the starless night;
Alas, for him no cheerful morning's dawn!
I wear the ransomed spirit's robe of white,
Yet still I hear him moaning, She is gone!

THE ANGEL.

--Ye know me not, sweet sisters?--All in vain
Ye seek your lost ones in the shapes they wore;
The flower once opened may not bud again,
The fruit once fallen finds the stem no more.

Child, lover, sire,--yea, all things loved below,
Fair pictures damasked on a vapor's fold,
Fade like the roseate flush, the golden glow,
When the bright curtain of the day is rolled.

I was the babe that slumbered on thy breast.
--And, sister, mine the lips that called thee bride.
--Mine were the silvered locks thy hand caressed,
That faithful hand, my faltering footstep's guide!

Each changing form, frail vesture of decay,
The soul unclad forgets it once hath worn,
Stained with the travel of the weary day,
And shamed with rents from every wayside thorn.

To lie, an infant, in thy fond embrace,
To come with love's warm kisses back to thee,
To show thine eyes thy gray-haired father's face,
Not Heaven itself could grant; this may not be!

Then spread your folded wings, and leave to earth
The dust once breathing ye have mourned so long,
Till Love, new risen, owns his heavenly birth,
And sorrow's discords sweeten into song!

II

I am going to take it for granted now and henceforth, in my report of
what was said and what was to be seen at our table, that I have secured
one good, faithful, loving reader, who never finds fault, who never gets
sleepy over my pages, whom no critic can bully out of a liking for me,
and to whom I am always safe in addressing myself. My one elect may be
man or woman, old or young, gentle or simple, living in the next block
or on a slope of Nevada, my fellow-countryman or an alien; but one such
reader I shall assume to exist and have always in my thought when I am
writing.

A writer is so like a lover! And a talk with the right listener is so
like an arm-in-arm walk in the moonlight with the soft heartbeat just
felt through the folds of muslin and broadcloth! But it takes very
little to spoil everything for writer, talker, lover. There are a great
many cruel things besides poverty that freeze the genial current of the
soul, as the poet of the E