et-place.'
He shook as one who looks on death:
'God save you, mother!' straight he saith;
'Where is my wife, Elizabeth?'"

And then the waters laid her body at his very door, and the sweet
voice that called, "Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" was stilled forever.

The _Songs of Seven_ soon became as household words, because they
were a reflection of real life. Nobody ever pictured a child more
exquisitely than the little seven-year-old, who, rich with the little
knowledge that seems much to a child, looks down from superior heights
upon

"The lambs that play always, they know no better;
They are only one times one."

So happy is she that she makes boon companions of the flowers:--

"O brave marshmary buds, rich and yellow,
Give me your honey to hold!

"O columbine, open your folded wrapper,
Where two twin turtle-doves dwell!
O cuckoopint, toll me the purple clapper
That hangs in your clear green bell!"

At "seven times two," who of us has not waited for the great heavy
curtains of the future to be drawn aside?

"I wish and I wish that the spring would go faster,
Nor long summer bide so late;
And I could grow on, like the fox-glove and aster,
For some things are ill to wait."

At twenty-one the girl's heart flutters with expectancy:--

"I leaned out of window, I smelt the white clover,
Dark, dark was the garden, I saw not the gate;
Now, if there be footsteps, he comes, my one lover;
Hush nightingale, hush! O sweet nightingale wait
Till I listen and hear
If a step draweth near,
For my love he is late!"

At twenty-eight, the happy mother lives in a simple home, made
beautiful by her children:--

"Heigho! daisies and buttercups!
Mother shall thread them a daisy chain."

At thirty-five a widow; at forty-two giving up her children to
brighten other homes; at forty-nine, "Longing for Home."

"I had a nestful once of my own,
Ah, happy, happy I!
Right dearly I loved them, but when they were grown
They spread out their wings to fly.
O, one after another they flew away,
Far up to the heavenly blue,
To the better country, the upper day,
And--I wish I was going too."

The _Songs of Seven_ will be read and treasured as long as there are
women in the world to be loved, and men in the world to love them.

My especial favorite in the volume was the poem _Divided_. Never have
I s