Yet even as we wept
Our star-faced beauty droopt.

He died:
And darksome grew our life's bright morning sun.
Gloomy the day so radiantly begun.
What joy, what joy, without our darling one,
Is all the world beside?

Tis past:
The perfumed rosebud of our life is dead:
Helpless we bend, and mourn the cherub fled,
Even as the bruised reed bends low its head
Before the cruel blast.

MAGDALENE.

Penitent! Penniless!
Where can she go?
Her poor heart is aching
With many a woe.
Repentant--though sinning:
Remorseful and sad,
She weeps in the moonlight
While others are glad.
Shrink not away from her,
Stained though she be:
She once, as the purest,
Was sinless and free:
And penitence bringeth
A shroud for her shame:
Hide it forgetfully;
Pity--nor blame.

Penniless! Penitent!
Gone every hope:
Warm lights are gleaming
From basement to cope.
Plenty surroundeth her:
Starving and stark,
Lonely she pleadeth
Out in the dark.
The cold moon above her,
The black stream below,
No friendly voice near her:
Where can she go?
Turned every face from her
Closed every door:
Plash in the moonlight!
She pleadeth no more.

LOVE WALKS WITH HUMANITY YET.

Though toilers for gold stain their souls in a strife
That enslaves them to Avarice grim,
Though Tyranny's hand fills the wine cup of life
With gall, surging over the brim;
Though Might in dark hatefulness reigns for a time,
And Right by Wrong's frownings be met;
Love lives--a guest-angel from heaven's far clime,
And walks with humanity yet.

And still the world, Balaam-like, blind as the night,
Sees not the fair seraph stand by
That beckons it onward to Morning and Light,
Lark-like, from the sod to the sky;
Love, slighted, smiles on, as the Thorn-crown'd of old,
Sun-featured and Godlike in might,
Its magic touch changing life's dross into gold,
Earth's darkness to Paradise bright.

As gems on Death's fingers flash up from the tomb
And rays o'er its loneliness shed;
As flowerets in early Spring tremblingly bloom
Ere Winter's cold ice-breath has fled;
So Love, rainbow-like, smiles through sadness and tears,
Bridging up from the earth to the sky;
The grave 'neath its glance a bright blossom-robe wears,
As the Night smiles when Morn dan