ove her mayhap for her smile,
So innocent and free from guile.

Perhaps I love her for her mien,
So calmly cheerful and serene;
Or it may be her silken hair,
First caught and tangled Cupid there.

And since I came to analyse;
Her chiefest beauty is her eyes.
Her mouth, too, that is Cupid's bow--
Perhaps that's why I love her so.

And now I think of it, her voice
First made my rusty heart rejoice
And then her hand--'tis my belief
It quite outvies the lily leaf.

Perhaps I love her for her ways
That blend in with the sunny days.
Tush--to be brief and plain with you,
I love her _just because I do_.

DISCONTENT

Like a thorn in the flesh, like a fly in the mesh,
Like a boat that is chained to shore,
The wild unrest of the heart in my breast
Tortures me more and more.
I wot not why, it should wail and cry
Like a child that is lost at night,
For it knew no grief, but has found relief,
And it is not touched with blight.

It has had of pleasure full many a measure;
It has thrilled with love's red wine;
It has hope and health, and youth's rare wealth--
Oh rich is this heart of mine.
Yet it is not glad--it is wild and mad
Like a billow before it breaks;
And its ceaseless pain is worse than vain,
Since it knows not why it aches.

It longs to be, like the waves of the sea
That rise in their might and beat
And dash and lunge, and hurry and plunge,
And die at the grey rocks' feet.
It wearies of life and it sickens of strife
And yet it tires of rest.
Oh! I know not why it should ache and cry--
'Tis a troublesome heart at best.

Though not understood, I think it a good
And God-like discontent.
It springs from the soul that longs for its goal--
For the source from which it was sent.
Then surge, O breast, with thy wild unrest--
Cry, heart, like a child at night,
Till the mystic shore of the Evermore
Shall dawn on thy eager sight.

A DREAM

In the night I dreamed that you had died,
And I thought you lay in your winding sheet;
And I kneeled low by your coffin side,
With my cheek on your heart that had ceased to beat.

And I thought as I looked on your form so still,
A terrible woe, and an awful pain,
Fierce as vultures that slay and kill,
Tore at my bosom and maddened my brain.

And then it seemed that the chill of death
Over me there like a mantle fell,
And I knew by my fluttering, failing breath