ad
O Dews, weep on uncomforted!

_We To Sigh Instead of Sing_

"Rain and rain! And rain and rain!"
Yesterday we muttered
Grimly as the grim refrain
That the thunders uttered:
All the heavens under cloud--
All the sunshine sleeping;
All the grasses limply bowed
With their weight of weeping.

Sigh and sigh! And sigh and sigh!
Never end of sighing;
Rain and rain for our reply--
Hopes half drowned and dying;
Peering through the window-pane,
Naught but endless raining--
Endless sighing, and as vain,
Endlessly complaining,

Shine and shine! And shine and shine!
Ah! To-day the splendor--!
All this glory yours and mine--
God! But God is tender!
We to sigh instead of sing,
Yesterday, in sorrow,
While the Lord was fashioning
This for our To-morrow!

_The Blossoms on the Trees_

Blossoms crimson, white, or blue,
Purple, pink, and every hue,
From sunny skies, to tintings drowned
In dusky drops of dew,
I praise you all, wherever found,
And love you through and through--;
But, Blossoms On The Trees,
With your breath upon the breeze
There's nothing all the world around
As half as sweet as you!

Could the rhymer only wring
All the sweetness to the lees
Of all the kisses clustering
In juicy Used-to-bes,
To dip his rhymes therein and sing
The blossoms on the trees--,
"O Blossoms on the Trees,"
He would twitter, trill, and coo,
"However sweet, such songs as these
Are not as sweet as you--:
For you are blooming melodies
The eyes may listen to!"

_Last Night-- And This_

Last night-- how deep the darkness was!
And well I knew its depths, because
I waded it from shore to shore,
Thinking to reach the light no more.

She would not even touch my hand---.
The winds rose and the cedars fanned
The moon out, and the stars fled back
In heaven and hid-- and all was black!

But ah! To-night a summons came,
Signed with a tear-drop for a name,
For as I wondering kissed it, lo
A line beneath it told me so.

And now-- the moon hangs over me
A disk of dazzling brilliancy,
And every star-tip stabs my sights
With splintered glitterings of light!

_A Discouraging Model_

Just the airiest, fairiest slip of a thing,
With a Gainsborough hat, like a butterfly's wing,
Tilted up at one side with the jauntiest air,
And a knot of red roses sown in under there
Where the shadows are lost in her hair.

Then a cameo face, carven in on a ground
Of that shadowy hair where the roses are wound;
And the