hes is upheld--and gleams
In every future of our boyhood dreams.
But while we follow every promise sweet,
With buoyant hearts and lightly springing feet,
To where some joy untasted yet awaits,--
We hear the solemn sound of closing gates;
And driven by Care, we leave the City bright,
To mount with aching feet some rocky height
Where Time dispels the hopes that Fancy gave,
And all life's prospect narrows to a cave.
Less sweet we sleep than did the sleepers seven,
Our dreams are shadows--theirs were bright with Heaven.
Haply to every soul there comes an hour
When Sorrow's hand smites in the wall with power,
Or Love hath breathed a whisper soft and low,
And wrought the miracle of Jericho.

And thus we come again or soon or late,
To pass once more the mystic City's gate.
Our hearts grow tender as we view again
The dear remembered vistas of the plain,
And as we draw the sun-lit portals near,
The air is sweet to us with vesper prayer;
While o'er the gate our lifted eyes behold
The sacred sign--a cross of shining gold.

A LEGEND OF ST. JOHN.

Inscribed to

C. C. Bonney.

A LEGEND OF ST. JOHN.

Then Jesus answered unto Peter, "If I will
That he shall tarry till I come again,
What is it unto thee?" He spake of John.

In Russia there still lives a legend sweet,
Repeated by the grandsire to the child,--
A dear old legend, which has lived so long,
And held an honored place so many years
By ancient firesides long since turned to dust--
A legend which doth mind us so of eve,
Of lengthened shadows, wonder-opened eyes,
And groups which listened ere they went their way,
We well might wish the story may be true,--
Of him who once had lain on Jesus' breast.
This is the tale, as I remember it.

When John to Patmos' isle was banished,
He saw and heard unutterable things.
The "Revelation" is a shadow poor,
Of his most marvelous experience.
But human language never can convey,
And human intellect can never span,
Things not of earth. When from his beauteous dream
Unwillingly the loved disciple woke,
His heart was burning with new zeal for God
And therefore with more tender love for man.
Down the steep mountain side, with ready feet,
To preach the gospel to the Greeks, he ran,
To tell of that fair city with its gates
Of gleaming pearl, and streets of shining gold,
Built for the people of the gracious Lord.
But to the Greeks his words were foolishness.
The Stoics cried, "What doth this babbler say?