ose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed!
Thus in the stilly night
Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
Sad Memory brings the light
Of other days around me.

THOMAS MOORE.

MY OWN SHALL COME TO ME.

If John Burroughs (1837-) had never written any other poem than "My Own
Shall Come to Me," he would have stood to all ages as one of the
greatest of American poets. The poem is most characteristic of the
tall, majestic, slow-going poet and naturalist. There is no greater
line in Greek or English literature than

"I stand amid the eternal ways."

Serene I fold my hands and wait,
Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea.
I rave no more 'gainst time or fate,
For lo! my own shall come to me.

I stay my haste, I make delays,
For what avails this eager pace?
I stand amid the eternal ways,
And what is mine shall know my face.

Asleep, awake, by night or day
The friends I seek are seeking me;
No wind can drive my bark astray,
Nor change the tide of destiny.

What matter if I stand alone?
I wait with joy the coming years;
My heart shall reap when it has sown,
And gather up its fruit of tears.

The stars come nightly to the sky;
The tidal wave comes to the sea;
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,
Can keep my own away from me.

The waters know their own and draw
The brook that springs in yonder heights;
So flows the good with equal law
Unto the soul of pure delights.

JOHN BURROUGHS.

ODE TO A SKYLARK.

"Ode to a Skylark," by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), is usually
assigned to "grammar grades" of schools. It is included here out of
respect to a boy of eleven years who was more impressed with these
lines than with any other lines in any poem:

"Like a poet hidden,
In the light of thought
Singing songs unbidden
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not."

Hail to thee, blithe spirit--
Bird thou never wert--
That from heaven or near it
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud o