ft Madonna look about her eyes;
The long thick lash, the drooping-petal lid,
Wrought on her face all love and tenderness.
Her lips were of that deep intensest red
The cherry, red rose, and columbine wear.
Her golden hair was sunshine changed to silk,
Which fell below her waist, and was a thing
Perhaps some lover, braver far than I,
Might dare to mesh his hands in, or to kiss.

II.

The Spring has come and brought her affluent days,
But in the air a rumor runs of death--
A pestilence is half across the sea.
The presses blare its probable approach,
And poverty and wealth alike forebode.
The cholera it is whispered, Asia-born,
May leave more vacant chairs about our hearths
Than the red havoc of internal war.
There is no foot it may not overtake;
There is no cheek which may not blanch for it.
It is Filth's daughter, and where the low
Huddle in impure air in narrow rooms,
There it must come. As all forms of life,
Animate and inanimate, originate
In seeds and eggs, so all infection does.
The floating gases in the atmosphere
Acting on particles which from filth arise,
Mingle with foul wedlock--germinate,
And bear their seed like grain, or breed like flies.
This product, scattered on the spotless air,
And hurried on the currents of the wind,
Is breathed by human beings, near and far;
And planted in the system, the disease
Ripens and grows, until the sufferer dies.
Yellow fever is vegetable disease
Because the sharp frost kills it. Cholera
Is animal in origin, and survives
The utmost cold of long, dark winter days.

I pray that if the cholera must come,
It will not touch my Grace who is so dear;
But that we twain may at the altar stand,
And outlive many a trouble in the air,
And gather many a day of happiness and peace.

III.

Down by the brook which separates the farms,
Is a great rock that leans above the stream,
And seems some monster of the Saurian day,
That coming to the water's edge to drink,
Was petrified, and so is leaning still.
Upon its back a week ago I sat,
And dreamed of Grace Bernard, and watched the brook;
And while I dreamed there came within the dream
A premonition of what yet would be.
The future's face, forever turned away,
Now seemed reverted, and its backward look
Was bent on me.

They took a faulty cast
Of Shakespeare's features after he was dead.
I, seeing the future's face, make here my cast.

And this th