John Boyle O'Reilly.

O'Reilly was born in 1844 in Dowth Castle, County Meath, Ireland. He was educated by his father, and beeame a journalist. In 1863 he engaged in the revolutionary movement for a republic. Entering the English army in a cavalry regiment, he made no secret of his republican sentiments among his fellow-soldiers. In 1866 he was arrested, tried, and sentenced to imprisonment for life, which was commuted to imprisonment for twenty years. He was sent in chains to the penal colony of West Australia in 1867, and escaped thence in 1869, through the devoted aid of an American whaling captain, David R. Gifford, of New Bedford, to whom he dedicated his first book. O'Reilly fixed his residence in Boston, where he became editor of The Pilot. In 1878 he published "Songs, Legends, and Ballads," by which he placed himself in the front rank of the Irish poets of the day. His poem of "The Patriot's Grave," read at the Robert Emmet Centennial in Boston, March 4th, 1878, seems to pulsate at times with the intense emotion made to throb in words by the "faculty divine."

WESTERN AUSTRALIA.

O beauteous Southland! land of yellow air
That hangeth o'er thee slumbering, and doth hold
The moveless foliage of thy valleys fair
And wooded hills, like aureole of gold!

O thou, discovered ere the fitting time,

Ere Nature in completion turned thee forth! Ere aught was finished but thy peerless clime, Thy virgin breath allured the amorous North.

O land, God made thee wondrous to the eye, But His sweet singers thou hast never heard; He left thee, meaning to come by-and-by,

And give rich voice to every bright-winged bird.

He painted with fresh hues thy myriad flowers, But left them scentless: ah, their woful dole, Like sad reproach of their Creator's powers,— To make so sweet fair bodies, void of soul.

He gave thee trees of odorous, precious wood;

But 'mid them all bloomed not one tree of fruit: He looked, but said not that His work was good, When leaving thee all perfumeless and mute.

He blessed thy flowers with honey: every bell Looks earthward, sunward, with a yearning wist; But no bee-lover ever notes the swell

Of hearts, like lips, a-hungering to be kissed.

O strange land, thou art virgin! thou art more Than fig-tree barren! Would that I could paint

For others' eyes the glory of the shore

Where last I saw thee; but the senses faint

In soft, delicious dreaming when they drain
Thy wine of color. Virgin fair thou art,
All sweetly fruitful, waiting with soft pain
The spouse who comes to wake thy sleeping heart.

FOREVER.

Those we love truly never die,

Though year by year the sad memorial wreath,
A ring and flowers, types of life and death,
Are laid upon their graves.

For death the pure life saves,

And life all pure is love; and love can reach From heaven to earth, and nobler lessons teach Than those by mortals read.

Well blessed is he who has a dear one dead: A friend he has whose face will never changeA dear communion that will not grow strange; The anchor of a love is death.

The blesséd sweetness of a loving breath Will reach our cheek all fresh through weary years. For her who died long since, ah! waste not tears, She's thine unto the end.

Thank God for one dear friend,

With face still radiant with the light of truth, Whose love comes laden with the scent of youth. Through twenty years of death.

AT BEST.

The faithful helm commands the keel, From port to port fair breezes blow; But the ship must sail the convex sea, Nor may she straighter go.

So, man to man; in fair accord,

On thought and will the winds may wait; But the world will bend the passing word, Though its shortest course be straight.

From soul to soul the shortest line

At best will bended be:

The ship that holds the straightest course Still sails the convex sea.

Charlotte Fiske Bates.

AMERICAN.

Miss Bates was born in the city of New York, but has spent most of her life in Cambridge, Mass., where she has long been engaged in teaching. Her first poems appeared in Our Young Folks, a juvenile magazine, which was incorporated in the St. Nicholas. Her first volume appeared in 1879, under the title of "Risk, and other Poems." It includes more than two-thirds of what she has written for various periodicals during the last fifteen years. It is a book of genuine poetical utterances, as the few extracts we give will show.

SATISFIED.

Life is unutterably dear,

God makes to-day so fair; Though Heaven is better,-being here I long not to be there.

The weights of life are pressing still,
Not one of them may fall;

Yet such strong joys my spirit fill,
That I can bear them all.

Thongh Care and Grief are at my side,
There would I let them stay,
And still be ever satisfied

With beautiful To-day!

AFTER READING LONGFELLOW'S "MORITURI SALUTAMUS."

"Ye against whose familiar names not yet
The fatal asterisk of death is set."

Be that sad year, O poet! very far
That proves thee mortal by the little star.
Yet since thy thoughts live daily in our own,
And leave no heart to weep or smile alone;
Since they are rooted in our souls, and so
Will live forever whither those shall go,
Though some late asterisk may mark thy name,

It never will be set against thy fame!

For the world's fervent love and praise of thee Have starred it first with immortality.

EVIL THOUGHT.

A form not always dark but ever dread,
That sometimes haunts the holiest of all,—
God's audience-room, the chamber of the dead,
He ventures here, to woo or to appall!

923

When the soul sits with every portal wide,
Joyful to drink the air and light of God,
This Dark One rushes through with rapid stride,
Leaving the print of evil where he trod.

Sometimes he enters like a thief at night; And breaking in upon the stillest hour Startles the soul to tremble with affright Lest she be pinioned by so foul a power.

Again we see his shadow, feel his tread,

And just escape that strange and captive touch; Perhaps by some transfixing wonder led, We look till drawn within his very clutch.

O valorous souls! so strong to meet the foe,
O timid souls! yet brave in flight of wing,
Secure and happy ones who seldom know
The agony this visitant can bring,-

Have mercy on your brothers housed so ill,
Too weak or blinded any force to wield;
Judging their deeds, this fiend remember still:
Christ pity those who cannot use His shield!

THE POWER OF MUSIC.

How high those tones are beating, and how strong Against these frail and tottering walls of clay! Can they withstand those mighty dashings long? Do I not feel them even now give way?

What if they should? That soon or late must be:
The broken wall lets forth the soul to light:-
O Heaven! what fitter passage into thee
Than on the waves of music's conquering night!

WOODBINES IN OCTOBER.

As dyed in blood the streaming vines appear, While long and low the wind about them grieves,The heart of Autumn must have broken here, And poured its treasure out upon the leaves.

SONNET: TO C. F.

O friend! whose name is closely bound with mine,
How often when thy soul its body wore,
We spake of those who spake with us no more,
And eager sought their nearness to divine.
To-day I stand with just this grave of thine

And the remembrance of the days before,
Which time and place so vividly restore
That sense of death and dust I can resign.
Once it was here thy fancy used to seek,
In Nature's simple play midst flower and tree,
In sudden tremor of a dear grave's grass,
Some subtile recognition :-thus then speak,
O soul that knowest all, and now art free,
To her who still can only guess and pass.

THE TELEPHONE.

Oh what a marvel of electric might,

That makes the ear the conqueror of space, And gives us all of presence but the sight, When miles of dark and distance hide the face.

Soul! is not this thy very analogue ?

Do not strange thoughts come sounding through thee thus?

Ay, clear sometimes, as if there were no clog
To shut remotest being out from us!

Low notes are said through this strange instrument
To reach the listener with distinctest tone:
So inmost thoughts, from man or angel sent,
Strike through the soul's aërial telephone!

THE RIVER.

I know thou art not that brown mountain-side,
Nor the pale mist that lies along the hills,
And with white joy the deepening valley fills;
Nor yet the solemn river moving wide
Into that valley, where the hills abide,
But whence those morning clouds on noiseless wheels
Shall lingering lift, and, as the moonlight steals
From out the heavens, so into the heavens shall
glide.

I know thou art not that gray rock that looms
Above the water, fringed with scarlet vine;
Nor flame of burning meadow; nor the sedge
That sways and trembles at the river's edge.
But through all these, dear heart, to me there comes
Some melancholy absent look of thine.

A THOUGHT.

Once, looking from a window on a land
That lay in silence underneath the suu:

A land of broad, green meadows, through which poured

Two rivers, slowly widening to the sea,-
Thus, as I looked, I know not how or whence,
Was borne into my unexpectant soul

That thought, late learned by anxious-witted man,
The infinite patience of the Eternal Mind.

O golden-rod and brave sunflower
That flame before my maiden's bower;

O butterfly, on whose light wings
The golden summer sunshine clings;
O birds that flit o'er wheat and wall,
And from cool hollows pipe and call;

O falling water, whose distant roar
Sounds like the waves upon the shore;
O winds that down the valley sweep,
And lightnings from the clouds that leap;

O skies that bend above the hills,
O gentle rains and babbling rills,

O moon and sun that beam and burn-
Keep safe my Love till I return!

CALL ME NOT DEAD.

Call me not dead when I, indeed, have gone
Into the company of the ever-living
High and most glorious poets! Let thanksgiving
Rather be made. Say-"He at last hath won
Release and rest, converse supreme and wise,
Music and song and light of immortal faces:
To-day, perhaps, wandering in starry places,
He hath met Keats, and known him by his eyes.
To-morrow (who can say) Shakspeare may pass,--
And our lost friend just catch one syllable
Of that three-centuried wit that kept so well,-
Or Milton,-or Dante, looking on the grass
Thinking of Beatrice, and listening still

To chanted hymns that sound from the heavenly hill."

MY SONGS ARE ALL OF THEE.

My songs are all of thee; what though I sing
Of morning when the stars are yet in sight,
Of evening, or the melancholy night,

Of birds that o'er the reddening waters wing;
Of song, of fire, of winds, or mists that cling
To mountain-tops, of winter all in white,
Of rivers that toward ocean take their flight,
Of summer when the rose is blossoming.

I think no thought that is not thine, no breath
Of life I breathe beyond thy sanctity;
Thou art the voice that silence uttereth,
And of all sound thou art the sense.
The music of my song and what it saith
Is but the beat of thy heart, throbbed through me.

From thee

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

AMERICAN.

925

Upon Life's Bridge of Sighs to standA palace and a prison on each hand.

O palace of the rose-heart's hue!

How like a flower the warm light falls from you!

O prison with the hollow eyes!
Beneath your stony stare no flowers arise.

O palace of the rose-sweet sin!

How safe the heart that does not enter in!

O blessed prison walls! how true
The freedom of the soul that chooseth you!

Emily Pfeiffer.

Born in England, Miss Pfeiffer has written sonnets and poems, which have attracted the attention of some of the best critics. We find nothing more noteworthy in the list, however, than the following graceful little effusion constructed in imitation of the old French form of verse, called the "Villanelle;" which, we are told, was in truth a Shepherd's Song:" and, according to rule, "the thoughts should be full of sweetness and simplicity." The recurrence of the rhymes is worthy of note.

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SUMMER-TIME.

VILLANELLE.

O Summer-time, so passing sweet,

But heavy with the breath of flowers, But languid with the fervent heat,

They chide amiss who call thee fleet,Thee with thy weight of daylight hours, O Summer-time, so passing sweet!

Young Summer, thou art too replete,

Too rich in choice of joys and powers, But languid with the fervent heat.

Adieu! my face is set to meet

Bleak Winter, with his pallid showers-O Summer-time, so passing sweet!

Old Winter steps with swifter feet, He lingers not in wayside bowers, He is not languid with the heat;

His rounded day, a pearl complete,

Gleams on the unknown night that lowers;

O Summer-time, so passing sweet,
But languid with the fervent heat!

Theophile Marzials.

One of the "Victorian poets," Marzials is noted for his imitations of French forms of verse. Some of his poems are the result of his studies in Provençal literature. He is the author of "The Gallery of Pigeons, and other Poems," a work laughed at by some of his critics and praised by others. Poetic license can hardly justify a metaphor like this:

"I'd like to be the lavender
That makes her linen sweet."

CARPE DIEM.

RONDEAU.

To-day, what is there in the air
That makes December seem sweet May?
There are no swallows anywhere,
Nor crocuses to crown your hair,

And hail you down my garden way.

Last night the full-moon's frozen stare Struck me, perhaps; or did you say, Really, you'd come, sweet friend and fair, To-day?

To-day is here ;-come, crown to-day

With Spring's delight or Spring's despair! Love cannot bide old Time's delayDown my glad gardens light winds play, And my whole life shall bloom and bear To-day.

Edmund W. Gosse.

One of the younger tribe of Victorian poets, Gosse has published "On Viol and Flute," "King Eric," and other works. He is one of the revivers of the old French forms of rhyming verses, and we give specimens of his skill in these beautiful but somewhat artificial productions. The "Chant Royal" has been defined as a ballad of five stanzas of eleven lines with an "Envoi" of five. Gosse has given the first example in English, and with brilliant success. Here, too, the rhymes, running through all the divisions, play an important part. It originally appeared in his article on the peculiarities of French verse in the Cornhill Magazine.

VILLANELLE.

Wouldst thou not be content to die

When low-hung fruit is hardly clinging,

And golden Autumn passes by?