Clung to the mother, and sent out a cry Which mixt with little Margaret's, and I woke,

And my dream awed me :-well - but what are dreams?

Yours came but from the breaking of a glass,

And mine but from the crying of a child.'

'Child? No!' said he, 'but this tide's

roar, and his,

Our Boanerges with his threats of doom, And loud-lung'd Antibabylonianisms (Altho' I grant but little music there) Went both to make your dream: but if there were

A music harmonizing our wild cries, Sphere-music such as that you dream'd

about,

Why, that would make our passions far

too like

The discords dear to the musician. No One shriek of hate would jar all the hymns

of heaven:

True Devils with no ear, they howl in

tune

With nothing but the Devil!'

"True" indeed! One of our town, but later by an hour Here than ourselves, spoke with me on the shore;

While you were running down the sands,

and made

The dimpled flounce of the sea-furbelow

flap,

Good man, to please the child. She

brought strange news.

Why were you silent when I spoke tonight?

I had set my heart on your forgiving him Before you knew. We must forgive the dead.'

'Dead! who is dead?'

'The man your eye pursued.

A little after you had parted with him, He suddenly dropt dead of heart-disease.'

'Dead? he? of heart-disease? what heart had he

To die of? dead!'

'Ah, dearest, if there be A devil in man, there is an angel too, And if he did that wrong you charge him with,

His angel broke his heart. But your rough voice

(You spoke so loud) has roused the child

again.

Sleep, little birdie, sleep! will she not sleep Without her "little birdie?" well then,

sleep,

And I will sing you "birdie."

Saying this,

The woman half turn'd round from him she loved,

Left him one hand, and reaching thro' the night

Her other, found (for it was close beside) And half embraced the basket cradle-head With one soft arm, which, like the pliant bough

That moving moves the nest and nestling, sway'd

The cradle, while she sang this baby song.

What does little birdie say
In her nest at peep of day?
Let me fly, says little birdie,
Mother, let em fly away.
Birdie, rest a little longer,
Till the little wings are stronger.
So she rests a little longer,

Then she flies away.

What does little baby say,
In her bed at peep of day?
Baby.says, like little birdie,
Let me rise and fly away.
Baby, sleep a little longer,

Till the little limbs are stronger.
If she sleeps a little longer,
Baby too shall fly away.

'She sleeps: let us too, let all evil, sleep.

He also sleeps-another sleep than ours. He can do no more wrong: forgive him,

dear,

And I shall sleep the sounder!'

Then the man,

'His deeds yet live, the worst is yet to

come.

Yet let your sleep for this one night be sound:

I do forgive him!'

Thanks, my love,' she said, 'Your own will be the sweeter,' and they slept.

THE GOLDEN SUPPER.

[This poem is founded upon a story in Boccaccio.

A young lover, Julian, whose cousin and foster-sister, Camilla, has been wedded to his friend and rival, Lionel, endeavours to narrate the story of his own love for her, and the strange sequel of it. He speaks of having been haunted in delirium by visions and the sound of bells, sometimes tolling for a funeral, and at last ringing for a marriage; but he breaks away, overcome, as he approaches the Event, and a witness to it completes the tale.]

HE flies the event: he leaves the event

to me :

Poor Julian-how he rush'd away; the bells,

Those marriage-bells, echoing in ear and

heart

But cast a parting glance at me, you saw, As who should say 'Continue.' Well, he had

One golden hour-of triumph shall I say? Solace at least-before he left his home.

Would you had seen him in that hour of his !

He moved thro' all of it majesticallyRestrain'd himself quite to the close-but

now

Whether they were his lady's marriagebells,

Or prophets of them in his fantasy,

I never ask'd but Lionel and the girl Were wedded, and our Julian came again Back to his mother's house among the

pines.

But these, their gloom, the mountains and the Bay,

The whole land weigh'd him down as

Ætna does

The Giant of Mythology: he would go, Would leave the land for ever, and had

gone

Surely, but for a whisper, 'Go not yet,' Some warning, and divinely as it seem'd By that which follow'd-but of this I deem As of the visions that he told-the event Glanced back upon them in his after life, And partly made them-tho' he knew it

not.

And thus he stay'd and would not look at her

No not for months: but, when the eleventh

moon

After their marriage lit the lover's Bay, Heard yet once more the tolling bell, and

said,