He sells alike to rich and poor,

Who know what knocks to give his door, The yellow dust that rings the knells.

Well, then, I went and knocked the knock With cautious hand, as I'd been taught; The door revolved with silent lock,

And I went in, suspecting nought. But oh, the self-same form stood masked Behind the counter, and unasked

In silence proffered what I sought.

My knees and hands like aspens shook:
I spilt the powder on the ground;

I dared not turn, I dared not look;
My palsied tongue would make no sound.
Then through the door I fled at last

With feet that seemed more slow than fast,
And dared not even once look round.

And yet I am an honest man

Who only sought to kill his foe: Could I sit down to see each plan

That I took up frustrated so,

When as each plan was marred and balked, And in the sun my man still walked,

I felt my hate still greater grow?

I thought, "At dusk with stealthy tread I'll seek his dwelling, and I'll creep Upstairs and hide beneath his bed,

And in the night I'll strike him deep." And so I went; but at his door The figure, masked just as before, Sat on the step as if asleep.

Bent, spite all fear, upon my task,

I tried to pass: there was no space. Then rage prevailed: I snatched the mask From off the baffling figure's face, And oh, unutterable dread!

The face was mine, mine white and dead, Stiff with some frightful death's grimace.

What sins are mine, O luckless wight, That doom should play me such a trick And make me see a sudden sight

That turns both soul and body sick? Stretch out thy hands, thou priest unseen That sittest there behind the screen, And give me absolution, quick!

O God, O God, his hands are dead!

His hands are mine, O monstrous spell'

I feel them clammy on my head.
Is he my own dead self as well?

Those hands are mine- their scars, their

shape:

O God, O God, there's no escape,

And seeking Heaven, I fall on Hell!

TO THE MUSE.

I.

To keep through life the posture of the grave,
While others walk and run and dance and leap;
To keep it ever, waking or asleep,
While shrink the limbs which Nature goodly gave;
In summer's heat to breast no more the wave,
Nor tread the cornfield where the reapers reap;
To wade no more through tangled grasses deep,
Nor press the moss beneath some leafy nave;
In winter days no more to hear the ring
Of frozen earth, the creak of crisp, fresh snow;
No more to roam where scarlet berries cling
To leafless twigs, and pluck the ripe blue sloe —
'Tis hard, 'tis hard, but thou dost bring relief,
Fair, welcome Muse, sweet soother of all grief.

II.

Oh, were it not for thee, the dull, dead weight
Of Time's great coils, too sluggishly unrolled,
Which creep across me ever, fold on fold,
As I lie prostrate, were for strength too great.
For health and motion are not all that Fate
Has bid the passing seasons to withhold;
Alas! a nobler birthright yet was sold
For one small mess of pottage that I eat.
And, like the wretch who, shivering in the street
And gnawed by hunger, sees his haggard self
In some shop window piled with drink and meat,
I fix my hungry eyes where, cruelly near,
Are lying, closed and useless on the shelf,
The books I dare not read and dare not hear.

SEA-SHELL MURMURS.

THE hollow sea-shell which for years hath stood
On dusty shelves, when held against the ear
Proclaims its stormy parent; and we hear
The faint far murmur of the breaking flood.
We hear the sea. The sea? It is the blood
In our own veins, impetuous and near,
And pulses keeping pace with hope and fear
And with our feelings' every shifting mood.
Lo! in my heart I hear, as in a shell,
The murmur of a world beyond the grave,
Distinct, distinct, though faint and far it be.
Thou fool; this echo is a cheat as well,-
The hum of earthly instincts; and we crave
A world unreal as the shell-heard sea.

PORPHYRION.

Rock, hard and wind-swept, was my marriage bed;
The wilderness my bride; the starry sky
My roof; the distant, interrupted howl
Of beasts of prey my nuptial lullaby.

Before me lay the waste, strewn here and there
With ribs of men and camels, or the wreck
Of perished cities; yea, and thirst and pain
In vaguely measured sum. But in my soul
The voice of thunder cried: "Push on, push on
Into the waste, Porphyrion! thou art still
Too near to human haunts, too far from God!"

LIFE.

-Ibid.

But oh the pleasant breath

Of life; the strong, strong stream of youth and health

That bounds along the veins; the unused wealth
Of what we call the Future, with its schemes,
Emotions, friendships, loves, surprises, dreams;
The thing we call Identity, the I

To which the wretched cling, they know not why,
And which no evils press me to destroy;
The simple pleasures which I now enjoy —

What, give up all? What right has Fate, what right,

To thrust me from Life's hearth into the night,
The darkness and the cold? What right or need
Has Fate to come, and while I sit and read
Life's pleasant page, to summon me to shut
The open book, and leave two thirds uncut?
Who dares to tell me that a living man
Whom God has made, who feels the cool winds fan
His heated brow, is not in God's sight worth
A thing that is man's work, upon this earth?
-The Wonder of The World.

REALITY.

Oh who shall have the courage to decide
Between the things that are and those that seem,
And tell the spirit that the eyes have lied?
Watch thy own face reflected in the stream;
Is that a figment? Who shall dare to call
That unsubstantial form a madman's dream?

Or watch the shadow on the sunlit wall,

If thou couldst clutch it great would be thy skill;
Thou'lt feel a chilly spot-and that is all.
So may the spectres which, more subtle still.
Elude the feeble intellect of man,
And leave us empty-handed with a chill,
Be just as much reality. We spend

Life 'mid familiar spectres, while the soul
In fear denies the rest.

-The New Medusa,

D

DANSKE DANDRIDGE.

ANSKE DANDRIDGE is not a pen-name. For a real name, the Christian part of it sounds strange; but the surname is a well-known one in Virginia, the former bearers of it being near of kin to Martha Washington. The name Danske" means "the Dane," and it was given to the daughter who was born to Henry Bedinger, when he was United States minister to Copenhagen just before the breaking out of our Civil War. The infant lived, but the father soon died. The mother, Mrs. Caroline Lawrence Bedinger, with her children,- she had three, of whom Danske was the youngest, returned to the family country-seat at Shepherdstown, West Virginia. They lived there till the close of the war, when Mrs. Bedinger died. She, by the way, was a grand-daughter of Eliza Southgate Bowne, whose 'Letters of a Young Girl Eighty Years Ago" were recently published. The orphan children were taken to the home of their grandfather, the Hon. J. W. Lawrence, in Flushing, L. I., and there Danske lived till 1877, when she married Stephen Dandridge and returned to Shepherdstown, West Virginia, to live. By the marriage she secured not only the sympathy, encouragement and criticism she needed, but the alliteration of name that is as much to an author as a title is to a book.

But why did the foreign-born girl, who was frail in health and nervous in temperament, need sympathy, encouragement and criticism? Simply because she was about to enter the lists in literature. She had scribbled verses since she was a child of eight. Her father before her wrote poems for The Southern Literary Messenger. But the morbid, sensitive, dreamy child had not attempted ambitious flights, nor did the woman, though aided and encouraged, so much as offer a poem to an editor till she had been married some years. Her first poem was published in Godey's Lady's Book for February, 1885. In June of the same year The Lover in the Woods" appeared in Lippincott's, and in August "Twilight in the Woods" appeared in The Independent. Since then the name Danske Dandridge" has appeared again and again in our magazines and periodicals. Most frequently have her poems appeared in The Independent, which has published no less than twenty-three of them during the past three years. In the spring of 1888 these poems, with the bloom of their youth fresh upon them, were gathered into a dainty, tiny volume called “Joy, and Other Poems." Few of our poets have put forth a sweeter, simpler first venture than this. None of the poems are profound, and none, perhaps, are great; but many are striking for thought and expression and they all have a delicate freshness. It is the fashion to try to develop or discover an