She hastened to her inner room,
And silently mused there alone;

'Three springs have come, three winters gone,
And still we wait from hour to hour;
But earth waits long for her harvest-time,
And the aloe, in the northern clime,
Waits an hundred years for its flower.

'Under the apple-boughs as I sit In May-time, when the robin's song Thrills the odorous winds along,

The innermost heaven seems to ope;

I think, though the old joys pass from sight,
Still something is left for hearts' delight,
For life is endless, and so is hope.

'If the aloe waits an hundred years, And God's times are so long indeed For simple things, as flower and weed,

That gather only the light and gloom, For what great treasures of joy and dole, Of life and death, perchance, must the soul, Ere it flower in heavenly peace, find room?

'I see that all things wait in trust, As feeling afar God's distant ends, And unto every creature he sends

That measure of good that fills its scope; The marmot enters the stiffening mould, And the worm its dark sepulchral fold,

To hide there with its beautiful hope.'

Still Bertha waited on the cliff,
To catch the gleam of a coming sail
And the distant whisper of the gale,
Winging the unforgotten home;

And hope at her yearning heart would knock,
When a sunbeam on a far-off rock

Married a wreath of wandering foam.

Was it well? you ask (nay, was it ill?)— Who sat last year by the old man's hearth;The sun had passed below the earth,

And the first star locked its western gate,
When Bertha entered his darkening home,
And smiling said, 'He does not come,
But, dearest father, we still can wait!'

ANNE WHITNEY.

HOPES AND WAVES.

HOPES on hopes from the bosom sever,
But the heart hopes on, unchanging ever;
Wave after wave breaks on the shore,
But the sea is deep as it was before.

That the billows heave with a ceaseless motion
Is the very life of the throbbing ocean;

And hopes that from day to day upstart
Are the swelling wave-beats of the heart.

From the German of RÜCKERT.

My hopes retire, my wishes as before
Struggle to find their resting-place, in vain :
The ebbing sea thus beats against the shore;
The shore repels it; it returns again.

W. S. LANDor.

13

WRITING ON THE SANDS.

I PAUSED at early morn to trace
My name upon the sand,

Nor cared to think how soon the race
Of leaping waters would efface
The record of my hand.

But now the broad'ning blue expanse
Rolls higher up the shore;

Farther the curling waves advance,

Their smiles of light, their wreathed dance Are nearer than before.

So slight a thing may quell!

With yonder words beneath the tide,

I feel that all I've wrought beside
May disappear as well.

And dare I deem that all this strife

Of thoughts within my soul,

These hopes with which my heart is rife, These longings for a glorious life,

Will find a better goal?

Oh, coward! when the trumpet's call

Is sounding in thy heart, Pause not to basely reckon all The risks to triumph or to fall,

But forth and act thy part!

I know not if the bearded grain
Or barren stalks await

Mine autumn hours. Yet not in vain
The toil, though God the fruits restrain
Or grant the harvest late.

Oh Love, that askest but to be!
Oh Faith, that will not die!

Life, courage, strength, ye are to me,

While all things change, and fade, and flee,

In ocean, earth, and sky.

W. H. HURLBUT.