Or some gaunt castle lures me up its stair;

I see, far off, the red-tiled hamlets shine,
And catch, through slits of windows here and there,
Blue glimpses of the Rhine.

And now I linger in green English lanes,
By garden-plots of rose and heliotrope;
And now I face the sudden pelting rains
On some lone Alpine slope.

Now at Tangier, among the packed bazaars,
I saunter, and the merchants at the doors
Smile, and entice me; here are jewels like stars,
And curved knives of the Moors.

Cloths of Damascus, strings of amber dates;

What would Howadji . . . silver, gold, or stone?
Prone on the sun-scorched plain without the gates
The camels make their moan.

All this is mine, as I lie dreaming here,

High on the windy terrace, day by day;

And mine the children's laughter, sweet and clear,
Ringing across the bay.

For me the clouds; the ships sail by for me;

For me the petulant sea-gull takes its flight;

And mine the tender moonrise on the sea,
And hollow coves of night!

PRESCIENCE.

The new moon hung in the sky, the sun was low in the west,
And my betrothed and I in the church-yard paused to rest—
Happy maiden and lover, dreaming the old dream over;
The light winds wandered by, and robins chirped from the nest.

And lo! in the meadow-sweet was the grave of a little child, With a crumbling stone at the feet and the ivy running wild— Tangled ivy and clover folding it over and over:

Close to my sweetheart's feet was the little mound up-piled.

Stricken with nameless fears she shrank and clung to me, And her eyes were filled with tears for a sorrow I did not see: Lightly the winds were blowing, softly her tears were flowing— Tears for the unknown years and a sorrow that was to be!

UNSUNG.

As sweet as the breath that goes
From the lips of the white rose,
As weird as the elfin lights
That glimmer of frosty nights,
As wild as the winds that tear
The curled red leaf in the air,
Is the song I have never sung.

In slumber, a hundred times

I've said the enchanted rhymes,

But ere I open my eyes
This ghost of a poem flies;

Of the interfluent strains

Not even a note remains:

I know by my pulses' beat
It was something wild and sweet,
And my heart is strangely stirred
By an unremembered word.

I strive, but I strive in vain,
To recall the lost refrain.
On some miraculous day
Perhaps it will come and stay;
In some unimagined Spring
I may find my voice, and sing
The song I have never sung.

Elizabeth Akus Allew

DROUGHT.

The sun uprises, large and red,
The dawn is lost in a sultry glow;
Like a furnace-roof is the heaven o'erhead,
Like tinder the thirsty earth below;
Hushed is the grateful voice of streams,

The famished fountains and brooks are dry;
And day by day do the burning beams
Pour from the pitiless sky.

All things languish and fade and pine;
Buds are withered before they bloom;
The blighted leaves of the window-vine
Chase each other about the room;
Vapors gather, they melt in light;

Rain-clouds promise, then burn away;
And all hearts faint as the sultry night
Follows the sultry day.

Sadly adown the orchard lines

The apples shrivel and shrink and fall; The scanty clusters among the vines

Wilt, half-ripe, on the scorching wall;

The peaches perish before their prime,
The trim espaliers are bare and lorn;
Dry and dead, as in winter-time,

Stand the ranks of the curling corn.

No longer the cool and gurgling songs
Of warblers freshen the lifeless air;
The simmering noise of the insect throngs
Sounds incessantly everywhere;

The ringing rasp of the locust comes

Piercing the sense like a wedge of sound; The wasp from his nest in the gable hums, And the cricket shrills from the ground.

The hard dry grasshopper, snugly hid,
Grates his sharpest, and thinks he sings;
The castanets of the katydid

Chime with the rattle of sharded wings;
Blundering, booming, the beetles pass,
While bats flit silent, ås daylight dies;
And loud in the tangles of seedy grass
The peevish cat-bird cries.

Open-billed, with his wings a-droop,

The wren sits silent, and seeks no more The half-built nest in the sunny stoop,

Or the children's crumbs by the open door; Rustling with dead and brittle stalks

The paths of the garden are thick with dust; And the rows of flower-beds down the walks Are baked to an ashy crust.

Parched to blackness the roses die,

Robbed of sweetness and form and hue;