WHISPERS OF HEAVENLY DEATH.

Whispers of heavenly death murmur'd I hear,
Labial gossip of night, sibilant chorals

Footsteps gently ascending, mystical breezes wafted soft and low,

Ripples of unseen rivers, tides of a current flowing, forever flowing,

(Or is it the plashing of tears? the measureless waters of human tears?)

I see, just see skyward, great cloud-masses.

Mournfully, slowly they roll, silently swelling and mixing,

With at times a half-dimm'd, sadden'd, far-off star
Appearing and disappearing.

(Some parturition, rather, some solemn, immortal birth; On the frontiers, to eyes impenetrable,

Some soul is passing over.)

TO THE MAN-OF-WAR BIRD.

Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm,
Waking renew'd on thy prodigious pinions

(Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascended'st,
And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee).
Now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating,
As to the light emerging here on deck I watch thee
(Myself a speck, a point on the world's floating vast).
Far, far at sea,

After the night's fierce drifts have strewn the shore with wrecks,

With reappearing day as now so happy and serene,

The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun,

The limpid spread of air cerulean,

Thou also reappearest.

Thou born to match the gale (thou art all wings),

To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane,

Thou ship of air that never furl'st thy sails,

Days, even weeks, untired and onward, through space's

realms gyrating,

At dusk that look'st on Senegal, at morn America,
That sport'st amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud,
In them, in thy experiences, hadst thou my soul,
What joys! what joys were thine!

TO THOSE WHO'VE FAIL'D.

To those who've fail'd, in aspiration vast,

To unnam'd soldiers fallen in front on the lead,

To calm, devoted engineers to over-ardent travellers -to pilots on their ships,

To many a lofty song and picture without recognitionI'd rear a laurel-covered monument,

High, high above the rest - to all cut off before their time,

Possess'd by some strange spirit of fire,
Quench'd by an early death.

JOY, SHIPMATE, JOY!

Joy, shipmate, joy!

(Pleas'd to my soul at length I cry),
Our life is closed, our life begins,
The long, long anchorage we leave,
The ship is clear at last, she leaps!
She swiftly courses from the shore,
Joy, shipmate, joy!

HEROIC DEATHS.

The final use of the greatest men of a Nation is, after all, not with reference to their deeds in themselves, or their direct bearing on their times or lands. The final use of a heroic-eminent life - especially of a heroiceminent death is its indirect filtering into the nation and the race, and to give, often at many removes, but unerringly, age after age, color and fibre to the personalism of the youth and maturity of that age, and of mankind. Then there is a cement to the whole people, subtler, more underlying than anything in written constitution, or courts or armies. namely, the cement of a death identified thoroughly with that people, at its head,

and for its sake. Strange, (is it not?) that battles, martyrs, agonies, blood, even assassination, should so condense perhaps only really, lastingly condense Nationality.

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I repeat it the grand deaths of the race the dramatic deaths of every nationality are its most important inheritance value- -in some respects beyond its literature and art (as the hero is beyond his finest portrait, and the battle itself beyond its choicest song or epic).- The Death of Abraham Lincoln.

HITNEY, ADELINE DUTTON TRAIN, an Amer

ican novelist; born at Boston, Mass., September 15, 1824. After receiving her education in Boston, she was married to Seth D. Whitney in 1843. She has contributed to magazines, and is the author of Footsteps on the Seas, a poem (1857); Mother Goose for Grown Folks (1860; revised ed., 1882); Boys at Chequasset (1862); Faith Gartney's Girlhood (1863); The Gayworthys (1865); A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life (1866); Patience Strong's Outings (1868); Hitherto (1869); We Girls (1870); Real Folks (1871); Pansies, poems (1872); The Other Girls (1873); Sights and Insights (1876); Just How: a Key to the Cook Books (1878); Odd or Even (1880); Bonnyborough (1885); Homespun Yarns (1886); Holly-Tides (1886); Daffodils (1887); Bird Talk (1887); Ascutney Street (1890); A Golden Gossip (1892); White Memories: Three Poems (1893); and Friendly Letters to Girl Friends (1897).

SUNLIGHT AND STARLIGHT.

God sets some souls in shade, alone;
They have no daylight of their own:
Only in lives of happier ones
They see the shine of distant suns.

God knows. Content thee with thy night.
Thy greater heave hath grander light.
To-day is close; the hours are small,
Thou sit'st afar, and hast them all.

Lose the less joy that doth but blind;
Reach forth a larger bliss to find.
To-day is brief: the inclusive spheres
Rain raptures of a thousand years.

Pansies.

HUMPTY DUMPTY.

"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall:

Not all the king's horses nor all the king's men
Could set Humpty Dumpty up again."

Full many a project that never was hatched

Falls down, and gets shattered beyond being patched; And luckily, too! for if all came to chickens,

Then things without feathers might go to the dickens.

If each restless unit that moves among men
Might climb to a place with the privileged "ten,"
Pray tell us where all the commotion would stop!
Must the whole pan of milk, forsooth, rise to the top?

If always the statesman attained to his hopes,

And grasped the great helm, who would stand by the

ropes?

Or if all dainty fingers their duties might choose,

Who would wash up the dishes, and polish the shoes?

Suppose every aspirant writing a book

Contrived to get published, by hook or by crook;
Geologists then of a later creation

Would be startled, I fancy, to find a formation

Proving how the poor world did most woefully sink
Beneath mountains of paper, and oceans of ink!
Or even suppose all the women were married;
By whom would superfluous babies be carried?
Where would be the good aunts that should knit all the
stockings?

Or nurses, to do up the singings and rockings?
Wise spinsters, to lay down their wonderful rules,
And with theories rare to enlighten the fools,-
Or to look after orphans, and primary schools?

No! Failure's a part of the infinite plan;

Who finds that he can't, must give way to who can;
And as one and another drops out of the race,

Each stumbles at last to his suitable place.

So the great scheme works on,- though, like eggs from the wall,

Little single designs to such ruin may fall,

That not all the world's might, of its horses or men, Could set their crushed hopes at the summit again.

A VIOLET.

God does not send us strange flowers every year. When the spring wind blows o'er the pleasant places, The same dear things lift up the same fair faces, The violet is here.

It all comes back: the odor, grace, and hue;
Each sweet relation of its life repeated;
No blank is left, no looking-for is cheated;
It is the thing we knew.

So after the death-winter it must be.

God will not put strange signs in the heavenly places: The old love shall look out from the old faces.

Veilchen! I shall have thee.