People the haunted glooms; And the song of immortal singers Like a fragrant memory lingers,

I know, in the echoing rooms.

But nothing of these, my soul !

Nor castle, nor treasures, nor skies,
Nor the waves of the river that roll
With a cadence faint and sweet
In peace by its marble feet-
Nothing of these is the goal

For which my whole heart sighs.
'Tis the pearl gives worth to the shell-
The pearl I would die to gain ;
For there does my Lady dwell,
My love that I love so well-

The Queen whose gracious reign
Makes glad my Castle in Spain.

Her crown of golden hair

Sheds light in the shaded places,
And the spell of her girlish graces
Makes glad the happy air.
A breath of purity

Forever before her flies,

And ill things cease to be

In the glance of her honest eyes.
Around her pathway flutter,

Where her dear feet wander free,
In youth's pure majesty,

The wings of the vague desires; But the thought that love would utter In reverence expires.

Not yet! not yet shall I see

That face, which shines like a star

O'er my storm-swept life afar,

Transfigured with love for me.

Toiling, forgetting, and learning,
With labour, and vigils, and prayers,
Pure heart and resolute will,

At last I shall climb the hill,
And breathe the enchanted airs
Where the light of my life is burning,
Most lovely, and fair, and free;
Where alone in her youth and beauty,
And bound by her fate's sweet duty,
Unconscious she waits for me.

WOMAN'S LOVE.

A SENTINEL angel, sitting high in glory,
Heard this shrill wail ring out from purgatory:
"Have mercy, mighty angel! hear my story.

"I loved, and, blind with passionate love, I fell: Love brought me down to death, and death to hell; For God is just, and death for sin is well.

"I do not rage against his high decree,
Nor for myself do ask that grace shall be,
But for my love on earth, who mourns for me.

"Great spirit, let me see my love again, And comfort him one hour, and I were fain To pay a thousand years of fire and pain.”

Then said the pitying. angel: "Nay, repent
That wild vow. Look! the dial-finger's bent
Down to the last hour of thy punishment."

But still she wailed: "I pray thee, let me go;
I cannot rise to peace and leave him so!
Oh, let me soothe him in his bitter woe!"

The brazen gates ground sullenly ajar,
And upward, joyous, like a rising star
She rose, and vanished in the ether far.

But soon adown the dying sunset sailing,
And like a wounded bird her pinions trailing,
She fluttered back with broken-hearted wailing.

She sobbed: "I found him by the summer sea
Reclined, his head upon a maiden's knee;
She curled his hair and kissed him. Woe is me!"

She wept: "Now let my punishment begin:
I have been fond and foolish. Let me in
To expiate my sorrow and my sin."

The angel answered: "Nay, sad soul, go higher!
To be deceived in your true heart's desire
Was bitterer than a thousand years of fire!"

BRET HARTE.

"CICELY."

(ALKALI STATION.)

CICELY says you're a poet; may be; I ain't much on rhyme:
I reckon you'd give me a hundred, and beat me every time.
Poetry! That's the way some chaps put's up an idee,

But I takes mine "straight, without sugar," and that's what's the matter with me.

Poetry! Just look around you—alkali, rock, and sage;
Sage-brush, rock, and alkali-ain't it a pretty page?
Sun in the east at mornin', sun in the west at night,

And the shadow of this yer station the on'y thing moves in sight.

Polly, run to your mam;
By-by! Ain't she a lamb?

Poetry! Well, now-Polly!
Run right away, my pooty!
Poetry-that reminds me o' su'thin' right in that suit;
Jest shet that door thar, will yer, for Cicely's ears is cute.

Ye noticed Polly-the baby? A month afore she was born,
Cicely-my old woman-was moody-like and forlorn;
Out of her head and crazy, and talked of flowers and trees—
Family man yourself, sir? Well, you know what a woman be's.

Narvous she was, and restless; said that she "couldn't stay."
Stay-and the nearest woman seventeen miles away!

But I fixed it up with the doctor, and he said he would be on hand,
And I kinder stuck by the shanty, and fenced in that bit o' land.

One night-the tenth of October-I woke with a chill and fright,
For the door it was standing open, and Cicely warn't in sight,
But a note was pinned on the blanket, which it said that she
"couldn't stay,"

But had gone to visit her neighbor-seventeen miles away!

When and how she stampeded I didn't wait for to see,

For out in the road, next minit, I started as wild as she;

Running first this way and that way, like a hound that is off the

scent,

For there warn't no track in the darkness to tell me the way she went.

I've had some mighty mean moments afore I kem to this spot-
Lost on the Plains in '50, drowned almost, and shot-
But out on this alkali desert, a-hunting a crazy wife,
Was ra'ly as on-satis-factory as anything in my life.

"Cicely! Cicely! Cicely!" I called, and I held my breath;
And "Cicely!" came from the canyon-and all was as still as death;
And "Cicely! Cicely! Cicely!" came from the rocks below,
And jest but a whisper of "Cicely!" down from them peaks of snow.

I ain't what you call religious, but I jest looked up to the sky, And this yer's to what I'm coming, and maybe ye think I lie; But up away to the east'ard, yaller, and big, and far,

I saw of a suddent rising the singlerest kind of star.

Big, and yaller, and dancing, it seemed to beckon to me;
Yaller, and big, and dancing, such as you never see;
Big, and yaller, and dancing-I never saw such a star,
And I thought of them sharps in the Bible, and I went for it then
and thar.