THE FOUR PRINCESSES AT WILNA

A PHOTOGRAPH

WEET faces, that from pictured casements

As from a castle window, looking down

On some gay pageant passing through a town, Yourselves the fairest figures in the scene; With what a gentle grace, with what serene Unconsciousness ye wear the triple crown Of youth and beauty and the fair renown Of a great name, that ne'er hath tarnished been!

From your soft eyes, so innocent and sweet,

Four spirits, sweet and innocent as they, Gaze on the world below, the sky above; Hark! there is some one singing in the street; "Faith, Hope, and Love! these three," he

seems to say;

"These three; and greatest of the three is Love."

HOLIDAYS

HE holiest of all holidays are those

THE

Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,
When the full river of feeling overflows;-
The happy days unclouded to their close;

The sudden joys that out of darkness start
As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart
Like swallows singing down each wind that
blows!

White as the gleam of a receding sail,

White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,. White as the whitest lily on a stream,

These tender memories are ;

a Fairy Tale

Of some enchanted land we know not where, But lovely as a landscape in a dream.

WAPENTAKE

TO ALFRED TENNYSON

OET! I come to touch thy lance with mine;

POET

Not as a knight, who on the listed field
Of tourney touched his adversary's shield
In token of defiance, but in sign

Of homage to the mastery, which is thine,
In English song; nor will I keep concealed,
And voiceless as a rivulet frost-congealed,
My admiration for thy verse divine.

Not of the howling dervishes of song,

Who craze the brain with their delirious dance,

Art thou, O sweet historian of the heart! Therefore to thee the laurel-leaves belong, To thee our love and our allegiance,

For thy allegiance to the poet's art.

XI.

O

THE BROKEN OAR

NCE upon Iceland's solitary strand
Coup

A poet wandered with his book and pen,
Seeking some final word, some sweet Amen,
Wherewith to close the volume in his hand.
The billows rolled and plunged upon the sand,
The circling sea-gulls swept beyond his ken,
And from the parting cloud-rack now and then
Flashed the red sunset over sea and land.
Then by the billows at his feet was tossed
A broken oar; and carved thereon he read :
"Oft was I weary when I toiled at thee;"
And like a man who findeth what was lost,
He wrote the words, then lifted up his head,
And flung his useless pen into the sea.

NOTES