For she, whom only you deceived,
Lies hushed in dreamless sleeping.
Go: not beside that peaceful form,
Should lying words be spoken!
Go, pray to God, "Be merciful,

As she whose heart I've broken."

THE KING'S RIDE.

Above the city of Berlin

Shines soft the summer day, And near the royal palace shout The school-boys at their play.

Sudden the mighty palace gates

Unclasp their portals wide, And forth into the sunshine see A single horseman ride.

A bent old man in plain attire;
No glittering courtiers wait,
No armed guard attend the steps
Of Frederick the Great!

The boys have spied him, and with shouts
The summer breezes ring:

The merry urchins haste to greet
Their well-belovéd king.

Impeding e'en his horse's tread,
Presses the joyous train;

And Prussia's despot frowns his best,
And shakes his stick in vain.

The frowning look, the angry tone

Are feigned, full well they know; They do not fear his stick-that hand Ne'er struck a coward blow.

"Be off to school, you boys!" he cries. "Ho! ho!" the laughers say, "A pretty king you not to know We've holiday to-day!"

And so upon that summer day, These children at his side, The symbol of his nation's love, Did royal Frederick ride.

O Kings! your thrones are tottering now!
Dark frowns the brow of Fate!

When did you ride as rode that day
King Frederick the Great?

Bret Harte.

AMERICAN.

877

Francis Bret Harte, born in Albany, N. Y., in 1837, was the son of a school-master, and partly of Dutch origin. When seventeen years old, he went with his widowed mother to California. Here he opened a school at the mines of Sonora, but, not prospering in it, qualified himself as a setter of types. In San Francisco he got a place on the Golden Era; then engaged in The Californian, which was not a success. In it appeared his "Condensed Novels." He made his first decided hit in the Overland Monthly, in his "Plain Language from Truthful James," a delectable bit of original humor. Returning to the Atlantic States, he published his “Luck of Roaring Camp, and other Tales," in 1869; his "Poems" and "Condensed Novels," in 1870; his "East and West Poems," in 1872. He has since written a novel for Scribner's Magazine, and several articles for the Atlantic Monthly. In 1879 he was appointed to the important Consulate at Glasgow. His various writings have won for him quite a reputation in England and Germany as well as in his own country.

Samuel Stillman Conant.

AMERICAN.

Mr. Conant was born in Waterville, Me., in 1831. After receiving a college education in this country, he spent several years abroad, principally at the universities of Berlin, Heidelberg, and Munich. On his return to this country Mr. Conant became connected with the press of New York, and devoted himself to the profession of a journalist. In 1870 he published a translation of "The Circassian Boy," a metrical romance by the Russian poet Lermontoff. He has contributed frequently to the periodical literature of the day.

RELEASE.

As one who leaves a prison cell,

And looks, with glad though dazzled eye, Once more on wood and field and sky, And feels again the quickening spell

Of Nature thrill through every vein,
I leave my former self behind,
And, free once more in heart and mind,
Shake off the old, corroding chain.

Free from my Past-a jailer dread

And with the Present clasping hands, Beneath fair skies, through sunny lands, Which memory's ghosts ne'er haunt, I tread.

The pains and griefs of other days May, shadow-like, pursue me yet; But toward the sun my face is set, His golden light on all my ways.

A VIGIL.

The hands of my watch point to midnight,
My fire burns low;

But my pulse runs like the morning,
My heart all aglow.

My darling, my maiden, is nested

And wrapped from the chill,

And slumber lies down on her eyelids, Pure, light, and still;

She needs not the watch-care of angels To keep off fear and ill.

The throbbing of her heart is ever A sweet, virgin prayer;

The thoughts of her heart, like incense. Fill the chaste and silent air;

And how can evil, or fear of it,

Enter in there?

THE SAUCY ROGUE.

FROM THE GERMAN.

There is a saucy rogue, well known
To youth and gray-beard, maid and crone-
A boy, with eyes that mirth bespeak,
With curly locks and dimpled cheek;
He has a sly, demurish air.

But, maiden fair,

Take care, take care!

His dart may wound you, unaware!

With bow and arrows in his hand
He wanders up and down the land;
'Tis jolly sport to aim a dart
At some poor maiden's fluttering heart:
She wonders what has hurt her there.
Ah, maiden fair,

Take care, take care!

His dart may wound you, unaware!

Her nimble hands the distaff ply;
A gallant soldier-lad rides by;
He gives her such a loving glance
Her heart stands still, as in a trance,
And death-pale sinks the maiden fair.
Quick, mother, there,

Give heed, take care,

Else you may lose her, unaware!

Who stands there laughing at the door? That rogue, who triumphs thus once more! Both lad and maiden he has bit,

And laughs as though his sides would split. And so he sports him everywhere;

Now here, now there;

He mocks your care;

You fall his victim, unaware.

Now who so masterful and brave
To catch and hold this saucy knave?
Whoever binds him strong and fast,
His name and deed shall always last.
But, if this dangerous feat you dare,
Beware! take care

Lest ill you fare!

The rogue may catch you unaware!

Henry M. Alden.

AMERICAN.

Born on Mount Tabor, near Danby, Vt., in 1836. In 1863-64 he delivered an interesting course of lectures at the Lowell Institute, Boston, on "The Structure of Paganism." Mr. Alden has written but few poems, but those few are of a very high order. They evince the possession of thoughtful insight and unusual power of philosophic contemplation.

THE ANCIENT "LADY OF SORROW."

The worship of the Madonna, or Mater Dolorosa-“Our Lady of Sorrow" is not confined to the Roman Catholic faith; it was an important feature in all the ancient Pagan systems of religion, even the most primitive. In the Sacred Mysteries of Egypt and of Greece her worship was the distinctive and prominent element. In the latter her name was Achtheia, or Sorrow. Under the name of Demeter, by which she was generally known among the Greeks, she, like the Egyptian Isis, typifying the Earth, was represented as sympathizing with the sorrowing children of Earth, both as a bountiful mother, bestowing upon them her fruits and golden harvests, and in her more gloomy aspects-as in autumnal decay, in tempests, and wintry desolation-as sighing over human frailty, and over the wintry deserts of the human heart. The worship connected with this tradition was vague and symbolical, having no well-defined body of doctrine as to sin, salvation, or a future life. Day and Night, Summer and Winter, Birth and Death, as shown in Nature, were seized upon as symbols of vaguely understood truths.

Her closing eyelids mock the light;
Her cold, pale lips are sealed quite;
Before her face of spotless white

A mystic veil is drawn.
Our Lady hides herself in night;
In shadows hath she her delight;

She will not see the dawn!

The morning leaps across the plain-
It glories in a promise vain;
At noon the day begins to wane,
With its sad prophecy;

At eve the shadows come again:
Our Lady finds no rest from pain,
No answer to her cry.

In Spring she doth her Winter wait;
The Autumu shadoweth forth her fate;
Thus, one by one, years iterate
Her solemn tragedy.

Before her pass in solemn state
All shapes that come, or soon or late,
Of this world's misery.

What is, or shall be, or hath been, This Lady is; and she hath seen,

Like frailest leaves, the tribes of men
Come forth, and quickly die.
Therefore our Lady hath no rest;
For, close beneath her snow-white breast,
Her weary children lie.

She taketh on her all our grief;
Her Passion passeth all relief;
In vain she holds the poppy leaf-
In vain her lotus crown.
Even fabled Lethe hath no rest,
No solace for her troubled breast,
And no oblivion.

881

"Childhood and youth are vain," she saith, "Since all things ripen unto death; The flower is blasted by the breath

That calls it from the earth. And yet," she saith, "this thing is sureThere is no life but shall endure,

And death is only birth.

"From death or birth no powers defend, And thus from grade to grade we tend, By resurrections without end,

Unto some final peace.

But distant is that peace," she saith;
Yet eagerly awaiteth Death,

Expecting her release.

"O Rest," she saith, "that will not come,

Not even when our lips are dumb,
Not even when our limbs are numb,
And graves are growing green!
O Death, that, coming on apace,
Dost look so kindly in the face,

Thou wear'st a treach'rous mien!"

But still she gives the shadow place-
Our Lady, with the saddest grace,
Doth yield her to his feigned embrace,
And to his treachery!

Ye must not draw aside her veil;
Ye must not hear her dying wail;

Ye must not see her die!

But, hark! from out the stillness rise Low-murmured myths and prophecies, And chants that tremble to the skies-Miserere Domine!

They, trembling, lose themselves in rest, Soothing the anguish of her breastMiserere Domine!