To Herodias young Salome fondly turns, with grateful

smiles:

Gold of Ophir, pearls of ocean, nard and spice of happier

isles,

What of choice and costly treasures, choicest, costliest, shall she claim?

Then a glare of fiendish triumph in that cruel cold eye

came;

And the queen's heart heaved with vengeance; and she gasp'd with quicken'd breath

Brief words of envenom'd malice, warrant of the prophet's

death.

Why that sudden ashy pallor? why that passionate caress? Bends the sapling in the tempest: weakness yields to wickedness.

Musing still his past, the captive on his watch nor slept nor

stirr'd,

And the dawn drew on unheeded, and the cock crew thrice

unheard.

Of the sentinels of morning, shining over Abarim,

Only one was left, the day-star; and its lamp was growing

Hark! the bolt is drawn, how slowly see! the dungeon

door flung wide:

Weapons gleam along the passage: armed men are by his

side.

In their looks he read his sentence, and he knew his hour

was come,

And his proud neck meekly offer'd to the stroke of mar

tyrdom:

And, as flash'd the headsman's broadsword, rose the sun on

Pisgah's height;

And the morning star was hidden in the flood of golden

1868.

light.

7*

THE FAVORITISMS OF HEAVEN.

In the evening we can longest tarry by the twilight shore, For at even dreams float on for ever and for evermore:

In the evening stars that glimmer one by one from out the

sky

Tell in tones that touch us nearly how in silence time fleets

by:

And a voice like none beside them have the winds of fall

ing night,

Hurrying on our spirits with them up to Memory's cloudy

height.

In the evening, too, ariseth Hope with all her faëry train, Turning from the roseate Past to tell us such shall come again.

And at chiming of the vespers, as it chanced, my thoughts

I cast,

Half awake and half in dreamings, over my far-crowded

Past.

And is't mine then?- Some one answers, 66 How or what

is it to thee?

Nothing but a train of memories like a silver mist at sea: Here and there a glory scatter'd from the starlight or the

moon,

Rising like all things of time,— enthusiast! vanishing as

But the Past is nothing, nothing but the shadow of a shade."

Ceased the voice, and much I wonder'd, but I scarcely

dared to doubt.

When another spirit answer'd from the silence speaking

out,

"Brother, nay - the Past seems vanish'd save to Memory's

listless eye:

No-no-no

high."

the Past is deathless and its record is on

List! it rose a heaving landscape, scarce defined yet won

drous strange,

Gloom and glory like a moon-trance flitting o'er in cease

less change.

There were springs of crystal rapture, rivulets of sorrow

too,

Passion with her storm-tost surges, Peace a lake of softest

blue.

Long my musings like a wanderer wandering o'er the haunts of youth,

Slow retraced each by-gone feeling in their lucid depths of

truth,

Till upon love's fount they centred, purest of all waves that

flow,

Fed itself of heaven, yet feeding all the myriad flowers

below.

Lean thy heart on mine, beloved, — listen - I have heard

men say

That the fondnesses of earth will pass with earthly things

away;

All the silent eloquence of clasped hands and falling tears, All the musical low whispers like the music of the spheres, All the thrilling strange entrancement fluttering over cheek

and eye,