Just touch me with your hands, And let them press My weary eyelids with the old caress, And lull me till I sleep. Then go your way, That Death may say: He touched her with his hands. BY HER WHITE BED. By her white bed I muse a little space: She fell asleep--not very long ago,-- And yet the grass was here and not the snow-- The leaf, the bud, the blossom, and--her face!-- Midsummer's heaven above us, and the grace Of Lovers own day, from dawn to afterglow; The fireflies' glimmering, and the sweet and low Plaint of the whip-poor-wills, and every place In thicker twilight for the roses' scent. Then _night_.--She slept--in such tranquility, I walk atiptoe still, nor _dare_ to weep, Feeling, in all this hush, she rests content-- That though God stood to wake her for me, she Would mutely plead: "Nay, Lord! Let _him_ so sleep." WE TO SIGH INSTEAD OF SING. "Rain and rain! and rain and rain!" Yesterday we muttered Grimly as the grim refrain That the thunders uttered: All the heavens under cloud-- All the sunshine sleeping; All the grasses limply bowed With their weight of weeping. Sigh and sigh! and sigh and sigh! Never end of sighing; Rain and rain for our reply-- Hopes half-drowned and dying; Peering through the window-pane, Naught but endless raining-- Endless sighing, and, as vain, Endlessly complaining. Shine and shine! and shine and shine! Ah! to-day the splendor!-- All this glory yours and mine-- God! but God is tender! We to sigh instead of sing, _Yesterday_, in sorrow, While the Lord was fashioning This for our To-morrow! THE BLOSSOMS ON THE TREES. Blossoms crimson, white, or blue, Purple, pink, and every hue, From sunny skies, to tintings drowned In dusky drops of dew, I praise you all, wherever found, And love you through and through;-- _But_, Blossoms On The Trees, With your breath upon the breeze, There's nothing all the world around As half as sweet as you! Could the rhymer only wring All the sweetness to the lees Of all the kisses clustering In juicy Used-to-bes, To dip his rhymes therein and sing The blossoms on the trees,-- "O Blossoms on the Trees," He would twitter, trill and coo, "However sweet, such songs as these Are not as sweet as you:-- For you are _blooming_ melodies The _eyes_ may listen to!" A DISCOURAGING MODEL. Just the airiest, fairiest slip of a thing, With a Gainsborough hat, like a butterfly's wing, Tilted up at one side with the jauntiest air, And a knot of red roses sown in under there Where the shadows are lost in her hair. Then a cameo face, carven in on a ground Of that shadowy hair where the roses are wound; And the gleam of a smile O as fair and as faint And as sweet as the masters of old used to paint Round the lips of their favorite saint!