From her hand he took the volume and read, and she listened,-- All his voice molten in secret tears, and ebbing and flowing, Now with a faltering breath, and now with impassioned abandon,-- Read from the book of a poet the rhyme of the fatally sundered, Fatally met too late, and their love was their guilt and their anguish, But in the night they rose, and fled away into the darkness, Glad of all dangers and shames, and even of death, for their love's sake. Then, when his voice brake hollowly, falling and fading to silence, Thrilled in the silence they sat, and durst not behold one another, Feeling that wild temptation, that tender, ineffable yearning, Drawing them heart to heart. One blind, mad moment of passion With their fate they strove; but out of the pang of the conflict, Through such costly triumph as wins a waste and a famine, Victors they came, and Love retrieved the error of loving. So, foreknowing the years, and sharply discerning the future, Guessing the riddle of life, and accepting the cruel solution,-- Side by side they sat, as far as the stars are asunder. Carked the cricket no more, but while the audible silence Shrilled in their ears, she, suddenly rising and dragging the thistle Out of her clinging hair, laughed mockingly, casting it from her: "Perish the thorns and splendor,--the bloom and the sweetness are perished. Dreary, respectable calm, polite despair, and one's Duty,-- These and the world, for dead Love!--The end of these modern romances! Better than yonder rhyme?... Pleasant dreams and good night, Cousin Clement." BY THE SEA. I walked with her I love by the sea, The deep came up with its chanting waves, Making a music so great and free That the will and the faith, which were dead in me, Awoke and rose from their graves. Chanting, and with a regal sweep Of their 'broidered garments up and down The strand, came the mighty waves of the deep, Dragging the wave-worn drift from its sleep Along the sea-sands bare and brown. "O my soul, make the song of the sea!" I cried. "How it comes, with its stately tread, And its dreadful voice, and the splendid pride Of its regal garments flowing wide Over the land!" to my soul I said. My soul was still; the deep went down. "What hast thou, my soul," I cried, "In thy song?" "The sea-sands bare and brown, With broken shells and sea-weed strown, And stranded drift," my soul replied. SAINT CHRISTOPHER. In the narrow Venetian street, On the wall above the garden gate (Within, the breath of the rose is sweet, And the nightingale sings there, soon and late), Stands Saint Christopher, carven in stone, With the little child in his huge caress, And the arms of the baby Jesus thrown About his gigantic tenderness;