n.
So garlanded with latest-blooming flowers,
Chanting the mellow music of our hopes,
The silver-sandaled Autumn-hours tripped by.
And mother learned to love her; but she feared,
Knowing her heart and mine, that one rude hand
Might break our hopes asunder. Like a thief
I often crept about her father's house,
Under the evening shadows, eager-eyed,
Peering for one dear face, and lingered late
To catch the silver music of one voice
That from her chamber nightly rose to heaven.
Her father's face I feared--a silent man,
Cold-faced, imperative, by nature prone
To set his will against the beating world;
Warm-hearted but heart-crusted.

[Illustration: WE OFTEN STOLE AWAY AMONG THE PINES, AND CONNED OUR
LESSONS FROM THE SELF-SAME BOOK]

"Two years more
Thus wore away. Pauline grew up a queen.
A shadow fell across my sunny path;--
A hectic flush burned on my mother's cheeks;
She daily failed and nearer drew to death.
Pauline would often come with sun-lit face,
Cheating the day of half its languid hours
With cheering chapters from the holy book,
And border tales and wizard minstrelsy:
And mother loved her all the better for it.
With feeble hands upon our sad-bowed heads,
And in a voice all tremulous with tears,
She said to us: 'Dear children, love each other--
Bear and forbear, and come to me in heaven;'
And praying for us daily--drooped and died.

[Illustration: "'DEAR CHILDREN? LOVE EACH OTHER,--BEAR AND FORBEAR, AND
COME TO ME IN HEAVEN'"]

"After the sad and solemn funeral,
Alone and weeping and disconsolate,
I sat at evening by the cottage door.
I felt as if a dark and bitter fate
Had fallen on me in my tender years.
I seemed an aimless wanderer doomed to grope
In vain among the darkling years and die.
One only star shone through the shadowy mists.
The moon that wandered in the gloomy heavens
Was robed in shrouds; the rugged, looming hills
Looked desolate;--the silent river seemed
A somber chasm, while my own pet lamb,
Mourning disconsolate among the trees,
As if he followed some dim phantom-form,
Bleated in vain and would not heed my call.
On weary hands I bent my weary head;
In gloomy sadness fell my silent tears.

"An angel's hand was laid upon my head--
There in the moonlight stood my own Pauline--
Angel of love and hope and holy faith--
She flashed upon me bowed in bitter grief,
As falls the meteor down the night-clad heavens--
In silence. Then about my neck she clasp