thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

A FALSE STEP

Sweet, thou hast trod on a heart.
Pass! there's a world full of men;
And women as fair as thou art
Must do such things now and then.

Thou only hast stepped unaware,--
Malice, not one can impute;
And why should a heart have been there
In the way of a fair woman's foot?

It was not a stone that could trip,
Nor was it a thorn that could rend:
Put up thy proud underlip!
'Twas merely the heart of a friend.

And yet peradventure one day
Thou, sitting alone at the glass,
Remarking the bloom gone away,
Where the smile in its dimplement was,

And seeking around thee in vain
From hundreds who flattered before,
Such a word as,--"Oh, not in the main
Do I hold thee less precious,--but more!"

Thou'lt sigh, very like, on thy part:--
"Of all I have known or can know,
I wish I had only that Heart
I trod upon, ages ago!"

A CHILD'S THOUGHT OF GOD

They say that God lives very high!
But if you look above the pines
You cannot see our God. And why?

And if you dig down in the mines
You never see him in the gold,
Though, from him, all that's glory shines.

God is so good, he wears a fold
Of heaven and earth across his face--
Like secrets kept, for love, untold.

But still I feel that his embrace
Slides down by thrills, through all things made,
Through sight and sound of every place:

As if my tender mother laid
On my shut lids her kisses' pressure,
Half-waking me at night; and said
"Who kissed you through the dark, dear guesser?"

CHEERFULNESS TAUGHT BY REASON

I think we are too ready with complaint
In this fair world of God's. Had we no hope
Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope
Of yon gray blank of sky, we might be faint
To muse upon eternity's constraint
Round our aspirant souls. But since the scope
Must widen early, is it well to droop
For a few days consumed in loss and taint?
O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted,--
And like a cheerful traveler, take the road,
Singing besi