had thoughts beyond
My own poor love,
A wider sphere, ambitions fond!
'Fore God above
In rosy bliss
I only felt th' ungiven kiss!

I knew one day that unsaid word would dress
In shining letters, spelling happiness!
I knew that love would one day be mine own,
A tender suppliant for forgiveness won.
I had no fear,
Tho' cold and clear
You gave your answer,--sweet, my dear,
I never heard--your spoken word!

The Song of the Long Ago

Wraith of the out-lived years,
Wandering too and fro,
Floating to earth on the hallowed tones
Of a song of long ago.

Shadows of those asleep
Steal through the simple lay,
Lifting the silvery veil aside
Of a long lost yesterday.

Beautiful silent days,
Raised from the silent past,
In the pregnant chords of a once loved song
Memory speaks at last.

Of the golden summer eves,
Shrined in the mists of years
And a world of hopes! Dear God, what hopes,
Born to the soul in tears.

But the youthful hopes creep by,
Stealing with solemn chime
To a finite grave. They will rise in faith
When Eternity conquers Time.

Dream-laden, tender song,
Sacred and sweet and old,
With the lingering touch of a bygone age,
I have scanned again in thy down-turned page,
A tale that was long since told.

The Sinner's Dreaming

When the great sun flung bands of gold
(Bands to the number of seven)
On the limpid sea, we followed the gold
And climbed on our way to Heaven.

There to the portals of cloud and storm,
Piled high in the regions of thunder,
Till we reached the sky, in its columns of storm,
And God's gates rolled asunder.

Below, the world like a ball of mist
With us, pearl and jacinth and beryl,
And it faded away, that pearl-grey mist,
And we clung to the gates in peril.

Myrrh and incense, and jacinth and pearl,
How we cringed on the floor of Heaven!
And the great sun drew its bands from the pearl.
Bands to the number of seven.

And now, as we gaze from our star-crowned sphere
To the shadows, where earth is seeming,
We know that that hazy circling sphere
Was only a sinner's dreaming!

Woman

When God made woman
Fair He made her, as the rose;
Her face upturned