l.
Wherewith can salt be salted? And what way
Can life be seasoned after love doth pall?

[Illustration: TIRED OF THE OFT-READ STORY]

THE COQUETTE.

Alone she sat with her accusing heart,
That, like a restless comrade frightened sleep,
And every thought that found her, left a dart
That hurt her so, she could not even weep.

Her heart that once had been a cup well filled
With love's red wine, save for some drops of gall
She knew was empty; though it had not spilled
Its sweets for one, but wasted them on all.

She stood upon the grave of her dead truth,
And saw her soul's bright armor red with rust,
And knew that all the riches of her youth
Were Dead Sea apples, crumbling into dust.

Love that had turned to bitter, biting scorn,
Hearthstones despoiled, and homes made desolate,
Made her cry out that she was ever born,
To loathe her beauty and to curse her fate.

NEW AND OLD.

I and new love, in all its living bloom,
Sat vis-a-vis, while tender twilight hours
Went softly by us, treading as on flowers.
Then suddenly I saw within the room
The old love, long since lying in its tomb.
It dropped the cerecloth from its fleshless face
And smiled on me, with a remembered grace
That, like the noontide, lit the gloaming's gloom.

Upon its shroud there hung the grave's green mould,
About it hung the odor of the dead;
Yet from its cavernous eyes such light was shed
That all my life seemed gilded, as with gold;
Unto the trembling new love '"Go," I said
"I do not need thee, for I have the old."

NOT QUITE THE SAME.

Not quite the same the spring-time seems to me,
Since that sad season when in separate ways
Our paths diverged. There are no more such days
As dawned for us in that lost time when we
Dwelt in the realm of dreams, illusive dreams;
Spring may be just as fair now, but it seems
Not quite the same.

Not quite the same is life, since we two parted,
Knowing it best to go our ways alone.
Fair measures of success we both have known,
And pleasant hours, and yet something departed
Which gold, nor fame, nor anything we win
Can all replace. And either life has been
Not quite the same.