As ever an angel could.

I blessed you for your brightness
When you came unto our shore,
For the dull earth caught a beauty
It never had before;
But you left a lonesome shadow,
That will lie there evermore.

How proud the good ship bore you
Adown the golden bay,
The sun's last light upon its sails--
I stood there mournfully;
For I know it left the darkness--
Took the sunlight all away.

THE HAUNTED CASTLE.

It stands alone on a haunted shore,
With curious words of deathless lore
On its massive gate impearled;
And its carefully guarded mystic key
Locks in its silent mystery
From the seeking eyes of the world.

Oft do its stately walls repeat
Echoes of music wildly sweet
Swelling to gladness high--
With mournful ballads of ancient time,
And funeral hymns--and a nursery rhyme
Dying away in a sigh.

Pictures out of each haunted room,
Up through the ghostly shadows loom,
And gleam with a spectral light;
Pictures lit with a radiant glow,
And some that image such desolate woe
That, weeping, you turn from the sight.

Shining like stars in the twilight gloom
Brows as white as a lily's bloom
Gleam from its lattice and door;
And voices soft as a seraph's note,
Through its mysterious chambers float
Back from eternity's shore.

In the mournful silence of midnight air
You hear on its stately and winding stair
The echoes of fairy feet.
Gentle footsteps that lightly fall
Through the enchanted castle hall,
And up in the golden street.

And still in a dark forsaken tower,
Crowned with a withered cypress flower,
Is a bowed head turned away;
A face like carved marble white,
Sweet eyes drooping away from the light,
Shunning the eye of day.

And oft when the light burns low and dim
A haggard form ungainly and grim
Unbidden enters the door;
With chiding eyes whose burning light
You fain would bury in darkness and night,
Never to meet you more.

Mysteries strange its still walls keep,
Strange are the forms that through it sweep--
Walking by night and by day.
But evermore will the castle hall
Echo their footsteps' phantom fall,
Till its walls shall crumble away.

THE STORY OF GLADYS.

"I leave my child to Heaven." And with these words
Upon her lips, the Lady Mildred passed
Unto the rest prepared for her pure soul;
Words that meant only this: I cannot trust
Unto her earthly parent my young child,
So leave her to her heavenly Father's care;
A