lay.

He looked his fate full in the face--
He saw his watery resting-place
Undaunted, and
With firmer hand
Held others' hopes in sure command.--

The hopes of full three hundred lives--
Aye, babes unborn, and promised wives!
"The odds are dread,"
He must have said,
"Here, God, is one poor life instead."

No time for praying overmuch--
No time for tears, or woman's touch
Of tenderness,
Or child's caress--
His last "God bless them!" stopped at "bless"--

Thus man and engine, nerved with steel,
Clasped iron hands for woe or weal,
And so went down
Where dark waves drown
All but the name of William Brown.

WHY

Why are they written--all these lovers' rhymes?
I catch faint perfumes of the blossoms white
That maidens drape their tresses with at night,
And, through dim smiles of beauty and the din
Of the musicians' harp and violin,
I hear, enwound and blended with the dance,
The voice whose echo is this utterance,--
Why are they written--all these lovers' rhymes?

Why are they written--all these lovers' rhymes?
I see but vacant windows, curtained o'er
With webs whose architects forevermore
Race up and down their slender threads to bind
The buzzing fly's wings whirless, and to wind
The living victim in his winding sheet.--
I shudder, and with whispering lips repeat,
Why are they written--all these lovers' rhymes?

Why are they written--all these lovers' rhymes?
What will you have for answer?--Shall I say
That he who sings the merriest roundelay
Hath neither joy nor hope?--and he who sings
The lightest, sweetest, tenderest of things
But utters moan on moan of keenest pain,
So aches his heart to ask and ask in vain,
Why are they written--all these lovers' rhymes?

THE TOUCH OF LOVING HANDS

IMITATED

Light falls the rain-drop on the fallen leaf,
And light o'er harvest-plain and garnered sheaf--
But lightlier falls the touch of loving hands.

Light falls the dusk of mild midsummer night,
And light the first star's faltering lance of light
On glimmering lawns,--but lightlier loving hands.

And light the feathery flake of early snows,
Or wisp of thistle-down that no wind blows,
And light the dew,--but lightlier