rty,
And let it beat its life out on the bars,
Lest some dear bliss detain it in the heavens?
Shall I spill rashly forth this wine of joy,
Because for me within the crystal cup
Some dregs may haply rest when she has drunk?
Ah, no! for her alone shall I take thought.
The first pure sacrifice of Love is self!
There is no peril. God that sends the power
Will send the guardian angel to direct.
I work for her--Heaven speed the work of love.

[_Enters the room_.

MABEL.

I waited for thee, love--'tis past the hour,
And on my dial slumbers Time in shade
When thou comest not to sun me.

ORAN.

I but stood
There on the threshold, following thy voice
Away, away through mazy lengths of dreams.
Music--low music from the lips we love,
Is the true siren that still lures the soul
From cares of earth to the Enchanted Isles.

MABEL.

Methinks that thou art sad to-day, my husband.
Let me share with thee pain as well as joy;
It is the sweetest right that love can claim.
We give our joys to strangers, but our grief
Sighs itself only forth for those we love.
We hang our sorrows on the loved one's ear,
Like jewell'd pendents for a bridal feast.

ORAN.

Tell me, my Mabel, if within this sleep,
To which mine art oft leads thee, there should come
Some angel bright with Heaven's reflected light,
Wooing thee upward with the songs of bliss,--
Tell me, my Mabel, wouldst thou freely go,
Leaving this fair earth-vesture only here,
Leaving me lornly gazing on the sky,
Blotting its sun out with my blinding tears?

MABEL.

There is no angel but the angel Death
Could sever me from thee who art all my life!
What Heaven is there but that which Love creates?
What songs of Bliss, save those by Love intoned?
Ah! thou to me art as the sun to Day,
That dies out with its setting utterly--
Thou art the ever-flowing crystal spring,
That keeps the fountain of my being full--
Thou art the heart that beats with measured pulse
The joyous moments of my flowing life--
Leave thee? How canst thou wrong me with the thought?

ORAN.

Dear Mabel!--Yet to-day thy brothers came,
Taxing me harshly, and in cruel terms,
With practising against thy precious life.

MABEL.

Oh, Heaven!

ORAN.

They dread these trances, whose dim fame
Hath floated on the ignorant air to them.
They deem