wherein no other dared intrude,
I had drawn comfort from its smiling grace.
Silent companion of my solitude,
My soul held sweet communion with that face.

I lived again the dream so bright, so brief,
Though wakened as we all are by some Fate;
This picture gave me infinite relief,
And did not leave me wholly desolate.

To-day I saw an item, quite by chance,
That robbed me of my pitiful poor dole:
A marriage notice fell beneath my glance,
And I became a lonely widowed soul.

With drooping eyes, and cheeks a burning flame,
I turned the picture to the blank wall's gloom.
My very heart had died in me of shame,
If I had left it smiling in my room.

Another woman's husband. So, my friend,
My comfort, my sole relic of the past,
I bury thee, and, lonely, seek the end.
Swift age has swept my youth from me at last.

THEIR FACES

O Beautiful white Angels! who control
The inner workings of each poet soul,
Thou who hast touched my mind with tender graces
Come near to me that I may see thy faces.

Me, didst thou bless before I came to earth;
Me, hast thou kissed, and dowered at my birth,
With such a wealth of sweet imaginings,
That, even in sleep, my dreaming fancy sings.

Sometimes when seeing snow-white clouds at noon,
Or watching silver shadows from the moon,
Within my soul has stirred a joy like fear,
As if some kindred spirit lingered near.

Come closer, Angels! thou whose haloed wings
Do gild for me the meanest ways and things,
With beauty borrowed from the Infinite--
Stand forth, let me behold thee in the light.

O thought supreme! O death! O life! unknown
I shall not solve thy mystery alone.
The angels who have kissed me at my birth
Shall take again my soul when done with earth,
And as we soar through vast, star-lighted spaces,
At last, at last I shall behold their faces.

THE LULLABY

When the long day leans to the twilight,
When the Evening star climbs to the moon,
With a heart that is silently breaking,
I sit in the gloaming and croon.
I croon a low song for my darling,
My wee one, my baby, my own;
Who, cradled in rosewood and velvet,
Sleeps out in the churchyard alone.

Alone with no arms to enfold her,
Alone with no pillowing breast,
Alone with no hand on her cradle,
To rock her to soundlier rest.
But each day in the hush of the twilight,
Is silenced my broken heart's cry;
And I sit where I sat with my darling,
And