t air--
I dream beneath the blooming apple trees:

A merry orchestra of nymphs and fays
Has gathered in the pine-tree's elfin shade,
With naiad shell and fairy reed and string,
While Minturn Peck the magic baton sways.
And when the band his "Rhymes and Roses," played,
The dryads' voices made the woodlands ring!

THERE'S NOTHING DARK ABOUT HER BUT HER HAIR

There's nothing dark about her but her hair!
Her liquid eyes, as blue as Grecian seas,
Affect me, like a moonlit southern breeze,
From off the fields of sweet magnolias rare;
Her sympathetic soul is pure and fair
And spotless as the petals of a rose:
Her gown is like a drift of northern snows--
There's nothing dark about her but her hair!
But oh, her hair, ye priests, ye gods, her hair!
Those silken strands of raveled midnight wove
Into a Cupid's mesh, a net of love!
Ah, I confess that I'm entangled there!
But Susan's life as spotless as a dove,--
There's nothing dark about her but her hair.

BLIND TOM

Oh, happy, sad, mysterious, wondrous soul!
Imprisoned in a living dungeon deep
The fates have bound thee; but they can not keep
For ay that spirit in their dark control
Who hear'st the music of the spheres that roll
Through silent time; those beauteous orbs that sweep
Through space and glitter in the boundless deep,
Will yet thy blind, benighted life console.

What sin didst thou commit, or whom offend?
That doomed thee to a carnal cell so gross
That scarce a hint of what thou really art
Has ever reached the world,--who couldst transcend
In matchless music, purged of all thy dross,
The great Beethoven or divine Mozart.

A SONNET OF THE SEASON

The carol in my heart I send to you:
It comes from out the depths of brooding time
To cheer and bless in every place and clime;
To purge the false, to chasten and subdue;
To lift the drooping life, inspire the true
To nobler deeds and thoughts of love sublime.
This anthem--which I sing in sonnet rhyme--
Judean shepherds heard and angels knew!

And now we fear no longer war's alarms,
For red-eyed Mars has fled at last our home:
Christ took the little children in his arms
And blessed them, saying, Suffer them to come
To me that all the sons o