d fade the stain away.

Pining in desolation,
Shunned by each of her kind,
Sought she a bitter solace
In creatures of a coarser mind.

But the breath of the nettle stung her,
And the thistle's rude embrace
Burned her sensitive nature,
And scarred the fair, stained face.

Lower drooped the lily,
And died at the feet of the weeds;
And only the tender mosses
Ministered to her needs.

And still the tall while lilies
Stand as cold, and proud,
And still the weeds and thistles
Against the lilies crowd.

Alike the same warm sunbeams,
On weed and flower fall,
Alike by the same soil nourished,
And the great God made them all.

* * * * *

A VALENTINE.

I love thee for the soul that shines
Within thine eyes' soft beaming,
From out whose depths the prisoned fires
Of intellect are gleaming.

I love thee for the mind that soars
Beyond earth's narrow keeping,
That measures suns, and stars, and worlds,
Through boundless limits sweeping.

I love thee for the voice whose power
Can in my heart awaken
To passioned life each slumbering chord
The ruder tones have shaken.

Thou ne'er, perchance, mayst feel the chain
With which this love has bound thee,
Nor dream thee of the hand that flung
Its glittering links around thee.

And vainly mayst thou deem the task
Thy captive bounds to sever--
Who madly dates to love thee now
Will love thee on forever.

* * * * *

WHICH ONE.

Each was as fair as the other,
And both as my life were dear;
And the voices that lisped me mother,
Heaven's music in my ear.

One faded from life--and mother,
And died in the summer dawn;
And I turned away from the other
And wept for the child that was gone.

Then I lay in a weird sleep-vision,
Before me an earth dark scene,
And the land of the sweet Elysian,
And only a grave between.

One child soft called me mother
Out from the shining door,
And smile and beckoned; the other
Unconsciously played on the floor.

One's path, to my inward seeing,
Was light with a wondrous day,
And led to the heights of being,
And an angel showed the way.

The other lay where Marah's
Hot sands with snares are strewn--
Through many a darksome forest,
And the way was roughly hewn.

A faith to my soul was given--
The weird sleep-vision o'er--
And I turned from the child in heaven
To the child that played on the floor.