Heliotrope?
Has a dew-drop been thy tear?
Has the south-wind been thy sigh?
Let thy soul make mine reply,
By some sense, on brain or hand,
Let me know and understand,
Heliotrope.

In thy native land, Peru,
Heliotrope,
There are worshippers of light--
They might better worship you;
But they worship not as I.
You must tell her what I say,
When I take you 'cross the way,
For to-night your petals prove
The Devotion of my love,
Heliotrope.

'Tis time we go, breath o' bee,
Heliotrope.
All the house is lit for me;
Here's the room where we may dwell,
Filled with guests delectable.
Hark! I hear the silver bell
Ever tinkling at her throat.
I have thought it was a boat,
By the Graces put afloat,
On the billows of her heart.
I have thought it was a boat
With a bird in it, whose part
Was a solitary note.
Now I know 'tis Heliotrope
That the moonlight, bursting ope,
Changed to silver on her throat.
Let us watch the dancers go;
_She_ is dancing in the row.
Sweetest flower that ever was,
I shall give you as I pass,
Heliotrope.

KARAGWE, AN AFRICAN.

PART FIRST.

This is his story as I gathered it;
The simple story of a plain, true man.
I cling with Abraham Lincoln to the fact,
That they who make a nation truly great
Are plain men, scattered in each walk of life.
To them, my words. And if I cut, perchance.
Against the rind of prejudice, and disclose
The fruit of truth, it is for the love of truth;
And truth, I hold with Joubert, to consist
In seeing things and persons as God sees.

I.

An African, thick lipped, and heavy heeled,
With woolly hair, large eyes, and even teeth,
A forehead high, and beetling at the brows
Enough to show a strong perceptive thought
Ran out beyond the eyesight in all things--
A negro with no claim to any right,
A savage with no knowledge we possess
Of science, art, or books, or government--
Slave from a slaver to the Georgia coast,
His life disposed of at the market rate;
Yet in the face of all, a plain, true man--
Lowly and ignorant, yet brave and good,
Karagwe, named for his native tribe.

His buyer was the planter, Dalton Earl,
Of Valley Earl, an owner of broad lands,
Whose wife, in some gray daybreak of the past,
Had tarried with the night, and passed away;
But left him, as the marria