d seem almost--
So still lies the ocean--to hear the beat
Of its great Gulf Artery off the coast,
And to bask in its tropic heat.

In my neighbor's windows the gas lights flare
As the dancers swing in a waltz from Strauss;
And I wonder now could I fit that air
To the song of this sad old house.

And no odor of mignonette there is,
But the breath of morn on the dewy lawn;
And maybe from causes as slight as this
The quaint old legend was born.

But the soul of that subtle sad perfume,
As the spiced embalmings, they say, outlast
The mummy laid in his rocky tomb,
Awakens my buried past.

And I think of the passion that shook my youth,
Of its aimless loves and its idle pains,
And am thankful now for the certain truth
That only the sweet remains.

And I hear no rustle of stiff brocade,
And I see no face at my library door;
For now that the ghosts of my heart are laid,
She is viewless forevermore.

But whether she came as a faint perfume,
Or whether a spirit in stole of white,
I feel, as I pass from the darkened room,
She has been with my soul to-night.

A LEGEND: MAY KENDALL

Ay, an old story, yet it might
Have truth in it--who knows?
Of the heroine's breaking down one night
Just ere the curtain rose.

And suddenly, when fear and doubt
Had shaken every heart,
There stepped an unknown actress out,
To take the heroine's part.

But oh, the magic of her face,
And oh the songs she sung,
And oh the rapture of the place,
And oh the flowers they flung!

But she never stooped: they lay all night,
As when she turned away,
And left them--and the saddest light
Shone in her eyes of grey.

She gave a smile in glancing round,
And sighed, one fancied, then--
But never they knew where she was bound,
Or saw her face again,

But the old prompter, grey and frail,
They heard him murmur low,
"It only could be Meg Coverdale,
Died thirty years ago,

"In that old part, who took the town;
And she was fair, as fair
As when they shut the coffin down
On the gleam of her golden hair;

"And it wasn't hard to understand
How a lass as fair as she
Could never rest in the Promised Land,
Where none but angels be."

A MIDNIGHT VISITOR: ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN

After all the house is dark,
And the last soft step is still,
And the elm-bough's clear-cut shadow
Flickers on the window sill--

When the village lights are out,