BROTHER AND SISTER.

UR mother bade us keep the trodden ways,
Stroked down my tippet, set my brother's frill,

Then with the benediction of her gaze

Clung to us lessening, and pursued us still

Across the homestead to the rookery elms,
Whose tall old trunks had each a grassy mound,

So rich for us, we counted them as realms
With varied products: here were earth-nuts found,
And here the Lady-fingers in deep shade;

Here sloping toward the Moat the rushes grew,
The large to split for pith, the small to braid ;
While over all the dark rooks cawing flew,

And made a happy strange solemnity,

A deep-toned chant from life unknown to me, GEORGE ELIOT.

BROTHER AND SISTER.

HUS rambling we were schooled in deepest lore,
And learned the meanings that give words a
soul,

The fear, the love, the primal passionate store,
Whose shaping impulses make manhood whole :
Those hours were seed to all my after good;
My infant gladness, through eye, ear, and touch,
Took easily as warmth a various food

To nourish the sweet skill of loving much.
For who in age shall roam the earth and find
Reasons for loving that will strike out love

With sudden rod from the hard year-pressed mind?

Were reasons sown as thick as stars above,

'Tis love must see them, as the eye sees light:

Day is but Number to the darkened sight.

TO A BROOKLET.

DEEP unlovely brooklet, moaning slow
Through moorish fen in utter loneliness!

The partridge cowers beside thy loamy flow

In pulseful tremor, when with sudden press

The huntsman fluskers through the rustled heather.
In March thy sallow-buds from vermeil shells
Break satin-tinted, downy as the feather
Of moss-chat, that among the purplish bells
Breasts into fresh new life her three unborn.
The plover hovers o'er thee, uttering clear
And mournful-strange his human cry forlorn.
While wearily, alone, and void of cheer,
Thou guid'st thy nameless waters from the fen,
To sleep unsunned in an untrampled glen.

THE LUGGIE.

FOR the days of sweet Mythology,

When dripping Naiads taught their streams to glide!

When, 'mid the greenery, one would ofttimes spy

An Oread tripping with her face aside.

The dismal realms of Dis by Virgil sung,
Whose shade led Dante, in his virtue bold,

All the sad grief and agony among,

O'er Acheron, that mournful river old,

Ev'n to the Stygian tide of purple gloom!

Pan in the forest making melody!

And far away where hoariest billows boom,

Old Neptune's steeds with snorting nostrils high?

These were the ancient days of sunny song ;

Their memory yet how dear to the poetic throng.

DAVID GRAY,

SUNSET.

AY—like a conqueror marching to his rest,
The warfare finished and the victory won,

And all the pageant of his triumph done

Seeks his resplendent chamber in the West:
Yon clouds, like pursuivants and heralds drest
In gorgeous blazonry, troop slowly on,
Bearing abroad the banners of the sun
That proudly stream o'er many a warrior's crest.
In the azure field a solitary star

Lifts its pale signal, and the glorious train

Of errant sunbeams, straggling from afar,
Reform their glittering ranks, and join again

Their father Phoebus in his golden car,

Whose panting steeds have snuffed the western main.

GEORGE MORINE.