EVELYN HOPE.

1.

BEAUTIFUL Evelyn Hope is dead!

Sit and watch by her side an hour. That is her book-shelf, this her bed;

She plucked that piece of geranium-flower, Beginning to die too, in the glass.

Little has yet been changed, I think The shutters are shut, no light may pass

Save two long rays thro' the hinge's chink.

2.

Sixteen years old when she died!

Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name

It was not her time to love: beside,
Her life had many a hope and aim,
Duties enough and little cares,

And now was quiet, now astir

Till God's hand beckoned unawares,

And the sweet white brow is all of her.

3.

Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope?
What, your soul was pure and true,
The good stars met in your horoscope,
Made you of spirit, fire and dew
And just because I was thrice as old,

And our paths in the world diverged so wide,

Each was nought to each, must I be told?

We were fellow mortals, nought beside?

No, indeed! for God above

4.

Is great to grant, as mighty to make,
And creates the love to reward the love, —
I claim you still, for my own love's sake!
Delayed it may be for more lives yet,
Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few
Much is to learn and much to forget
Ere the time be come for taking you.

5.

But the time will come, at last it will,

When, Evelyn Hope, what meant, I shall say, In the lower earth, in the years long still, That body and soul so pure and gay?

Why your hair was amber, I shall divine,

And your mouth of your own geranium 's red And what you would do with me, in fine, In the new life come in the old one's stead.

6.

I have lived, I shall say, so much since then,
Given up myself so many times,
Gained me the gains of various men,
Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes;
Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope,

Either I missed or itself missed me
And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope!
What is the issue? let us see!

7.

I loved you, Evelyn, all the while;
My heart seemed full as it could hold

There was place and to spare for the frank

young smile And the red young mouth and the hair's young gold.

So, hush,—I will give you this leaf to keep —

See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand.

There, that is our secret! go to sleep;

You will wake, and remember, and understand.

UP AT A VILLA - DOWN IN THE CITY.

(AS DISTINGUISHED BY AN ITALIAN PERSON OF QUALITY.)

1.

HAD I but plenty of money, money enough and to

spare,

The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city

square.

Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window

there!

2.

Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at

least!

There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect feast; While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast.

3.

Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a

bull

Just on a mountain's edge as bare as the creature's

skull,

Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull !

-I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's turned wool.

4.

But the city, oh the city—the square with the houses! Why?

They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there's something to take the eye!

Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry! You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by:

Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets high;

And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly.

5.

What of a villa? Though winter be over in March by

rights,

'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the heights:

You've the brown ploughed land before, where the oxen steam and wheeze,

And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint

gray olive

trees.