Alice Wellington Rollins.

BRUTUS AT PHILIPPI.

Rome, for whose haughtier sake proud Cæsar made
His legions hers, to win her victories,

Denied him when her gods let Casca's blade

Pierce him who learned to make her legions his.
Still he is mighty; with unchanging dread

Her people murmur for great Cæsar slain;
Nor value, at the price of Cæsar dead,

Their greater cause lost on Philippi's plain.
If haply there are fields, as some pretend,
Beyond the silent Styx, where vaguely grim
Souls of dead heroes, shadowy and dim,
Awake,-I may find entrance at life's end,
Not as a hero who freed Rome from him,
But as a man who once was Cæsar's friend!

THE DIFFERENCE.

One day I heard a little lady say,

"O morning-glory, would that I were you! Twining around the porch that lovely way, Where you will see my dear one coming through.

So fair you are, he'll surely notice you,
And wait perhaps a moment, just to praise
The clinging prettiness of all your ways,
And tender tint of melting white and blue.
O morning-glory, would that I were you!

I heard the little lady's lover say,
"O rose-white daisy, dying in the dew,

Breathing your half-crushed, fainting life away
Under her footstep,-would that I were you!
For when how cruelly she wounded you,

She turned to see in pitying distress,

With murmured words of sorrowing tenderness

Close to her lips your bruised leaves she will press;—

O drooping daisy, would that I were you!"

INDIAN SUMMER.

Linger, O day!

Let not thy purple haze

Fade utterly away.

The Indian summer lays

Her tender touch upon the emerald hills.
Exquisite thrills

Of delicate gladness fill the blue-veined air.
More restful even than rest,

The passionate sweetness that is everywhere.
Soft splendors in the west

Touch with the charm of coming changefulness
The yielding hills.

O linger, day!

Let not the dear

Delicious languor of thy dreamfulness

Vanish away!

Serene and clear,

The brooding stillness of the delicate air,
Dreamier than the dreamiest depths of sleep,
Falls softly everywhere.

Still let me keep

One little hour longer tryst with thee,
O day of days!

Lean down to me,

In tender beauty of thy amethyst haze.
Upon the vine,

Rich clinging clusters of the ripening grape

Hang silent in the sun,

But in each one

Beats with full throb the quickening purple wine,
Whose pulse shall round the perfect fruit to shape.
Too dreamy even to dream,

I hear the murmuring bee and gliding stream;
The singing silence of the afternoon,
Lulling my yielding senses till they swoon
Into still deeper rest.

While soul released from sense,
Passionate and intense,

With quick exultant quiver in its wings,
Prophetic longing for diviner things,

Escapes the unthinking breast;

Pierces rejoicing through the shining mist,
But shrinks before the keen, cold ether, kissed

By burning stars; delirious foretaste

Of joys the soul-too eager in its haste

To grasp ere won by the diviner right

Of birth through death—is far too weak to bear.
Bathed in earth's lesser light,

Slipping down slowly through the shining air,
Once more it steals into the dreaming breast,
Praying again to be its patient guest.

And as my senses wake,

The beautiful glad soul again to take,
The twilight falls;

A lonely wood-thrush calls
The day away.

"Where hast thou been to-day,

O soul of mine?" I wondering question her. She will not answer while the light winds stir And rustle near to hear what she may say. Thou needst not linger, day!

My soul and I

Would hold high converse of diviner things Than blossom underneath thy tender sky. Unfold thy wings;

Wrap softly round thyself thy delicate haze, And gliding down the slowly darkening ways, Vanish away!

WHITMAN'S RIDE.

(AFTER "PAUL REVERE.")

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of a hero's ride that saved a state.

A midnight ride? Nay, child, for a year
He rode with the message that could not wait.

Eighteen hundred and forty two;

No railroad then had gone crashing through To the Western coast; not a telegraph wire Had guided there the electric fire;

But a fire burned in one strong man's breast For a beacon-light. You shall hear the rest.

He said to his wife: "At the fort to-day,
At Walla Walla, I heard them say

That a hundred British men had crossed

The mountains; and one young, ardent priest

Shouted, Hurrah for Oregon!

The Yankees are late by a year at least!'

They must know this at once at Washington.
Another year and all would be lost.

Some one must ride, to give the alarm,
Across the continent; untold harm

In an hour's delay; and only I

Can make them understand how or why
The United States must keep Oregon!"

Twenty-four hours he stopped to think.
To think? Nay, then, if he thought at all,
He thought as he tightened his saddle-girth.
One tried companion, who would not shrink
From the worst to come; just a mule or two
To carry arms and supplies, would do,
With a guide as far as Fort Bent. And she,
The woman of proud heroic worth,
Who must part from him, if she wept at all,
Wept as she gathered whatever he

Might need for the outfit on his way.

Fame for the man who rode that day

Into the wilds at his country's call:

And for her who waited for him a year

On that wild Pacific coast, a tear!

Then he said "Good-by!" and with firm-set lips

Silently rode from his cabin door,

Just as the sun rose over the tips

Of the phantom mountains that loomed before

The woman there in the cabin door,