Floating, floating, from dawn to dusk,
⁠Till the pearly twilight dies,
And the mists float up from the sapphire sea
⁠And cloud all the sapphire skies.
Floating, floating, while golden stars
⁠Seem to float in a sea overhead,
And starry lights from a sea below
⁠Glow orange, and purple, and red;
Till we seem floating out from the sea of life,
The tempests of passion, the storm-winds of strife —
⁠Out into strange, mysterious space,
⁠Till God shall find us a landing-place.

Drifting, drifting, to lands unknown,
⁠From a world of love and care,
Drifting away to a home untried
⁠And a heart that is waiting there.
O ship, sail, swiftly! O waters deep,
⁠Bear me safe to that haven unknown,
Safe to the tender love that waits
⁠To be forever my own!
Till we drift away from the sea of life,
The tempests of passion, the storm-winds of strife,
⁠Out to a haven, out to a shore
⁠Where life is love for evermore.

Exultant in the grey, uncertain light,
Out of a dream the bird-voice seemed to break,
⁠As if it rang from woods and fields of home,
Proclaiming, "Spring is here. Awake! awake!"
⁠No mateless wanderer, I said, would roam
So far from sheltering copse and meadows bright,
Some prisoned thrush is trying thus to drown
Memories of love and spring that haunt him yet.
⁠O restless songster! crying to be free,
⁠Dost thou remember love and liberty —
⁠And I forget?

I know where gold lent-lilies wave afield,
Where April keeps her white ungathered store
⁠Of violets, where the trembling cuckoo-flowers
Fringe the brown roots of budding sycamore;
⁠Green nooks where birds between the spring-tide showers
Make passionate music; where old pastures yield
Their cowslip bells to little children's hands:
Ah, weary bird! these are but shadow lands.
Then the dawn showed me where, unfaltering,
⁠A thrush unfettered on a blackened tree
⁠Thrilled these wild strains of love and ecstasy
⁠In praise of spring.
⁠Good Words.C. Brooke

From his youth up a martyr on the rack
⁠Of unearned suffering that most wills had tamed,
And turned a nature less heroic back
⁠From strenuous effort, pitied and unblamed.

But, quenching sense in spirit, he so strove,
⁠That early manhood found him early wise,
A sage in whom, as pain o'ercame not love,
⁠Strong soul weak body bore on high emprize.

Till on the judgment-seat, as on the way
⁠That led up to its honors, he was seen,
Bearing the heat and burden of his day,
⁠Of soul unruffled, patient, and serene;

With a sweet sadness putting pain aside,
⁠To bend his ripened judgment to the cause,
And turn the clear light of his mind to guide
⁠His brethren through our labyrinthine laws.

When men, in after times, would have held up
⁠The glass of all that a great judge should be,
The face of Mellish, with his bitter cup
⁠Beside him, let the Bar of England see!

An English wife, whose passage o'er the line
That severs maid from matron leaves its trace
In wiser innocence and chastened grace;
With queenly eyes, love loyal, frank, benign,
That warm, unheating, and unglittering shine;
A touch of cool bright color on her face,
A shape that curves part hide and part define, —
Figures our June, the summer's resting-place.
Promise is perfected, without excess;
The leaf fulfilled, the flower not overblown,
The beams of noontide in this kindly zone
Bless, and burn not; half-tints of pink and pearl
Shimmer from wild-rose cluster, woodbine whorl;
The wavy woods are dim for leafiness.
⁠Spectator.H. G. Hewlett

He spoke to her with manly word, —
⁠With honest speech and slow;
She felt she loved him as she heard,
⁠But yet she answered "No."

She saw him rise, she saw him stand,
⁠As staggering from a blow;
She could have kissed his trembling hand,
⁠But still she answered "No."

And so he goes — to come no more!
⁠But let him only go,
Her voice will call him from the door —
⁠Who trusts a woman's "No"?
⁠Good Words.F. James.