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What cause hast thou to show Of sacrifice unsped?

Of all thy slaves below

I most have laborèd

With service sung and said;

Have cull'd such buds as blow,
Soft poppies white and red,
Where thy still gardens grow,
And Lethe's waters weep.
Why, then, art thou my foe?
Wilt thou not hear me, Sleep?

ENVOY.

Prince, ere the dark te shred
By golden shafts, ere low
And long the shadows creep:
Lord of the wand of lead,
Soft-footed as the snow,
Wilt thou not hear me, Sleep!

THE SHADES OF HELEN.

Some say that Helen never went to Troy, but abode in Egypt; for the gods, having made in her semblance a woman out of clouds and shadows, sent the same to be wife to Paris. For this shadow then the Greeks and Trojans slew each other.

WHY from the quiet hollows of the hills,

And extreme meeting-place of light and shade,

Wherein soft rains fell slowly, and became

Clouds among sister clouds, where fair spent beams

And dying glories of the sun would

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And some strange force, within me, or around,

Makes answer, kiss for kiss and sigh for sigh,

And somewhere there is fever in the halls,

That troubles me, for no such trouble

came

To vex the cool, far hollows of the hills. The foolish folk crowd round me, and they cry,

That house and wife, and lands, and all Troy town,

Are little to lose; if they may hold me here,

And see me flit, a pale and silent shade, Among the streets bereft, and helpless shrines.

At other hours another life seems mine, Where one great river runs unswollen of rain,

By pyramids of unremembered kings, And homes of men obedient to the Dead.

Their dark and quiet faces come and go, Around me, then again the shriek of arms,

And all the turmoil of the Ilian men. What are they? Even shadows such as I. What make they? Even this-the sport of Gods,

The sport of Gods, however free they

seem.

Ah, would the game were ended, and the light,

The blinding light, and all too mighty

suns,

Withdrawn, and I once more with sister shades,

Unloved, forgotten, mingled with the mist,

Dwelt in the hollows of the shadowy hills.

THE ODYSSEY.

As one that for a weary space has lain Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine

In gardens near the pale Proserpine,

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[BORN in London, 1844, and at the age of twenty obtained, through the aid of Lord Lytton, a place in the British Museum, where, during the remainder of his life, he was connected with the department of Natural History. In 1873 he married the elder of the Marston sisters, who joined him in writing a volume of prose tales, Toyland, 1875. His early books, An Epic of Women, 1870, and Lays of France, 1872, were successful. Music and Moonlight, 1874, was coldly received. Songs of a Worker appeared after his death, which took place at London in 1881.]

SONG OF A FELLOW-WORKER.

I FOUND a fellow-worker when I I worked in the palace of my brain, he deemed I toiled alone:

My toil was fashioning thought and sound, and his was hewing stone;

in the common street;

And it seemed his toil was great and hard, while mine was great and sweet.

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"Then noonward, as the task grows

light with all the labor done, The single thought of all the day becomes a joyous one;

For, rising in my heart at last where it has lain so long,

It thrills up seeking for a voice, and grows almost a song.

"But when the evening comes, indeed, the words have taken wing,

The thought sings in me still, but I am all too tired to sing:

Therefore, O you my friend, who serve the world with minstrelsy, Among our fellow-workers' songs make that one song for me."

E. LEE HAMILTON.

STRANGLED.

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SUNKEN GOLD.

IN dim green depths rot ingot-laden ships,

While gold doubloons that from the drowned hand fell

Lie nestled in the ocean-flower's bell With Love's gemmed rings once kissed by now dead lips.

And round some wrought-gold cup the sea-grass whips,

And hides lost pearls, near pearls still in their shell,

Where sea-weed forests fill each ocean dell,

And seek dim sunlight with their countless tips.

So lie the wasted gifts, the long-lost hopes,

Beneath the now hushed surface of myself,

In lonelier depths than where the diver gropes.

They lie deep, deep; but I at times

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MRS. ALICE MEYNELL

(MISS ALICE THOMPSON).

1850

[HER first volume, Preludes, was published before her marriage, which occurred in 1877, and received favorable notice by Rossetti and other competent critics. She has written comparatively little in verse, and since her marriage has almost exclusively devoted herself to the composition prose, giving special attention to matters pertaining to art criticism.]

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[STEP-DAUGHTER of Karl Blind, the German author and political writer. Miss Blind is knows as a skilful editor and critic of Shelley's works. In 1874 she produced a translation of Strauss's Old Faith and the New, and, in 1881, The Prophecy of St. Oran, and Other Poems. She is also the author of a Life of George Eliot, 1883, which has been republished in this country.]

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