Look at me with thy large brown eyes,
Philip, my King!

149

150

PHILIP, MY KING.

For round thee the purple shadow lies
Of babyhood's regal dignities.
Lay on my neck thy tiny hand,

With Love's invisible sceptre laden:

I am thine Esther, to command

Till thou shalt find thy queen-handmaiden,
Philip, my King!

O, the day when thou goest a-wooing,
Philip, my King!

When those beautiful lips are suing,
And, some gentle heart's bars undoing,
Thou dost enter, love-crowned, and there
Sittest all glorified! — rule kindly,

Tenderly, over thy kingdom fair;

For we that love, ah! we love so blindly,
Philip, my King!

I gaze from thy sweet mouth up to thy brow,
Philip, my King!

Ay! there lies the spirit, all sleeping now,
That may rise like a giant, and make men bow
As to one God-throned amid his peers.

My Saul! than thy brethren higher and fairer
Let me behold thee in coming years.

Yet thy head needeth a circleț rarer,
Philip, my King –

A wreath, not of gold, but palm. One day,
Philip, my King!

Thou too must tread, as we tread, a way

THE LOVED NOT LOST.

Thorny, and bitter, and cold, and gray;
Rebels within thee, and foes without,

Will snatch at thy crown. But go on, glorious:
Martyr, yet monarch! till angels shout,

As thou sit'st at the feet of God victorious,

"Philip, the King!"

DINAH MARIA MULOCH.

THE LOVED NOT LOST.

How strange it seems with so much gone

Of life and love, to still live on!
Ah, brother, only I and thou
Are left of all that circle now,-
The dear home faces whereupon
That fitful firelight paled and shone,
Henceforward, listen as we will,
The voices of that hearth are still,
Look where we may the wide earth o'er,
Those lighted faces shine no more.

We tread the paths their feet have worn,

We sit beneath their orchard trees,
We hear, like them, the hum of bees
And rustle of the bladed corn;
We turn the pages that they read,
Their written words we linger o'er,
But in the sun they cast no shade,
No voice is heard, no sign is made.

151

152

LARVÆ.

No step is on the conscious floor!
Yet love will dream, and faith will trust
Since He who knows our need is just,
That somehow somewhere meet we must.
Alas for him who never sees

The stars shine through his cypress-trees!
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day
Across the mournful marbles play!

Who hath not learned in hours of faith,
The truth to flesh and sense unknown,

That Life is ever Lord of Death,

And love can never lose its own!

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

LARVE.

My little maiden of four years old

(No myth but a genuine child is she,

With her bronze-brown eyes and her curls of gold)
Came quite in disgust, one day, to me.

Rubbing her shoulder with rosy palm,

As the loathsome touch seemed yet to thrill her,
She cried, "Oh, mother I found on my arm
A horrible, crawling caterpillar!"

ᏞᎪᎡᏙᎬ.

153

And with mischievous smile she could scarcely smother,
Yet a glance, in its daring, half-awed and shy,
She added: "While they were about it, mother,
I wish they'd just finished the butterfly!”

They were words to the thought of the soul that turns
From the coarser form of a partial growth,
Reproaching the Infinite Patience that yearns
With an unknown glory to crown them both.

Ah, look thou largely with lenient eyes,

On whatso beside thee may creep and cling, For the possible beauty that underlies

The passing phase of the meanest thing!

What if God's great angels, whose waiting love

Beholdeth our pitiful life below,

From the holy height of their Heaven above

Couldn't bear with the worm till the wings should grow?

ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY.