All her heart stood still and listened,

As the door swung backward slow.

There she saw no surly warder

With an eye like bolt and bar;

Through her soul a sense of music

Throbbed, and, like a guardian Lar,

On the threshold stood an angel,

Bright and silent as a star.

Fairest seemed he of God's seraphs,
And her spirit, lily-wise,

Blossomed when he turned upon

The deep welcome of his eyes,

Sending upward to that sunlight

All its dew for sacrifice.

her

Then she heard a voice come onward

Singing with a rapture new,

As Eve heard the songs in Eden,

Dropping earthward with the dew;

Well she knew the happy singer,

Well the happy song she knew.

Forward leaped she o'er the threshold, Eager as a glancing surf;

Fell from her the spirit's languor, Fell from her the body's scurf;

'Neath the palm next day some Arabs Found a corpse upon the turf.

THE BIRCH-TREE.

RIPPLING through thy branches goes the sunshine,
Among thy leaves that palpitate for ever;
Ovid in thee a pining Nymph had prisoned,

The soul once of some tremulous inland river,

Quivering to tell her woe, but, ah! dumb, dumb for ever!

While all the forest, witched with slumberous moonshine, Holds up its leaves in happy, happy silence,

Waiting the dew, with breath and pulse suspended, — I hear afar thy whispering, gleamy islands,

And track thee wakeful still amid the wide-hung silence.

Upon the brink of some wood-nestled lakelet,

Thy foliage, like the tresses of a Dryad,

Dripping about thy slim white stem, whose shadow
Slopes quivering down the water's dusky quiet,

Thou shrink'st as on her bath's edge would some startled Dryad.

Thou art the go-between of rustic lovers;
Thy white bark has their secrets in its keeping;
Reuben writes here the happy name of Patience,
And thy lithe boughs hang murmuring and weeping
Above her, as she steals the mystery from thy keeping.

Thou art to me like my beloved maiden,

So frankly coy, so full of trembly confidences;

Thy shadow scarce seems shade, thy pattering leaflets
Sprinkle their gathered sunshine o'er my senses,
And Nature gives me all her summer confidences.

Whether my heart with hope or sorrow tremble,
Thou sympathizest still; wild and unquiet,
I fling me down; thy ripple, like a river,
Flows valleyward, where calmness is, and by it
My heart is floated down into the land of quiet.

AN INTERVIEW WITH MILES STANDISH.

I SAT one evening in my room,

In that sweet hour of twilight

When blended thoughts, half light, half gloom,

Throng through the spirit's skylight;

The flames by fits curled round the bars,

Or up the chimney crinkled,

While embers dropped like falling stars,

And in the ashes tinkled.

I sat and mused; the fire burned low,
And, o'er my senses stealing,
Crept something of the ruddy glow

That bloomed on wall and ceiling;