IDENTITY.'

SOMEWHERE-in desolate wind-swept space-
In Twilight-land-in No-man's land-
Two hurrying Shapes met face to face,
And bade each other stand.

"And who are you?" cried one, agape,
Shuddering in the gloaming light.
"I know not," said the second Shape,
"I only died last night!"

PRESCIENCE.1

THE new moon hung in the sky, the sun was low in the west, And my betrothed and I in the churchyard paused to rest: Happy maid and lover, dreaming the old dream over:

The light winds wandered by, and robins chirped from the nest.

And lo! in the meadow sweet was the grave of a little child, With a crumbling stone at the feet, and the ivy running wild: Tangled ivy and clover folding it over and over:

Close to my sweetheart's feet was the little mound uppiled.

Stricken with nameless fears, she shrank and clung to me,
And her eyes were filled with tears for a sorrow I did not see:
Lightly the winds were blowing, softly her tears were flowing—
Tears for the unknown years and a sorrow that was to be!

1 Used by permission of Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.

242

COUNT ALEARDO ALEARDI.

ALEARDI, ALEARDO, COUNT. A distinguished Italian poet and patriot; born near Verona, Nov. 4, 1812; died there, July 17, 1878. He studied first philosophy and natural science, and then jurisprudence. His political principles, as revealed in his poem "Arnaldo" (1842), brought him under suspicion, and public office under the (Austrian) government was denied him. Others of his works are: "Primal Histories" (1857), a poem on the intellectual, ethical, and social evolution of man; "An Hour in My Youth," a piece inspired at once with tenderest love of nature and intense devotion to Italian independence; "Letters to Mary"; "Raffaele and the Fornarina"; "The Maritime Cities of Italy"; and "A Political Ode," directed against Pope Pius IX. (1862).

(The selections are from Howells's "Modern Italian Poets," copyright 1887, by Harper and Brothers.)

COWARDS.

(From "The Primal Histories.")

In the deep circle of Siddim hast thou seen,

Under the shining skies of Palestine,

The sinister glitter of the Lake of Asphalt?

Those coasts, strewn thick with ashes of damnation,

Forever foe to every living thing,

Where rings the cry of the lost wandering bird
That on the shore of the perfidious sea

Athirsting dies, that watery sepulchre

Of the five cities of iniquity,

Where even the tempest, when its clouds hang low,
Passes in silence, and the lightning dies, -

If thou hast seen them, bitterly hath been
Thy heart wrung with the misery and despair
Of that dread vision!

Yet there is on earth

A woe more desperate and miserable,
A spectacle wherein the wrath of God
Avenges Him more terribly. It is

A vain, weak people of faint-heart old men,

That, for three hundred years of dull repose,
Has lain perpetual dreamer, folded in

The ragged purple of its ancestors,

Stretching its limbs wide in its country's sun,
To warm them; drinking the soft airs of autumn
Forgetful, on the fields where its forefathers
Like lions fought! From overflowing hands,
Strew we with hellebore and poppies thick
The way.

THE HARVESTERS.

(From "Monte Circello.")

WHAT time in summer, sad with so much light,
The sun beats ceaselessly upon the fields;
The harvesters, as famine urges them,
Draw hitherward in thousands, and they wear
The look of those that dolorously go
In exile, and already their brown eyes
Are heavy with the poison of the air.
Here never note of amorous bird consoles
Their drooping hearts; here never the gay songs
Of their Abruzzi sound to gladden these
Pathetic hands. But taciturn they toil,
Reaping the harvests for their unknown lords;
And when the weary labor is performed,
Taciturn they retire; and not till then
Their bagpipes crown the joys of the return,
Swelling the heart with their familiar strain.
Alas! not all return, for there is one
That dying in the furrow sits, and seeks
With his last look some faithful kinsman out,
To give his life's wage, that he carry it
Unto his trembling mother, with the last
Words of her son that comes no more.
Deserted and alone, far off he hears
His comrades going, with their pipes in time,
Joyfully measuring their homeward steps.
And when in after years an orphan comes
To reap the harvest here, and feels his blade

And dying,

Go quivering through the swaths of falling grain, He weeps and thinks — haply these heavy stalks Ripened on his unburied father's bones.

244

MRS. ALEXANDER.

Alexander, Mrs. Cecil Frances [Humphrey]; born in County Wicklow, Ireland, in 1818; died at Londonderry, Ireland, October 12, 1895. She was widely known as a hymn writer. "The Burial of Moses" is her best known poem. She was the author of "Verses for Holy Seasons" (1846); "Narrative Hymns" (1853); "Legend of the Golden Prayer" (1859); "Verses from Holy Scripture;" "Hymns Descriptive and Devotional;" "Hymns for Little Children;" "Poems on Old Testament Subjects; "Moral Songs;" "The Baron's Little Daughter;" "The Lord of the Forest:" and edited "The Sunday Book of Poetry."

THE BURIAL OF MOSES.

By Nebo's lonely mountain,
On this side Jordan's wave,

In a vale in the land of Moab
There lies a lonely grave.
And no man knows that sepulcher,
And no man saw it e'er;

For the angels of God upturned the sod,
And laid the dead man there.

That was the grandest funeral
That ever passed on earth;
But no man heard the trampling,
Or saw the train go forth :
Noiselessly as the daylight

Comes back when the night is done,
And the crimson streak on ocean's cheek
Grows into the great sun,

Noiselessly as the springtime
Her crown of verdure weaves,

And all the trees on all the hills
Open their thousand leaves;

So without sound of music,

Or voice of them that wept,

Silently down from the mountain's crown,

The great procession swept.

Perchance the bald old eagle,
On gray Beth-Peor's height,
Out of his lonely eyrie,

Looked on the wondrous sight;
Perchance the lion stalking

Still shuns that hallowed spot,

For beast and bird have seen and heard
That which man knoweth not.

But when the warrior dieth,

His comrades in the war,

With arms reversed and muffled drum,
Follow his funeral car;

They show the banners taken,

They tell his battles won,

And after him lead his masterless steed,
While peals the minute gun.

Amid the noblest of the land
We lay the sage to rest,

And give the bard an honored place,

With costly marble drest,

In the great minster transept

Where lights like glories fall,

And the organ rings, and the sweet choir sings Along the emblazoned wall.

This was the truest warrior

That ever buckled sword,

This the most gifted poet

That ever breathed a word; And never earth's philosopher

Traced with his golden pen,

On the deathless page, truths half so sage
As he wrote down for men.

And had he not high honor,
The hillside for a pall,

To lie in state while angels wait

With stars for tapers tall,

And the dark rock pines, like tossing plumes,

Over his bier to wave,

And God's own hand, in that lonely land,

To lay him in the grave?