Now walking there was one more fair

A slight girl, lily pale;

And she had unseen company

To make the spirit quail :

'Twixt Want and Scorn she walked forlorn,

And nothing could avail.

No mercy now can clear her brow

For this world's peace to pray;

For, as love's wild prayer dissolved in air,
Her woman's heart gave way !-

But the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven
By man is cursed alway!

SPRING

THE Spring is here - the delicate-footed May,
With its slight fingers full of leaves and flowers,
And with it comes a thirst to be away,

In lovelier scenes to pass these sweeter hours,
A feeling like the worm's awakening wings,
Wild for companionship with swifter things.

We pass out from the city's feverish hum,
To find refreshment in the silent woods;
And nature that is beautiful and dumb,
Like a cool sleep upon the pulses broods -
Yet, even there a restless thought will steal,
To teach the indolent heart it still must feel.

Strange that the audible stillness of the noon,
The waters tripping with their silver feet,
The turning to the light of leaves in June,

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And the light whisper as their edges meet

Strange that they fill not, with their tranquil tone,

The spirit, walking in their midst alone.

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There's no contentment in a world like this,
Save in forgetting the immortal dream;
We may not gaze upon the stars of bliss,
That through the cloud rifts radiantly stream;
Birdlike, the prison'd soul will lift its eye
And pine till it is hooded from the sky.

CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN

1806-1884

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HOFFMAN was born in New York city, studied at Columbia College, and practiced law in his native city. His tastes, however, were more literary than legal. He was the first editor of the Knickerbocker Magazine, founded in 1833, which was for thirty years the most conspicuous periodical of its kind in the country. It was the forerunner of Harper's and the Century. Among its contributors were Irving, Bryant, Halleck, Willis, Boker, Bayard Taylor, and George William Curtis. This group of writers formed what is often spoken of as the Knickerbocker School. The chief literary work of Hoffman consists of novels and books of travel, all now forgotten. His verse is also fading, but it had a lyrical quality above that of the verse of most of his contemporaries.

In 1849 Hoffman's mind was sadly darkened by an insanity which kept him in seclusion the last thirty-five years of his life.

MONTEREY

WE were not many we who stood

Before the iron sleet that day

Yet many a gallant spirit would
Give half his years if he then could

Have been with us at Monterey.

Now here, now there, the shot, it hailed

In deadly drifts of fiery spray,

Yet not a single soldier quailed

When wounded comrades round them wailed
Their dying shout at Monterey.

ΤΟ

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Through walls of flame its withering way;
Where fell the dead, the living stept,

Still charging on the guns which swept
The slippery streets of Monterey.

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THE author of the national hymn of America was born in Boston. He was graduated in 1829 from Harvard, where Oliver Wendell Holmes was his classmate. Three years after graduation he wrote this famous hymn. He was a Baptist clergyman, and wrote other hymns, as well as books for boys; but his name would soon be forgotten were it not for My Country, 'tis of Thee.

PARK BENJAMIN

1809-1864

THIS journalist, lecturer, and poet was born at Demerara, British Guiana, and died at New York, where he spent the greater part of his life. His sister was married to John Lothrop Motley, the author of The Rise of the Dutch Republic. Benjamin edited more than one magazine in New York, and also worked on the Tribune under Horace Greeley. His poems were never collected. Perhaps the best known is the one given below.

THE OLD SEXTON

NIGH to a grave that was newly made,
Leaned a sexton old on his earth-worn spade;
His work was done, and he paused to wait
The funeral train at the open gate.

A relic of bygone days was he,

And his locks were white as the foamy sea;

And these words came from his lips so thin:
"I gather them in, I gather them in.

"I gather them in! for man and boy,
Year after year of grief and joy,
I've builded the houses that lie around,
In every nook of this burial ground;
Mother and daughter, father and son,
Come to my solitude, one by one:

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But come they strangers or come they kin
I gather them in, I gather them in.

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Many are with me, but still I'm alone,

I'm king of the dead—and I make my throne
On a monument slab of marble cold;

And my scepter of rule is the spade I hold:

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