The evening hours, the birds, the flowers,
The starlight, moonlight, all that's meet
For heaven in this lost world of ours,

Remind me of her teachings sweet.
My heart is harder, and perhaps

My thoughtlessness hath drank up tears;
And there's a mildew in the lapse

Of a few swift and checkered years;
But nature's book is even yet
With all my mother's lessons writ.

I have been out at eventide

Beneath a moonlight sky of spring, When earth was garnished like a bride, And night had on her silver wing; When bursting leaves, and diamond grass, And waters leaping to the light,

And all that make the pulses pass

With wilder sweetness, thronged the night;

When all was beauty; then have I,

With friends on whom my love is flung

Like myrrh on winds of Araby,

Gazed up where evening's lamp is hung;
And when the beautiful spirit there
Flung over me its golden chain,

My mother's voice came on the air
Like the light dropping of the rain.
And resting on some silver star
The spirit of a bended knee,

I've poured out low and fervent prayer
That our eternity might be

To rise in heaven, like stars at night,
And tread a living path of light.

A MOTHER'S LOVE.

THERE is still within this world

A brilliant, fadeless light,

With a low murmur in the trees,

And melody by fits was breaking

Upon the whisper of the breeze; And this when I was forth, perchance, As a worn reveler from the dance; And when the sun sprang gloriously

And freely up, and hill and river Were catching upon wave and tree The arrows from his subtle quiver: I say a voice has thrilled me then,

Heard on the still and rushing light, Or, creeping from the lonely glen

Like words from the departing night, Hath stricken me; and I have pressed On the wet grass my fevered brow, And pouring forth the earliest,

Of sorrow's darkest night

Which hovers round our pathway here,
Wherever we may rove;

It is the light reflected from
A mother's holy love.

There is a boon-a blessed boon

Unto us mortals given,

Which gives us here a foretaste of
The happiness of heaven;
And when the storms of sorrows rise,

And clouds grow dark above,

It lingers round us to the last;
That boon-a mother's love.

'Tis true that oft our footsteps roam,
Through pleasure's flow'ry maze,

The snow-flakes tap against your window pane;

You heed them not. Ah, love! you cannot know

That I have crossed to you this winter night Upon a frail, white bridge of falling snow!

I stand outside-the night is dark and cold; Within your room, are warmth and summer glow,

night,

Though white with misty flakes of falling

snow.

Love, it is cold as death out here alone. Look up but once, I pray you, ere I go! Without one smile to light the lonely way I cannot cross again this bridge of snow.

The light has vanished in the cold and gloom; Your face is hidden. Now, alas, I know Only my heart's deep longing formed the bridge

Between us and the falling snow.

ANONYMOUs.