Weary and weak, and worn with all unrest,
Spent with the strife,-

O mother, let me weep upon thy breast
At the sad mystery of Life!

John Burroughs.

AMERICAN.

Burroughs was born April 3d, 1837, at Roxbury, N. Y. He has distinguished himself as a genial observer of natural phenomena, and his books about birds, flowers, and out-of-door life have a distinctive value, as coming from one at once a poet and a naturalist. He is the author of "Walt Whitman as Poet and Person" (1867); "Wake Robin" (1871); "Winter Sunshine" (1875); "Birds and Poets" (1877); "Locusts and Wild Honey" (1879).

WAITING.

Serene I fold my arms and wait,
Nor care for wind, or tide, or sea:
I rave no more 'gainst time or fate,
For lo! my own shall come to me.

I stay my haste, I make delays,

For what avails this eager pace?

I stand amid the eternal ways,
And what is mine shall know my face.

Asleep, awake, by night or day,

The friends I seek are seeking me; No wind can drive my bark astray, Nor change the tide of destiny.

What matter if I stand alone?

I wait with joy the coming years; My heart shall reap where it has sown, And garner up its fruit of tears.

The waters know their own, and draw
The brook that springs in yonder height:
So flows the good with equal law
Unto the soul of pure delight.

The floweret nodding in the wind
Is ready plighted to the bee;
And, maiden, why that look unkind?
For lo thy lover seeketh thee.

The stars come nightly to the sky;
The tidal wave unto the sea;
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high
Can keep my own away from me.

Algernon Charles Swinburne.

Swinburne, son of an English admiral, was born at Holmwood, near Henley-on-Thames, in 1837. His early education, begun in France, was continued at Eton. In 1857 he entered a commoner of Baliol College, Oxford, but left without taking a degree. In his twenty-third year he published two plays, "The Queen Mother” and "Rosamund." In 1865 appeared his dramatic poem of "Atalanta in Calydon," thoroughly Grecian in form and spirit. The Edinburgh Review pronounced it "the prod uce of an affluent apprehensive genius which, with or dinary care and fair fortune, will take a foremost place in English literature." In 1866 appeared a volume of "Poems and Ballads," which was considered so objectionable in its free and sensuous expressions, that, in obedience to the critical outcry against it, the edition was suppressed by the English publishers. Since then Swinburne has published "A Song of Italy" (1867); “Siena, a Poem " (1868); "Ode on the Proclamation of the French Republic" (1870); "Songs before Sunrise" (1871); "Bothwell, a Tragedy" (1874); "Songs of the Springtides" (1880). He is a genuine poet, both in temperament and original vivacity of thought and expression. At times there is a marvellous charm, peculiarly his own, in his diction, which is at once mellifluous and vigorous. It will be noticed that he has revived the old fashion of alliteration in many of his lines. Sometimes this is a defect, but not unfrequently it helps to sweeten the versification.

AN INTERLUDE.

In the greenest growth of the May-time, I rode where the woods were wet, Between the dawn and the daytime; The spring was glad that we met.

There was something the season wanted,
Though the ways and the woods smelled sweet;

The breath at your lips that panted,

The pulse of the grass at your feet.

You came, and the sun came after,

And the green grew golden above; And the flag-flowers lightened with laughter, And the meadow-sweet shook with love.

Your feet in the full-grown grasses Moved soft as a weak wind blows; You passed me as April passes,

With face made out of a rose.

By the stream where the stems were slender, Your bright foot paused at the sedge;

It might be to watch the tender

Light leaves in the spring-time hedge,

If you were April's lady,

And I were lord in May,

We'd throw with leaves for hours,' And draw for days with flowers, Till day like night were shady, And night were bright like day;

If you were April's lady,

And I were lord in May.

If you were queen of pleasure, And I were king of pain, We'd hunt down love together, Pluck out his flying-feather, And teach his feet a measure, And find his mouth a rein; If you were queen of pleasure, Aud I were king of pain.

Forceythe Willson.

AMERICAN.

Willson (1837-1867) was a native of Little Genesee, N. Y. "The Old Sergeant, and other Poems," was the title of a volume from his pen, published in Boston in 1867. "The Old Sergeant" has in it more of the narrative and dramatic element than of the poetic, but its pathos is genuine, and Willson fully believed in the possibility of the occurrence he describes. He was himself an intuitionalist, and the spirit-world seemed to him more real than this. In his poem of "The Voice" he describes himself as listening to the words of his deceased wife, and adds:

"They fell and died upon my ear,
As dew dies on the atmosphere;
And then an intense yearning thrilled
My Soul, that all might be fulfilled:
'Where art thou, Blesséd Spirit, where?
Whose Voice is dew upon the air?'
I looked around me and above,
And cried aloud, 'Where art thou, Love?
O let me see thy living eye,
And clasp thy living hand, or die!'
Again, upon the atmosphere,

The self-same words fell: I am here!

"Here? Thou art here, Love!' 'I am here:'
The echo died upon my ear:

I looked around me-everywhere;
But, ah! there was no mortal there!
The moonlight was upon the mart,
And Awe and Wonder in my heart!
I saw no form!-I only felt
Heaven's Peace upon me as I knelt;
And knew a Soul Beatified
Was at that moment by my side!
And there was Silence in my ear,
And Silence in the atmosphere!"

Like Oberlin, he was firm in the belief here poetically expressed, and claimed to have had frequent interviews with the partner so dear to him in life.