"Thus, seamed with many scars,
Bursting these prison-bars,

Up to its native stars

My soul ascended!

There from the flowing bowl

Deep drinks the warrior's soul,

'Skoal! to the Northland! skval!'"*
-Thus the tale ended.

* In Scandinavia, this is the customary salutation when drinking

a health,

A

Julia Ward Howe.

WOMAN.

VESTAL priestess, proudly pure, But of a meek and quiet spirit; With soul all dauntless to endure,

And mood so calm that naught can stir it,
Save when a thought most deeply thrilling
Her eyes with gentlest tears is filling,
Which seem with her true words to start
From the deep fountain at her heart.

A mien that neither seeks nor shuns
The homage scattered in her way;
A love that hath few favoured ones,

And yet for all can work and pray;
A smile wherein each mortal reads
The very sympathy he needs;
An eye like to a mystic book

Of lays that bard or prophet sings
Which keepeth for the holiest look
Of holiest love its deepest things

A form to which a king had bent,
The fireside's dearest ornament—
Known in the dwellings of the poo
Better than at the rich man's door
A life that ever onward goes,
Yet in itself has deep repose.

A vestal priestess, maid, or wife-
Vestal, and vowed to offer up

The innocence of a holy life

To Him who gives the mingled cup;
With man its bitter sweets to share,
To live and love, to do and dare;
His prayer to breathe, his tears to shed,
Breaking to him the heavenly bread
Of hopes which, all too high for earth,
Have yet in her a mortal birth.

This is the woman I have dreamed,
And to my childish thought she seemed
The woman I myself should be:
Alas! I would that I were she.

THE DEAD CHRIST.

AKE the dead CHRIST to my chamber

TAKE

The CHRIST I brought from Rome;

Over all the tossing ocean,

He has reached His Western home.

Bear Him as in procession,

And lay Him solemnly

Where, through weary night and morning,

He shall bear me company.

The name I bear is other

Than that I bore by birth;

And I've given life to children,
Who'll grow and dwell on earth,

But the time comes swiftly towards me→→
Nor do I bid it stay-

When the dead CHRIST will be more to me

Than all I hold to-day.

Lay the dead CHRIST beside me

Oh, press Him to my

heart!

I would hold him long and painfully,

Till the weary tears should startTill the divine contagion

Heal me of self and sin,

And the cold weight press wholly down
The pulse that chokes within.

Reproof and frost, they fret me;
Toward the free, the sunny

From the chaos of existence,

I stretch these feeble hands

And, penitential, kneeling,

lands,

Pray God would not be wroth,
Who gave not the strength of feeling
And strength of labour both.

Thou'rt but a wooden carving,
Defaced of worms, and old;

Yet more to me Thou couldst not be
Wert Thou all wrapped in gold
Like the gem-bedizened baby

Which, at the Twelfth-day noon,
They show from the Ara Cœli's steps
To a merry dancing-tune.

I ask of Thee no wonders-
No changing white or red;
I dream not Thou art living,
I love and prize Thee dead

That salutary deadness

I seek through want and pain,
From which God's own high power can bid
Our virtue rise again.

James Russell Lowell.

WITH A PRESSED FLOWER.

THIS little flower from afar

Hath come from other lands to thine; For, once, its white and drooping star Could see its shadow in the Rhine.

Perchance some fair-haired German maid Hath plucked one from the self-same stalk, And numbered over, half afraid, Its petals in her evening walk.

"He loves me, loves me not," she cries;
"He loves me more than earth or Heaven,'
And then glad tears have filled her eyes
To find the number was uneven.

So, Love, my heart doth wander forth
To farthest lands beyond the sea,
And search the fairest spots of earth
To find sweet flowers of thought for thee.

A type this tiny blossom is
Of what my heart doth every day,
Seeking for pleasant fantasies
To brood upon when thou 'rt away.

And thou must count its petals well,
Because it is a gift from me;
And the last one of all shall tell
Something I've often told to thee.