One faded from life—and mother, And died in the summer dawn; And I turned away from the other And wept for the child that was gone. 

Then I lay in a weird sleep-vision, Before me an earth dark scene, And the land of the sweet Elysian, And only a grave between. 

One child soft called me mother Out from the shining door, And smile and beckoned; the other Unconsciously played on the floor. 

One's path, to my inward seeing, Was light with a wondrous day, And led to the heights of being, And an angel showed the way. 

The other lay where Marah's Hot sands with snares are strewn— Through many a darksome forest, And the way was roughly hewn. 

A faith to my soul was given—   The weird sleep-vision o'er— And I turned from the child in heaven To the child that played on the floor. 

 

     LIFE'S WAY 

Good-bye, sweetheart, he said, and clasped her hand, And rained his kisses on her tear-wet face; Then broke away, and in a foreign land. For her dear sake, sought gold, that he might place 

Love's jeweled crown upon his queen's fair brow, And pour his hard-won treasures at her feet; And swore, than Heaven, than life itself, his vow To her he held more sacred and more sweet. 

She waited as the woman only may Whose eyes are blinded oft with unshed tears; Lines on her forehead grew, and threads of gray; The weary days crept into weary years. 

"Oh stars, go down! Oh sun, be shrouded now! My love comes not; he does not live," she said; And brushed the curls he'd kissed back from her brow, And pout on mourning for her dead. 

And still as oft the day came round that he Had left his warm good-bye upon her lips, As oft she sought the head-land by sea, And longing watched the far-off white-sailed ships. 

To-day, the low sand-beach was over-strewn; Torn sail, and broken spar and human form, 'Gulfed by the waves, and crushed, and then out-thrown—   A ship went down in yester-night's wild storm. 

She walked among the debris, and the dead, As some sweet mercy-sister on her round, Scanning each up-turned face with nameless dread, For aught of life; her tireless searching found 

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