Deep in its bed lay the river's bones,
Bleaching in pebbles and milk-white stones;
And, tracked o'er the desert faint and far,
Its ribs shone bright on each sandy bar.

Thus they stood as the sun went down
Over the foot-hills bare and brown;
Thus they looked to the South, wherefrom
The pale-face medicine-man should come.
Not in anger or in strife,

But to bring-so ran the tale

The welcome springs of eternal life,
The living waters that should not fail.

Said one, 66 He will come like Manitou,
Unseen, unheard, in the falling dew."
Said another, "He will come full soon
Out of the round-faced watery moon."
And another said, "He is here!" and lo,--
Faltering, staggering, feeble and slow,-
Out from the desert's blinding heat
The Padre dropped at the heathen's feet.
They stood and gazed for a little space
Down on his pallid and careworn face,
And a smile of scorn went round the band
As they touched alternate with foot and hand
This mortal waif, that the outer space
Of dim mysterious sky and sand
Flung with so little of Christian grace
Down on their barren sterile strand.

Said one to him: "It seems thy god
Is a very pitiful kind of god;

He could not shield thine aching eyes
From the blowing desert-sands that rise,
Nor turn aside from thy old grey head
The glittering blade that is brandished
By the sun he set in the heavens high.
He could not moisten thy lips when dry;
The desert fire is in thy brain ;

Thy limbs are racked with the fever-pain.
If this be the grace he showeth thee
Who art his servant, what may we,
Strange to his ways and his commands,
Seek at his unforgiving hands?"

"Drink but this cup," said the Padre straight,
"And thou shalt know whose mercy bore
These aching limbs to your heathen door,
And purged my soul of its gross estate.
Drink in His name, and thou shalt see
The hidden depths of this mystery.
Drink!" and he held the cup. One blow
From the heathen dashed to the ground below
The sacred cup that the Padre bore;
And the thirsty soil drank the precious store
Of sacramental and holy wine,

That emblem and consecrated sign
And blessed symbol of blood divine.

Then, says the legend (and they who doubt
The same as heretics be accurst),

From the dry and feverish soil leaped out
A living fountain; a well-spring burst
Over the dusty and broad champaign,
Over the sandy and sterile plain,

Till the granite ribs and the milk-white stones
That lay in the valley-the scattered bones-
Moved in the river and lived again!

Such was the wonderful miracle
Wrought by the cup of wine that fell
From the hands of the pious Padre Serro,
The very reverend Junipero.

THE RÉVEILLÉ.

HARK! I hear the tramp of thousands,
And of armèd men the hum;
Lo! a nation's hosts have gathered
Round the quick alarming drum,----
Saying, "Come,

Freemen, come!

Ere your heritage be wasted," said the quick alarming drum.

"Let me of my heart take counsel:
War is not of Life the sum ;

Who shall stay and reap the harvest
When the autumn days shall come?"
But the drum

Echoed, "Come!

Death shall reap the braver harvest," said the solemnsounding drum.

"But, when won the coming battle,
What of profit springs therefrom?
What if conquest, subjugation,
Even greater ills become?"
But the drum

Answered, "Come!

You must do the sum to prove it," said the Yankeeanswering drum.

"What if, 'mid the cannons' thunder,
Whistling shot and bursting bomb,

When my brothers fall around me,

Should my heart grow

But the drum

cold and numb?"

Answered, "Come!

Better there in death united than in life a recreant,—

come!"

Thus they answered,-hoping, fearing,

Some in faith, and doubting some,

Till a trumpet-voice proclaiming

Said, "My chosen people, come!"
Then the drum

Lo! was dumb,

For the great heart of the nation, throbbing, answered,

SAUNTERING hither on listless wings,
Careless vagabond of the sea,
Little thou heedest the surf that sings,
The bar that thunders, the shale that rings,-
Give me to keep thy company.

Little thou hast, old friend, that's new;
Storms and wrecks are old things to thee;
Sick am I of these changes, too;

Little to care for, little to rue,—

I on the shore, and thou on the sea.

All of thy wanderings, far and near,
Bring thee at last to shore and me;
All of my journeyings end them here,
This our tether must be our cheer,-

I on the shore, and thou on the sea.

Lazily rocking on ocean's breast,

Something in common, old friend, have we;
Thou on the shingle seek'st thy nest,

I to the waters look for rest,

I on the shore, and thou on the sea.

ADAH ISAACS MENKEN.

[Born in New Orleans, 1839; died of consumption in Paris, August 1868. She was the daughter of a merchant, a Spanish Jew, and her maiden name was Dolores Adios Fuertos. Her father dying when she was only two years of age, she was taken by her mother to Cuba, and brought up in the family of a rich planter. This gentleman also died when she was but thirteen-her mother's death had occurred previously. He left her the bulk of his property but the will was set aside,1 and the girl of fourteen came out on the stage as a dancer,— afterwards playing various parts in tragedy and drama. She next married a Mr. John Isaacs Menken; and, changing her proper name of Adios into Adah, made up the married name by which she thereafter continued to be known. Towards 1860 she married again—Mr. Robert H. Newell, author of the Orpheus C. Kerr Papers: this alliance was terminated by a divorce. The impetuous actress made her southern sympathies, during the war of secession, rather perilously prominent; and in 1864 crossed over to England, where her performances-chiefly as "the female Mazeppa"-are fresh in many memories. Of the numbers who admired her lavish graces of face and form, few indeed would have thought that she was predestined the victim of consumption within four years. "She expressed a wish to be buried in accordance with the rites of her religion [the Jewish], with nothing to mark her resting-place but a plain piece of wood bearing the words 'Thou knowest : an inscription as sublime and profound as it is majestically simple.

:

Living a turbid and irregular life, with uncommon versatility of talent (though she showed no great gift for her professional calling as an actress), Adah Menken had a vein of intense melancholy in her character it predominates throughout her verses with a wearisome iteration of emphasis, and was by no means vamped up for mere purposes of effect. The poems contained in her single published volume are mostly unformed rhapsodies-windy and nebulous; perhaps only half intelligible to herself, and certainly more than half unintelligible to the reader. Yet there are touches of genius which place them in a very different category from many so-called poems of more regular construction and more definable deservings. They really express a life of much passion, and not a little aspiration; a life deeply sensible of loss, self-baffled, and

1 In some of the incidents-not to speak of the general tenour— of Adah Menken's career, the reader may observe a curious parallelism to that of Edgar Poe: and indeed (allowing for a great difference in poetic merit) the tone of mind and inspiration of the two writers were not without some analogy. Poe was a man and an artist in a direction of faculty wherein Adah Menken was a woman and a votary.