The veriest wretch that goes shivering by
Will take a wide sweep, lest I wander too nigh;
For of all that is on or about me, I know,

There is nothing that's pure but the beautiful snow.

How strange it should be that this beautiful snow
Should fall on a sinner with nowhere to go!

How strange it would be, when the night comes again,
If the snow and the ice struck my desperate brain!

Fainting,
Freezing,

Dying alone,

Too wicked for prayer, too weak for my moan
To be heard in the crash of the crazy town,
Gone mad in its joy at the snow's coming down;
To lie and to die in my terrible woe,

With a bed and a shroud of beautiful snow!

Helpless and frail as the trampled-on snow,
Sinner, despair not - Christ stoopeth low
To rescue the soul that is lost in its sin,
And raise it to life and enjoyment again.
Groaning,
Bleeding,

Dying for thee,

The Crucified hung on the accursed tree.

His accents of mercy fall soft on my ear;

Is there mercy for me, will he heed my weak prayer?
O God, in the stream that for sinners doth flow,

Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

JAMES W. WATSON.

SISTER MADELEINE.

THE blessed hush of eventide
Over the weary city fell,

And softly pealed the vesper-bell
Across the waters dim and wide,
Breathing a sacred spell.

Across the waters wide and dim,

And through the dusty, murky street,
The chimes passed on, with silver feet:
Chords of the never-silent hymn

With which the air doth beat.

They pulsed across the silent space
Which closed the old cathedral in,
And rang remotely through the din
That still was in the market-place,
With echo faint and thin.

One of the bustling, careless throng
Listened apart, with low-bowed head;
A toiler, he, for daily bread,
What time had such to heed the song?
Why works he not instead?

A far-off look is in his eyes,
He seeth nothing that is near,
He only doth those bell-tones hear,
Soft ringing through the purple skies,
Distant, but ever dear.

Oh, happy magic of their chime!
The dreams of youth again enfold
That time-worn spirit, growing old
Too early in this alien clime,

Where hearts as snow are cold.

But fairest of the treasures sweet

By memory brought from their dim place,
Shineth the vision of a face

For angel habitations meet
In its transcendent grace.

He saw her as she used to stand,
With parted lips and lifted eyes,
Watching the wondrous sunset skies,
And pointing, with her slender hand,
Towards their changeful dyes.

Ah, what can give the world release
From under thraldom of this pain,
That life can never know again
The rapturous joy, the trust and peace
Of youth's departed train?

But not of this he thought to-night:
The happy days of long ago

Were round him, with unfaded glow;
The flowers as fresh, the skies as bright,
As those he used to know.

More deep and dark the shadows grew,
The bell's last echoes died away
Within the heavens still and gray.
The peace of night seemed sweet and new
After the toilful day.

But lo! a sudden, blinding glare

Shot upward in the northern sky; And loud and sharp rang out a cry That human seemed in its despair, The bells of Trinity,

Which but a few short hours ago
Breathed their good-night so tenderly
Over the quiet earth and sea,
And faded with the sunset glow
Peaceful exceedingly.

But now across the night they ring
With a wild terror and despair

That thrills through all the fearful air,
Till the wide heavens seem shuddering
With the impassioned prayer.

And human hearts have heard the call:
Thousands are thronging up the steep
Whereon the gray old tower doth keep
Its steadfast vigil over all

Within its shade asleep.

Too late, too late the help had come,
The flames were curling everywhere,
And, fainting in the scorching air,
The very bells at last were dumb
In uttermost despair.

But in the silence that succeeds
The sudden hushing of the bells,
One awful human cry upswells,
And not a listening heart but bleeds
For her whose fate it tells.

Alas, 't is Sister Madeleine!"

The nuns cry out, with faces pale, And then they wring their hands, and wail; For sweeter sister ne'er was seen

Beneath a convent veil.

But while the thousands held their breath,
One listener sprang with footstep light,
Pushing the crowd to left and right,
Forcing his way to fiery death,

While every cheek grew white.

He vanished through the smoke-veiled door,
And higher yet, with fearful glee,
The red flames clambered merrily,
Wrapping the lofty tower o'er
With splendor sad to see.

The abbess knelt, with ashen face

"For those two souls we cry to Thee, Through Him who died upon the tree, That Thou wilt grant to them thy grace In their extremity."

A thousand voices cried, "Amen,”-
And as in answer to the prayer
Out from the blinding, stifling glare,
Like life that wakens from the dead,
Forth came the fated pair.

Scorched, blinded, deafened, on they pressed,
The dreamer of the market-place,
Close holding in a last embrace,
Close holding 'gainst a dying breast,
That dreamed-of angel face.

Parting and pain for both were done;
Together from the stranger's strand
Peacefully passed they, hand in hand,
Before the rising of the sun,

Into the "Silent Land."

CLARE EVEREST.

LAST AND WORST.

UPON life's highway I was hastening, when
I met a trouble grim,

Whom I had often seen with other men,
But I was far from him.

He seized my arm, and with a sneering lip
Looked o'er my happy past;

With sinking heart I felt his bony grip
Clutch tight and hold me fast.

"You look," said he, "so happy and bright,

That I have come to see

Why other troubles miss you in their flight,

And what you'll do with me."

"And have you come to stay with me?" I cried, Hoping respite to win.

"Yes, I have come to stay. Your world is wide; I'm crowded where I have been."

I would not look him in the face, but turned

To take him home with me

To all my other troubles, who had spurned

His hateful company.

So he was "crowded," and with me would roam ?
I laughed with sullen glee;

At arm's length took him up the steps of home
Under my own roof-tree.

And there I clutched his scrawny neck and thin,

To thrust him in the room Where, locked and barred, Seclusion's friendly gloom.

kept my troubles, in

Grimly he looked at me with eyes that burned: "You nothing know of me;

The key on other troubles may be turned, am Poverty."

But I

Ah! soon I knew it was in vain, in vain,
No locks avail for him;

Nor double doors, nor thickly curtained pane
Could make his presence dim.

He wrote his name on all my threadbare ways,
And in my shrinking air;

He told the tale of useless shifts and stays

I made against despair;

He brushed the smile from off my sweet wife's face,
And left an anxious frown;

The fresh young joys that should my children grace
His heavy foot trod down;

He took my other troubles out, and walked
With them the public street;

Clad in my sacred sorrows, cheaply talked
With all he chanced to meet.

The hours he stretched upon the rack of days,

The days to weeks of fears;

The weeks were months, whose weary toilsome ways
Stretched out through hopeless years.

To-day I stooped to fan with eager strife
A single hope which glowed,

And 'mid the fading embers of my life
A fitful warmth bestowed.

Cheered by a spark, I turned with trembling limb

Once more the strife to wage;

But as I turned I saw my trouble grim

Linking his arm with Age.

Old age and poverty, - here end the strife!

And ye, remorseless pair,

Drape on the last, dim milestone of my life
Your banner of despair.

FRANCES EKIN ALLISON