WORDS.

The robin repeats his two musical words,
The meadow-lark whistles his one refrain;
And steadily, over and over again,
The same song swells from a hundred birds.

Bobolink, chickadee, blackbird and jay, Thrasher and woodpecker, cuckoo and

wren,

Each sings its word, or its phrase, and then It has nothing further to sing or to say.

Into that word, or that sweet little phrase, All there may be of its life must crowd; And lulling and liquid, or hoarse and loud, It breathes out its burden of joy and praise.

A little child sits in his father's door,

Chatting and singing with careless tongue;

A thousand beautiful words are sung,

And he holds unuttered a thousand more.

Words measure power; and they measure thine;

Greater art thou in thy prattling moods

Than all the singers of all the woods; They are brutes only, but thou art divine.

Words measure destiny. Power to declare Infinite ranges of passion and thought Holds with the infinite only its lot,Is of eternity only the heir.

Words measure life, and they measure its joy! Thou hast more joy in thy childish years Than the birds of a hundred tuneful

spheres,

So-sing with the beautiful birds, my boy!

SLEEPING AND DREAMING.

I softly sink into the bath of sleep: With eyelids shut, I see around me close The mottled, violet vapors of the deep, That wraps me in repose.

I float all night in the ethereal sea
That drowns my pain and weariness in

balm,

Careless of where its currents carry me, Or settle into calm.

That which the ear can hear is silent all; But, in the lower stillness which I reach, Soft whispers call me, like the distant fall Of waves upon the beach.

Now like the mother who with patient care Has soothed to rest her faint, o'erwearied

boy,

My spirit leaves the couch, and seeks the air For freedom and for joy.

Drunk up like vapors by the morning sun The past and future rise and disappear; And times and spaces gather home, and run Into a common sphere.

My youth is round me, and the silent tomb
Has burst to set its fairest prisoner free,
And I await her in the dewy gloom
Of the old trysting tree.

I mark the flutter of her snowy dress,
I hear the tripping of her fairy feet,
And now, pressed closely in a pure caress,
With ardent joy we meet.

I tell again the story of my love,

I drink again her lip's delicious wine,

And, while the same old stars look down above,

Her eyes look up to mine.

I dream that I am dreaming, and I

start;

Then dream that nought so real comes

in dreams;

Then kiss again to reassure my heart

That she is what she seems.