They cleft her golden ringlets through:

The Loving is the Dying.

She felt the scimitar gleam down,
And met it from beneath,

With smile more bright in victory

Than any sword from sheath,Which flashed across her lip serene, Most like the spirit-light between The darks of life and death.

Ingemisco, ingemisco!
From the convent on the sea,
Now it sweepeth solemnly
As over wood and over lea,
Bodily the wind did carry
The great altar of St. Mary,

And the fifty tapers paling o'er it,

And the Lady Abbess stark before it,

And the weary nuns, with hearts that faintly

Beat along their voices saintly

Ingemisco, ingemisco!

Dirge for abbess laid in shroud,

Sweepeth o'er the shroudless Dead,

Page or lady, as we said,

With the dews upon her head,

All as sad if not as loud!

Ingemisco, ingemisco!

Is ever a lament begun

By any mourner under sun,

Which, ere it endeth, suits but one?

THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY.

Go thy ways. I did not think to have shed one tear for thee, but thou hast made me water my plants spite of my heart.

WITCH OF EDMONTON.

PART FIRST

“ ONORA, Onora ”—her mother is callingShe sits at the lattice and hears the dew falling Drop after drop from the sycamores laden

With dew as with blossom, and calls home the maiden

"Night cometh, Onora."

She looks down the garden-walk caverned with trees, To the limes at the end, where the green arbor is"Some sweet thought or other may keep were it found her,

While, forgot or unseen in the dreamlight around herNight cometh, Onora!"

She looks up the forest whose alleys shoot on,
Like the mute minster-aisles, when the anthem is done,
And the choristers, sitting with faces aslant,

Feel the silence to consecrate more than the chant-
Onora, Onora!"

And forward she looketh across the brown heath

Onora, art coming?"-What is it she seeth? Nought, nought, but the gray border-stone that is wist To dilate and assume a wild shape in the mist "My daughter!"—Then over

The casement she leaneth, and as she doth so, She is 'ware of her little son playing below: "Now where is Onora ?"—He hung down his head And spake not, then answering blushed scarlet-red,"At the tryst with her lover."

But his mother was wroth. In a sternness quoth she, "As thou play'st at the ball, art thou playing with me?

When we know that her lover to battle is gone, And the saints know above that she loveth but one, And will ne'er wed another ?"

Then the boy wept aloud. 'Twas a fair sight, yet sad,
To see the tears run down the sweet blooms he had:
He stamped with his foot, said "The saints know
lied,

Because truth that is wicked, is fittest to hide!
Must I utter it, mother?"

In his vehement childhood he hurried within,
And knelt at her feet as in prayer against sin;
But a child at a prayer never sobbeth as he—
"Oh! she sits with the nun of the brown rosarie,
At nights in the ruin!

T

"The old convent ruin the ivy rots off,

Where the owl hoots by day, and the toad is sun

proof;

Where no singing-birds build; and the trees gaunt

and gray,

As in stormy sea-coasts, appear blasted one way— But is this the wind's doing?

"A nun in the east wall was buried alive,

Who mocked at the priest, when he called her to

shrive,

And shrieked such a curse as the stone took her breath, The old abbess fell backward and swooned unto death With an ave half-spoken.

"I tried once to pass it, myself and my hound, Till, as fearing the lash, down he shivered to ground! A brave hound, my mother! a brave hound, ye wot! And the wolf thought the same, with his fangs at her throat,

In the pass of the Brocken.

"At dawn and at eve, mother, who sitteth there,
With the brown rosarie never used for a prayer ?
Stoop low, mother, low! If we went there to see,
What an ugly great hole in that east wall must be
At dawn and at even!

"Who meet there, my mother, at dawn and at even? Who meet by that wall, never looking to heaven? O sweetest my sister, what doeth with thee,

The ghost of a nun with a brown rosarie,
And a face turned from heaven?

"St. Agnes o'erwatcheth my dreams; and erewhile I have felt through mine eyelids, the warmth of her smile

But last night, as a sadness like pity came o'er her, She whispered-'Say two prayers at dawn for Onora! The Tempted is sinning.''

Onora, Onora! they heard her not comingNot a step on the grass, not a voice through the gloaming:

But her mother looked up, and she stood on the floor, Fair and still as the moonlight that came there before, And a smile just beginning!

It touches her lips-but it dares not arise

To the height of the mystical sphere of her eyes : And the large musing eyes, neither joyous nor sorry, Sing on like the angels in separate glory,

Between clouds of amber.

For the hair droops in clouds amber-colored, till stirred
Into gold by the gesture that comes with a word:
While-O soft!-her speaking is so interwound.
Of the dim and the sweet, 'tis a twilight of sound,
And floats through the chamber.

"Since thou shrivest my brother, fair mother," said she,