And piteous look which they gave.

"This collar of freedom must win you ap

plause,"

She said, "for all by it may see,

won't suffer me.

JOHN.

Yes, but Denmark, DoN, and Poland, are commercially as no land,

cause,

How grateful a nation can be.

stops my trade.

True, the CZAR did Poland smother; Prussia's Monarch robbed his brother:

chain,

Lest freedom your ruin should be, They never can make of you chattels again This collar declares you are free.

"You are free to submit, you are free to obey, You are free, if submissive, to live;

And you have the freedom to work for such pay

As the white man may grudgingly give.

ers blockade.

From the Shilling Magazine.
LADY MAY'S LOVER.

THE quiet autumn of my life has come,
A sober eventide, with yet some gleams
Of mellowed gold, of smiles serenely sweet,
Some tender memories of days now dead,
Some tranquil present joys, some future hopes
For here, more for hereafter, and my days
Flow calmly on beneath God's loving eye.

And I, like one who after travelling long
Has reached a high hill-top, and turns to gaze
Upon the route now traversed, pause at times
With retrospective eye, and wondering see
Clearly set out before me on the plain
The landmarks that have each a tale to tell
Of fears, hopes, passions, aspirations high,
Dangers, despairs, sick faintings by the way,
Bold risings up unvanquished.

And 'mid all, Clearer than all, deeper, more bright, more dear

More dear a thousandfold!-rises a shape,
The image of my young life's one young love.
I cannot tell when first I saw her face.
Hubert and I- we were young writers both,
Striving to earn our crust, because we knew
The homes we left had only bread enough
To feed the helpless ones, while we had hands
And hearts and heads- -or so, at least, we
hoped

(Not without reason, as the event declared)
To win our own, and honour further on,
The first stage passed. - Hubert and I, I say,
Were wont at times, when work was slack, or
when

The press of it had worn us, to go forth
And saunter in the Parks, to watch the tide
Of brighter, idler, richer, prouder lives
Than ours, glide smoothly past.

I know not why; but something in her eyes Thus wrought on mine, and in her full-lipped mouth

Pouting, yet pensive, like a child aggrieved,
Taking its wrongs in sorrow, not in wrath.
Later I knew how this same pensive mouth
Could smile, and how those tender, shaded
eyes

Could pierce a soul that now they only stirred
With an emotion deep but undefined.
And thus the time wore on. Hubert and I
Were struggling upwards, seeing day by day
Our efforts bursting into vigorous bud
That promised early bloom and mellow fruit,
And still wrought till the promise of our spring
Summer fulfilled. And then the day arrived
When the world's sun shone brightly forth and
smiled

Upon our new-plucked laurels, and we found
The world's hand offered us, its massive doors
Flung wide on well-oiled hinges to admit
Those whose good wits had struggled long to find
The Open Sesame.

The world does well
To crown success well wrought for. I, for one,
When hardest pushed and most despondent, felt
I had no right to claim its smiles until

I had deserved them. For the world lacks time
To spy out " modest merit," and to see
A man's end in his crude beginning - he
Must show his work complete, and not expect
The world to follow patient every step
Of his slow progress.

Hubert held aloof,
Not from false pride, but from an unnamed fear
That this bright unknown world had unknown

When face to face I met her; when I bowed
With leaping heart before her; when I heard
The liquid music of her tongue, that brought
Again that quick up-welling of the tears
To my hot lids, so full its accents seemed
Of some unfathomed depth of unknown power
To move the under-currents of my soul
That heard and thrilled and sought to under-

stand.

We talked together. I remember she Spoke little of my books, but with a smile And simultaneous blush- she never spoke

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1

With earnestness, and very seldom smiled
Without so blushing - those blest lips of hers
Repeated from the last a certain passage
That I had written from the inmost depths
Of my heart's core one day when I had seen
Her pass before me, and had turned away
To ease my soul by pouring forth in words
Some portion of its fulness. How I longed
To tell her so! but I as soon had dared
To kiss her hand, or take her glove, or look
Or breathe a word of worship. So I smiled
And murmured incoherent words, and looked
And felt a fool, and loathed myself and stole
A trembling glance to see if she should smile,
Derisive of my boorishness. But she,
Sweet soul, had never such a cruel thought.
She, 'mid the stately calm that fenced her
round,

Was yet as shy as any village maid,
And though her birth and training made her

school

And rarely chanced it that a week went by
Without our meeting. In the early days
Of our acquaintance, I was wont to speak
Of her to Hubert. Steadily I spoke,
Stilling my pulses, tutoring my voice,
To cheat him and myself into the thought
That naught of passion tinged the reverence
With which I viewed her. Hubert never
smiled,

Nor never questioned: silently he heard:
Until at last, one night, when I came home,
My heart so brimful of her that I spoke
Less guardedly, perchance, than was my wont,
Or some thing in my face or in my voice
Betrayed me, Hubert shook his head and
sighed.

That silenced me. Thenceforth between us rose
The barrier of a secret. 'Twas the first
And last, and only one; but there it stood;
And in the intercourse of every day,
We who had lived as brothers, inly felt
The unacknowledged pain of such reserve,
And felt it all the more that either strove
To disavow it, and to seem as though
Unconscious of the gulf between us fixed.

Upon the sloping banks of quiet Thames,
Beneath the hill that's crowned by pleasant
Sheen,

A house there stood amid its garden fair
As those of paradise.

This Eden bloomed
For Lady May. For often, when the heat
And throng of crowded rooms had paled her
cheek,

Or that her tender nature craved to be

Amid the blush of flowers, and 'neath the shade
Of June-leaved trees and song of nightingales,
The Earl, her father, and her mother took
Their darling for a summer holiday
To the Richmond villa. There, amid a knot
Of chosen guests, the days and nights passed
Truly like those of Eden. Lady May
Was privileged to ask whatever guests
It pleased her to this quiet nest, o'er which
She held a smiling sway, for it was called
Always "May's villa" by her parents, who
Declared themselves, like others, visitors.
The pretty fiction pleased her and pleased
them;

And oh! how it enraptured me, when she,
One night as we were parting, left her hand
An instant within mine the while she said -
"On Saturday we go to spend a week
At Richmond, at my villa; you will come?"
I went, of course. I felt that I was mad,
For I had no illusions; never dreamt
That I could e'er be aught to Lady May
Than just what I was then, a sort of friend :
Yet hardly that- for though she always sought
To bridge, or hide, the abyss between us
stretched,

I never could forget it, and I felt
The tenure of my footing lay in such
Continued recollection of myself;
Not in small points and trifling etiquettes,
Nor yet in aught befitting to a man
Who holds his manliness and dignity
As things inherent to his state, and deems
He only merits the regard he wins
From those above him in the social scale
While he maintains them but in subtle points
Which lie beyond the certain boundary
That marks each grade upon that social scale.
I knew this always; and I also knew
That-though herself unconscious of the
thought

I carefully kept dormant, should she wake
To my idolatry awake to know
My humble homage was the love that man
Bestows on woman; just the love that Eve
Inspired in Adam the patrician blood
Would lift itself against me, make her feel
As I had injured her with treachery
Had stolen into her confidence to take
Presumptuous advantage of the place
Her kindness had accorded.

This I knew,
And knew each day I saw her must increase
Tenfold the love, tenfold the agony,
Tenfold the hopelessness and yet I went!
I went, thinking it madness: for my youth,
Starved of youth's joys by manhood's work
and care,

Hungering for happiness, athirst for love-
Sought them alone, deemed them the one reward
Of honourable toil and hours well spent
In manly labour, spurning silken ease
No less than vice:- I went, knowing that these
Were to be shown me, made to float before
My dazzled sight, like ignes fatuii,
But never to be tasted.

I had yet

To learn the deeper secret that the years
Slowly unfold. How a great love becomes
Its own reward; how its most holy flaine
Warms, purifies, expands the heart and brain;
Makes a man godlike with the sacred force
And elevation it accords to him;

How, the love-lesson learned, the love thrown back

By one extends into a wider sphere,
And takes the world into its great embrace.

My lady! O my darling! O my love! How, as those days I spent beside thee float Back on my memory, my heart awakes And makes them present! all the joys alive, The pain so deadened by Time's mellowing hand That all my thoughts of thee are tender-sweet As dying June days, even song of thrush, Moonlight on water, flow'rs that through the

night

Unseen waft odours, cooing of the doves
In summer woods! My blessing on thee,
sweet!

The joy was all thy giving; all the pain
Was born of circumstance. I thank my God,
No thought of thee is tinged with bitterness;
My memory has never to record

A frown of thine, a word less kindly toned,
A hand withdrawn. Across the gulf of Time
I look upon thee as the men of old

Looked on the angels sent with messages
Direct from God.

If I have spoken aught
That hath brought courage to a fainting heart,
Hath waked a soul to higher, holier aims,
Hath given light in darkness, marked the way
That leads to Heaven 'twas thou, beloved!

Amid her high-born guests, distinguished me Above them all. But in those very acts Was marked unconsciously the constant sense of the barrier between us making love 'Twixt her and me a possibility

Not once to be admitted. In her mind

She never shaped such thought; but there it lay

A dormant embryo one word of mine
Might wake and fashion. So I held my breath
To keep it sleeping and unshapen still.

And so 'twixt Heaven and Hell five days passed by,

Five days and nights. Into what little space
May the concentrate essence of a life
Be Love-condensed!

The sixth day, Lady May
And I were in the garden. 'Neath a beech
That waved the verdant layers of its boughs
With soft upheaving o'er a rustic seat

I sat beside her. While she grouped her flow

ers,

She had bid me read to her St. Agnes' Eve, And, as I read, the hand that held the bloom Drooped on her knees, and all her angel face Grew lucent with the light of her sweet soul.

Just so unto the eyes of Porphyro
Had Madeline appeared. Ah, Porphyro,
Thy heart's own instinct to thy heart had told
The boldness of thy venture would approve
Rather than mar thy cause with Madeline!
She loved thee, Porphyro; and women call
That noble courage in the man they love
Which in the unloved were basest insolence

The mildest Christian maid could scarce forgive
To see her thus, and I alone with her -
And all the summer in the balmy air-
And my life's summer in its fullest prime-
And I to keep my voice untremulous,
My eyes upon the book my heaving heart
From bursting into eloquence of love! -

I to refrain from falling at her feet,
And telling her how all of me was given
Unto her solely-how my heart and brain
Were by the love of her enlarged, enriched,
Ennobled and unfolded, - she my Moon,
I her Endymion, worshipping with pain

filled!

Sometimes I wonder how I ever kept
My heart in silence; never by a word,
A look, a tremor of the hand, a sigh,

Betrayed the passion that filled all my being!

What might have been I know not: but what

was

I must remember to my dying day.

A step came down the path - a buoyant

step,

I could not sleep again beneath the roof That sheltered him- her lover—so I feigned An urgent summons calling me away.

Had it been possible I would have fled Upon the instant, not again to see That love-look on her face. I almost wished She knew I loved her, that her tender soul Might bid her veil it, and replace its light With decent pity for the man who went Forth from her presence with a dying heart Into an empty world.

Did she divine Aught of my agony? I sometimes feel Nigh sure she guessed it: for I saw a change Come o'er her face- -a quick inquiry spring Up to her eyes as mine encountered them, And then they fell, and then a troubled flushO Heaven! how diff'rent to the blush that

burned

My life's life out anon!-distressed her face,
And her voice trembled.
Then I turned to go,
And closed the door between us, and outside
I paused to man myself ere going forth

With dying heart into the empty world.

The handle turned full softly: then appeared Her face, suffused with a pitying pain That brought my soul before her on its knees To kiss her garment's hem.

She spoke my name: "Consuelo wants to follow you. It seems And here she smiled a little tender smile "You've made him faithless to me: since his love

Is yours now more than mine, he shall be

yours;

pressed

Him silently into my arms and turned, And the door closed, and I was left alone.