It also contained several minor differences in reading from the original. Where considered improvements, they have been adopted; but as a poet's first thoughts are often his best thoughts, I have taken the liberty to follow original "copy" where it seemed to chime best with the patter of the rain. I was the more emboldened to do this by the fact that poets are proverbially unsafe revisers of their own work. William Cullen Bryant edited the life later days has out of many of his younger passages, while Tennyson i retouched the spirit and force out of some of his carlier work.

A DEED AND A WORD,

A LITTLE Stream had lost its way
Amid the grass and fern;
A passing stranger scooped a well,
Where weary men might turn;
He walled it in, and hung with care
A ladle at the brink;

He thought not of the deed he did,
But judged that all might drink.
He passed again, and lol the well,
By summer never dried,

Had cooled ten thousand parching tongues,
And saved a life beside.

A nameless man, amid a crowd

That thronged the daily mart,
Let fall a word of hope and love,
Unstudied, from the heart;
A whisper on the tumult thrown,
A transitory breath-

It raised a brother from the dust,
It saved a soul from death.

O germ! O fount! O word of love!
O thought at random cast!

Ye were but little at the first,
But mighty at the last.

CHARLES MACKAY.

1 Here, on reading the note in manuscript, Mr. Francis F. Browne interjected the query, "Is it a fact?" and quoted the following verses from Gautier, as translated by Austin Dobson:

"O Poet! then forbear

The loosely-sandalled verse:
Choose rather thou to wear
The buskin, straight and terse.

"Leave to the tyro's hand

The limp and shapeless style;
See that thy form demand
The labor of the file."

!

THE KING'S PICTURE.

THE king from the council chamber
Came, weary and sore of heart;
He called to Iliff, the painter,

And spoke to him thus apart:
I'm sickened of the faces ignoble,
Hypocrites, cowards, and knaves;
I shall shrink in their shrunken measure,
Chief slave in a realm of slaves.

Paint me a true man's picture,
Gracious, and wise, and good.
Dowered with the strength of heroes
And the beauty of womanhood.
It shall hang in my inmost chamber,
That, thither when I retire,

It may fill my soul with its grandeur,
"And warm it with sacred fire."

So the artist painted the picture,
And it hung in the palace hall;
Never a thing so lovely

Had garnished the stately wall.
The king, with head uncovered,
Gazed on it with rapt delight,

Till it suddenly wore strange meaning
Baffled his questioning sight.

For the form was the supplest courtier's,
Perfect in every limb;

But the bearing was that of the henchman
Who filled the flagons for him;

The brow was a priest's, who pondered
His parchment early and late;
The eye was the wandering minstrel's,
Who sang at the palace gate.

The lips, half sad and half mirthful,
With a fitful trembling grace,

Were the very lips of a woman

He had kissed in the market-place;
But the smiles which her curves transfigured,
As a rose with its shimmer of dew,
Was the smile of the wife who loved him,
Queen Ethelyn, good and true.

Then, "Learn, O King," said the artist,
"This truth that the picture tells

That in every form of the human

Some hint of the highest dwells;

-

That, scanning each living temple
For the place that the veil is thin,
We may gather by beautiful glimpses
The form of the God within."

HELEN B. BOSTWICK.

UNSPOKEN WORDS.

THE kindly words that rise within the heart,
And thrill it with their sympathetic tone,
But die ere spoken, fail to play their part,
And claim a merit that is not their own.
The kindly word unspoken is a sin,

A sin that wraps itself in purest guise,

And tells the heart that, doubting, looks within,
That not in speech, but thought, the virtue lies.

But 't is not so; another heart may thirst

For that kind word, as Hagar in the wild-
Poor banished Hagar!-prayed a well might burst
From out the sand to save her parching child.
And loving eyes that cannot see the mind

Will watch the unexpected movement of the lips.

Ah! can you let its cutting silence wind

Around that heart and scathe it like a whip?

Unspoken words like treasures in a mine
Are valueless until we give them birth;

Like unfound gold their hidden beauties shine,
Which God has made to bless and gild the earth.
How sad 't would be to see the master's hand

Strike glorious notes upon a voiceless lute!
But oh, what pain when, at God's own command,
A heart-string thrills with kindness, but is mute!

Then hide it not, the music of the soul,

Dear sympathy expressed with kindly voice, But let it like a shining river roll

To deserts dry-to hearts that would rejoice.

Oh, let the symphony of kindly words

Sound for the poor, the friendless, and the weak, And He will bless you! He who struck the chords Will strike another when in turn you seek.

IT IS COMMON.

So are the stars and the arching skies,
So are the smiles in the children's eyes:
Common the life-giving breath of the spring;
So are the songs which the wild birds sing,
Blessed be God, they are common.

Common the grass in its glowing green;
So is the water's glistening sheen:
Common the springs of love and mirth;
So are the holiest gifts of earth.

Common the fragrance of rosy June;
So is the generous harvest moon,
So are the towering, mighty hills,
So are the twittering, trickling rills.

Common the beautiful tints of the fall;
So is the sun which is over all:
Common the rain, with its pattering feet;
So is the bread which we daily eat,
Blessed be God, it is common.

So is the sea in its wild unrest,

Kissing forever the earth's brown breast;
So is the voice of undying prayer,
Evermore piercing the ambient air.

So unto all are the "promises" given,
So unto all is the hope of heaven:
Common the rest from the weary strife;
So is the life which is after life,

Blessed be God, it is common.

RECIPE FOR A POEM.

TAKE for your hero some thoroughbred scamp,Miner, or pilot, or jockey, or tramp,

Gambler (of course), drunkard, bully, and cheat, Facile princeps, in way of deceit ;

So fond of the ladies, he 's given to bigamy (Better, perhaps, if you make it polygamy); Pepper his talk with the raciest slang,

Culled from the haunts of his rude, vulgar gang; Seasoned with blasphemy - lard him with curses; Serve him up hot in your "dialect

verses

Properly dished, he'd excite a sensation,
And tickle the taste of our delicate nation.

Old Mother English has twaddle enough;
Give us a language that 's ready and tough!
Who cares, just now, for a subject Miltonian?
Who is n't bored by a style Addisonian?
Popular heroes must wear shabby clothes!
What if their diction is cumbered with oaths!
That's but a feature of life Occidental,
Really, at heart, they are pious and gentle.
Think, for example, how solemn and rich is

The sermon we gather from dear "Little Breeches "I
Is n't it charming that sweet baby talk

Of the urchin who "chawed " ere he fairly could walk?

Sure, 't is no wonder bright spirits above
Singled him out for their errand of love!
I suppose I'm a "fogy," not up to the age,
But I can't help recalling an earlier stage,
When a real inspiration (divinus afflatus)
Could be printed without any saving hiatus;
When humor was decently shrouded in rhyme,

As suited the primitive ways of the time,

And we all would have blushed had we dreamed of the rules

Which are taught us to-day in our "dialect" schools.

It may be all right, though I find it all wrong,

This queer prostitution of talent and song;
Perhaps, in our market, gold sells at a loss, -
And the public will pay better prices for dross,

Well! 't were folly to row 'gainst a tide that has turned,
And the lesson that 's set us has got to be learned;
But I'll make one more desperate pull to be free
Ere I swallow the brood of that "Heathen Chinee."
New York Evening Post.