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"I, Eve, sad mother Of all who must live,

I, not another,

Plucked bitterest fruit to give
My friend, husband, lover.
O wanton eyes run over!
Who but I should grieve?
Cain hath slain his brother:
Of all who must die mother,
Miserable Eve!"

Thus she sat weeping,
Thus Eve, our mother,
Where one lay sleeping
Slain by his brother.
Greatest and least
Each piteous beast
To hear her voice

Forgot his joys

And set aside his feast.

The mouse paused in his walk
And dropped his wheaten stalk;
Grave cattle wagged their heads
In rumination;

The eagle gave a cry
From his cloud station;
Larks on thyme beds
Forbore to mount or sing;
Bees drooped upon the wing;
The raven perched on high
Forgot his ration;

The conies in their rock,
A feeble nation,
Quaked sympathetical;

The mocking-bird left off the mock;
Huge camels knelt as if
In deprecation;

The kind hart's tears were falling:
Chattered the wistful stork;
Dove-voices with a dying fall
Cooed desolation,

Answering grief by grief.

Only the serpent in the dust,
Wriggling and crawling,
Grinned an evil grin, and thrust
His tongue out with its fork.

CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI.
(1830-1894).

EVE AT THE FOUNTAIN.

"No distant far from thence, a murmuring sound

Of waters issued from a cave, and

spread

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Beneath whose spells thy favored votary sees

Glimpses of fairy forms and spirit eyes, And hears faint whispers, on the fancied breeze,

That have no echoes underneath the skies;

Who leadest to the chambers of his sleep

Shadows of things that time has left behind,

And minglest with his musings, wild and deep,

The thoughts which are the memories of the mind!

Spirit of beauty! who didst dip, of yore, Thy pinions in the clear Castalian springs,

And on thine own adopted islands pour Their inspiration from thy dewy wings, (The islands with their girdles of the

sea,

Betrothed to freedom and baptized by thee,)

Till the wild rising of a wilder moon Than she,-whose footsteps, when the winds were still,

Thou led'st where, lulled by evening's mystic tune,

Her shepherd slumbered on the lonely hill,

Brought up the spring-tides of a darker flood,

And drowned thine altars in a sea of blood!

Spirit of beauty! from thine eastern land,

Where rose the crescent o'er thy country's grave,

Have thy bright footsteps found another strand,

Where genius watches o'er another

wave,

And spirits of the tameless and the free Are temples for thine oracles and thee? Yes! the stern beauty of our northern isle

Is softening in the sunlight of thy smile,

And all around the land are echoes caught

Of the sweet music thou hast sweetly taught,

And to our mortal vision angel-gleams Are given by the dreamers of thy dreams;

Scrolls, in thine own high language, are unfurled,

That, with their written beauty, witch the world;

Bright secrets of the past have been unsealed,

And features, where the shroud hath lain, revealed,

And cheeks restored, without their stain of tears,

And forms, without their blight of sin

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Is present sorrow, while it mourns one gone!

No mark of memory, and no trace of hope,

(The star that looketh over through a cloud,)

No thought hath she, beneath the wide, blue cope,

Of wants ungranted,-wishes unallowed! No sigh of pain!-the pulse whose languid beat

Is low and painful, like a passing-bell, Nor fever-'larum rung, with furious heat,

From all the watch-towers of life's citadel!

These are to come!-but lo! the very form

That God had moulded with his own right hand,

Bent o'er its first young beauty, fresh

and warm,

In the "still waters" of that pleasant land!

The cheek where God had breathed, and left the trace

Of his own presence on her sinless face! The sweet, calm brow to which God's finger lent

The beauty of his angels; and the eye That-like the stainless mirror where she bent

Revealed to earth a vision of the sky! Lost Eden!-Eden, had it held but thee, Of all the flowers that grew amid its glades,

And shapes, whose more than mortal minstrelsy Stole up, at shades.

eve, amid its fragrant

When to thy mortal ear and heart were given

The far, sweet answers of the harps of heaven!

Lost Eden!-beautiful, hadst thou been all

Is lost to all, save dreamers, in their dreams!

And thou didst learn how even the voice of mirth,

In the world's bowers, is echoed by a sigh,

And none of all the fountains of the earth

Give back thine early glance of cloudless joy!

O never since, 'mid many a trace divine,

To one of all thy daughters has been given

A mirror to reflect a face like thine, And show no shadow 'twixt its wave and heaven.

And yet, for them and thee, in aftertime,

Flowed a full river, from a purer spring

Of beauty, which it sheltered in its Than ever ran through Eden, in its

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Earth learn'd strong lessons in her morning prime,

More strange than Chaos taught, When o'er contending elements the darkest veil was wrought;

The poison of the tempter's glozing tongue,

Man's disobedience and expulsion dire, The terror of the sword of fire

At Eden's portal hung,

Inferior creatures filled with savage hate,

No more at peace, no more subordinate; Man's birth in agony, man's death by crime,

The taste of life-blood, brother-spilt;
But that red stain of guilt

Sent through her inmost heart such sickening pain,

That in her path o'er ether's plain She hid her head and mourn'd, amid the planct-train.

LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY (1791-1865).

THE CURSE OF CAIN.

OH, the wrath of the Lord is a terrible thing!

Like the tempest that withers the blossoms of spring,

Like the thunder that bursts on the summer's domain,

It fell on the head of the homicide Cain.

And, lo! Like a deer in the fright of the chase,

With a fire in his heart, and a brand on his face,

He speeds him afar to the desert of Nod

A vagabond, smote by the vengeance of God!

All nature, to him, has been blasted and banned,

And the blood of a brother yet reeks on his hand;

And no vintage has grown, and no fountain has sprung,

For cheering his heart, or for cooling his tongue.

The groans of a father his slumber shall start,

And the tears of a mother shall pierce to his heart,

And the kiss of his children shall scorch him like flame,

When he thinks of the curse that hangs over his name.

And the wife of his bosom-the faithful and fair

Can mix no sweet drop in his cup of despair;

For her tender caress and her innocent breath

But stir in his soul the hot embers of death.

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