THE FIRST KISS

She sat where he had left her all alone,

With head bent back, and eyes through love on flame, And neck half flushed with most delicious shame, With hair disordered, and with loosened zone; She sat, and to herself made tender moan, As yet again in thought her lover came,

And caught her by her hands and called her name, And sealed her body as her soul his own.

The June moon-stricken twilight, warm, and fair, Closed round her where she sat 'neath voiceless trees, Full of the wonder of triumphant prayer,

And sense of unimagined ecstasies

Which must be hers, she knows, yet knows not why;
But feels thereof his kiss the prophecy.

BRIDAL EVE

Half robed, with gold hair drooped o'er shoulders white,
She sits as one entranced, with eyes that gaze
Upon the mirrored beauties of her face;

And through the distances of dark and light
She hears faint music of the coming night;
She hears the murmurs of receding days;
Her future life is veiled in such a haze
As hides, on sultry morns, the sun from sight.

Upon the brink of imminent change she stands,
Glad, yet afraid to look beyond the verge;
She starts, as at the touch of unseen hands;

Love's music grows half anthem and half dirge.
Strange sounds and shadows round her spirit fall,
Yet to herself she stranger seems than all.

THE OID CHURCHYARD OF BONCHURCH

(This old churchyard has been for many years slipping toward the sea, which it is expected will ultimately engulf it)

The churchyard leans to the sea with its dead

It leans to the sea with its dead so long.

Do they hear, I wonder, the first bird's song,
When the winter's anger is all but fled,

The high, sweet voice of the west wind,
The fall of the warm, soft rain,
When the second month of the year
Puts heart in the earth again?

Do they hear, through the glad April weather,
The green grasses waving above them?

Do they think there are none left to love them,
They have lain for so long there, together?

Do they hear the note of the cuckoo,

The cry of gulls on the wing,

The laughter of winds and waters,
The feet of the dancing Spring?

Do they feel the old land slipping seaward,
The old land, with its hills and its graves,
As they gradually slide to the waves

With the wind blowing on them from leeward?
Do they know of the change that awaits them,
The sepulchre vast and strange?

Do they long for days to go over,

And bring that miraculous change?

Or they love, perhaps, their night with no moonlight,
With no starlight, no dawn to its gloom,

And they sigh-"'Neath the snow, or the bloom

Of the wild things that wave from our night,

We are warm, through winter and summer;

We hear the winds blow, and say

"The storm-wind blows over our heads,

But we, here, are out of its way.'

Do they mumble low, one to another,
With a sense that the waters that thunder
Shall ingather them all, draw them under,
"Ah! how long to our moving, brother?
How long shall we quietly rest here,
In graves of darkness and ease?
The waves, even now, may be on us,
To draw us down under the seas!"

Do they think 'twill be cold when the waters
That they love not, that neither can love them,
Shall eternally thunder above them?

Have they dread of the sea's shining daughters,
That people the bright sea-regions

And play with the young sea-kings?

Have they dread of their cold embraces,
And dread of all strange sea-things?

But their dread or their joy-it is bootless: They shall pass from the breast of their mother;

They shall lie low, dead brother by brother,

In a place that is radiant and fruitless,

And the folk that sail over their heads

In violent weather

Shall come down to them, haply, and all

They shall lie there, together.

FROM FAR

"O Love, come back, across the weary way

Thou wentest yesterday

Dear Love, come back!"

"I am too far upon my way to turn:

Be silent, hearts that yearn

Upon my track."

"O Love! Love! Love! sweet Love, we are undone,

If thou indeed be gone

Where lost things are."

"Beyond the extremest sea's waste light and noise, As from Ghost-land, my voice

Is borne afar."

"O Love, what was our sin, that we should be Forsaken thus by thee?

So hard a lot!"

"Upon your hearts my hands and lips were setMy lips of fire-and yet,

Ye knew me not."

"Nay, surely, Love! We knew thee well, sweet Love! Did we not breathe and move

Within thy light?"

"Ye did reject my thorns who wore my roses;

Now darkness closes

Upon your sight."

"O Love! stern Love! be not implacable.

We loved thee, Love, so well!

Come back to us."

"To whom, and where, and by what weary way That I went yesterday,

Shall I come thus?"

"O weep, weep, weep! for Love, who tarried long With many a kiss and song,

Has taken wing.

"No more he lightens in our eyes like fire;

He heeds not our desire,

Or songs we sing."

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

[BORN at 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, on November 30, 1850: the only child of Thomas Stevenson, civil engineer, and his wife Margaret Isabella, youngest daughter of the Rev. James Balfour of Colinton. His father, who with two elder brothers, David and Alan, conducted the business of harbour and lighthouse engineers founded by their distinguished father, Robert Stevenson, destined him from the first for the family profession. But weak health and a strong bias of nature foiled this purpose and directed him to the career of letters. His education was irregular, at private schools, at the Edinburgh Academy, under private tutors, and at the University of Edinburgh. For twenty years after 1873, in spite of nervous, arterial, and pulmonary troubles, he plied nearly every known mode of the literary art. Partly from ill health and partly from choice, he was much of a traveller. The order of the main incidents of his life as a writer is as follows:-1874-9: lived chiefly at Edinburgh, with occasional visits to London and long sojourns at Barbizon, Grez, and Paris: published The Inland Voyage, Travels with a Donkey, Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes, and New Arabian Nights.-187980: travelled to and returned from California, where he was married to Mrs. Fanny van de Grift Osbourne.—1880-4: passed two summers in Scotland and two winters at Davos, a few months at Marseilles, and a year at Hyères: published Treasure Island, Virginibus Puerisque, Familiar Studies of Men and Books, and The Silverado Squatters.-1884-7: settled at Bournemouth, living invalid life: published A Child's Garden of Verses, Prince Otto, The Dynamiters, Jekyll and Hyde, Kidnapped, The Merry Men, Underwoods, and Memories and Portraits: wrote plays in collaboration with W. E. Henley.-1887-90: sailed with his family to America; wintered at Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks; starting from San Francisco in the spring of 1888, took three successive ocean voyages among the Pacific Islands: published Ballads, The Master of Ballantrae, and Letter to the Rev. Doctor Hyde.-1890-4: built and settled at "Vailima," island of Upolu, Samoa: published In the South Seas, The Wrecker, A Footnote to History, Island Nights' Entertainments, Catriona, Across the Plains, The Ebb-Tide. Died suddenly December 4, 1894.— Songs of Travel and the unfinished novels Weir of Hermiston and St. Ives were published posthumously.]

"Poetry," wrote Walter Savage Landor, "was always my amusement, prose my study and business." Much the same