I know in its dusky rooms
  Are treasures rich and rare;
The spoil of Eastern looms,
  And whatever of bright and fair
Painters divine have caught and won
  From the vault of Italy’s air: 
White gods in Phidian stone
  People the haunted glooms;
And the song of immortal singers
Like a fragrant memory lingers,
  I know, in the echoing rooms.

But nothing of these, my soul! 
 Nor castle, nor treasures, nor skies,
Nor the waves of the river that roll
 With a cadence faint and sweet
 In peace by its marble feet—­
Nothing of these is the goal
 For which my whole heart sighs. 
’Tis the pearl gives worth to the shell—­
 The pearl I would die to gain;
For there does my lady dwell,
My love that I love so well—­
 The Queen whose gracious reign
 Makes glad my Castle in Spain.

Her face so pure and fair
 Sheds light in the shady places,
And the spell of her girlish graces
 Holds charmed the happy air. 
A breath of purity
 Forever before her flies,
And ill things cease to be
 In the glance of her honest eyes. 
Around her pathway flutter,
 Where her dear feet wander free
 In youth’s pure majesty,
 The wings of the vague desires;
But the thought that love would utter
 In reverence expires.

Not yet! not yet shall I see
 That face which shines like a star
 O’er my storm-swept life afar,
Transfigured with love for me. 
Toiling, forgetting, and learning
With labor and vigils and prayers,
 Pure heart and resolute will,
 At last I shall climb the hill
And breathe the enchanted airs
Where the light of my life is burning
 Most lovely and fair and free,
Where alone in her youth and beauty,
And bound by her fate’s sweet duty,
 Unconscious she waits for me.

Sister Saint Luke

She lived shut in by flowers and trees
 And shade of gentle bigotries. 
On this side lay the trackless sea,
On that the great world’s mystery;
But all unseen and all unguessed
They could not break upon her rest. 
The world’s far splendors gleamed and flashed,
Afar the wild seas foamed and dashed;
But in her small, dull Paradise,
Safe housed from rapture or surprise,
Nor day nor night had power to fright
The peace of God that filled her eyes.

New and Old.

Miles Keogh’s Horse

On the bluff of the Little Big-Horn,
 At the close of a woful day,
Custer and his Three Hundred
 In death and silence lay.

Three Hundred to three Thousand! 
 They had bravely fought and bled;
For such is the will of Congress
 When the White man meets the Red.

The White men are ten millions,
 The thriftiest under the sun;
The Reds are fifty thousand,
 And warriors every one.