How the sumac banners bent, dripping as if with blood,
  What a mournful presence brooded upon the slumbrous air;
A mocking-bird screamed noisily in the depths of the silent wood,
  And in my heart was crying the raven of despair,
Thrilling my being through with its desolate, desolate cry—­
“It were better to die, it were better to die.”

The white dawn follows the darkness; out of the years’ decay
  Shineth the golden fire that gildeth the autumn with light;
From another’s sin and loss, cometh this good to me,
  By another’s fall am I raised to this blissful height. 
“Let me be humble,” said my heart, as from her sweet lips fell,
“Let a prayer for him arise, with the sound of our marriage bell.”

THE FAIREST LAND.

’Twas a bleak dull moor that stretched before
The low stone porch of the cottage door,
And standing there was youth and maid,
He for long journeying seemed arrayed,
And the sunset flamed in the burnished west,
And a proud throb beat in the young man’s breast,
As he whispered, “Sweet, will you come to me
In that fairer land beyond the sea?”

“The wonderful western land; in dreams
I have seen its prairies green, and gleams
Of its shining waterfalls, valleys fair,
And a voice in my dreams has called me there
Where man is a man, and not a clod,
And must bend the knee to none but God. 
A home will I make for thee and me
In that fairer land beyond the sea.”

“But the cruel seas where the fated ships
Go down to their doom”—­But he kissed the lips—­
The trembling lips, till they smiled again,
And his bright hopes cheered her heart’s dull pain,
And she laid her head on his hopeful breast,
And looked with him to the glowing west,
And said, “I will come, I will come to thee
To that fairer land beyond the seas.”

And the crimson light changed to daffodil—­
To ashen gray, but they stood there still,
And high o’er the west shone the evening star
As still he pictured that home afar—­
“The peace and the bliss our own at last
When this dreary parting all is past,
When my heart’s dear love, you come to me
In that fairer land beyond the sea.”

So he sailed; but saddest ’tis alway
Not for those who go, but for those who stay;
And her sweet eyes gathered a shadow dim
As days went by with no news of him,
And weeks and months, but at last it came,
As the gray moor shone with the sunset flame
Her quick eyes glanced the strange lines o’er,
Then she fell like dead on the cottage floor.

’Twas a stranded ship on a rocky coast,
One true heart brave, when hope was lost,
How he toiled till all the shore had gained,
And only a baby form remained
On ship, how he breasted the surging tide
With Death a-wrestling side by side,
How he lifted the child to its mother’s knee,
As a great wave washed him out to sea.