[7] From “The Poems of H.C.  Bunner,” copyright, 1884, 1892, 1896, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Destiny.

  Three roses, wan as moonlight, and weighed down
  Each with its loveliness as with a crown,
  Drooped in a florist’s window in a town.

  The first a lover bought.  It lay at rest,
  Like flower on flower, that night, on Beauty’s breast.

  The second rose, as virginal and fair,
  Shrunk in the tangles of a harlot’s hair.

  The third, a widow, with new grief made wild,
  Shut in the icy palm of her dead child.

T.B.  ALDRICH.

The Kings.

  A man said unto his angel: 
  “My spirits are fallen thro’,
  And I cannot carry this battle;
  O brother! what shall I do?

  “The terrible Kings are on me,
  With spears that are deadly bright,
  Against me so from the cradle
  Do fate and my fathers fight.”

  Then said to the man his angel: 
  “Thou wavering, foolish soul,
  Back to the ranks!  What matter
  To win or to lose the whole,

  “As judged by the little judges
  Who hearken not well, nor see? 
  Not thus, by the outer issue,
  The Wise shall interpret thee.

  “Thy will is the very, the only,
  The solemn event of things;
  The weakest of hearts defying
  Is stronger than all these Kings.

  “Tho’ out of the past they gather,
  Mind’s Doubt and bodily Pain,
  And pallid Thirst of the Spirit
  That is kin to the other twain,

  “And Grief, in a cloud of banners,
  And ringletted Vain Desires,
  And Vice with the spoils upon him
  Of thee and thy beaten sires,

  “While Kings of eternal evil
  Yet darken the hills about,
  Thy part is with broken sabre
  To rise on the last redoubt;

  “To fear not sensible failure,
  Nor covet the game at all,
  But fighting, fighting, fighting,
  Die, driven against the wall!”

L.I.  GUINEY.

Triumph.[8]

  The dawn came in through the bars of the blind,—­
    And the winter’s dawn is gray,—­
  And said, “However you cheat your mind,
    The hours are flying away.”

  A ghost of a dawn, and pale, and weak,—­
    “Has the sun a heart,” I said,
  “To throw a morning flush on the cheek
    Whence a fairer flush has fled?”

  As a gray rose-leaf that is fading white
    Was the cheek where I set my kiss;
  And on that side of the bed all night
    Death had watched, and I on this.

  I kissed her lips, they were half apart,
    Yet they made no answering sign;
  Death’s hand was on her failing heart,
    And his eyes said, “She is mine.”

  I set my lips on the blue-veined lid,
    Half-veiled by her death-damp hair;
  And oh, for the violet depths it hid
    And the light I longed for there!