POETRY.

MADEMOISELLE RICHARDE.

BESIDE the haunted lake where Nereids seem Court ladies in a dark transfigured dream, Who were perfected in their glacial chill

By Mademoiselle Richarde, I wandered still ; Among the enchanted waters that seem green, Deep mirrors, their cold beauty's shade is seen ; A swan-like waterfall now dies, Singing its cold elegies.

• • • An air sighs without memory and lost.

The leaves are cold and seeking like a ghost.

There are sad ghosts whose living was not life,

But a small complaining, dying without strife—

A little reading by sad candlelight,

Of some unowned, uncared-for book, a slight

Rustling then, a settling down to sleep, And cold unutterable darkness deep Has soothed them, and has smoothed their eyelids fast, And they have their own resting-place at last,

Who longed for this from hopeless distances—

Poor unloved creatures whose existences Were spent upon the surface of another's Life ; the Darkness seams like their own mother's Touch ; they are so used to fireless life, so old

That they would scarcely know the grave is cold ;

But Life had so forgotten this poor Dead That Death had left them long unburied.

He had no room for them in all his grace, Though they would only need a little place : Age shrinks our hearts and makes our bodies wane

Until we seem a little child again—

But not the children that we used to be .

Blind to the heaven childish eyes can see.

• • • • • • But there are those who do not feel the cold ; And Mademoiselle Richer& was thus—both old And sharp, content to be the cold wind's butt ; A tiny spider in a gilded nut, She lived and rattled in the emptiness

Of other people's splendours, her rich dress

Had muffled her old loneliness of heart.

This was her life ; to live another's part, To come and go unheard, a ghost unseen Among the costly mirrors glacial green,.

Placed just beyond her reach, for fear that she Forget her loneliness, her image see ,

Crown concrete—not a ghost by cold airs blown ;

So each reflection blooms there but her own.

She sits at other people's tables, raises Her hands at other people's joys and praises Their cold amusements, drawing down the blinds Over her face for others' griefs, the winds

Her sole friends now—grown grey and grim as she— They have forgotten how to hear or see.

And her opinions are not her own, ' But meaningless half words by cold airs blown Through keyholes . . . words that were not meant for her ; " Madame la Duchesse said, The spring buds stir ! ' " . . .

(Madame la Duchesse, old and gold-japanned, Whirled like a typhoon over the grey land In her wide carriage, while a dead wind grieves Among those seeking ghosts, the small grey leaves.) So now, like Echo, she is soundless fleet,

Save for the little talk she can repeat,— Small whispers listened for at courtly doors . . 4

She swims across the river-dark vast floors,

To fires that seem like rococo gilt carving—

Nor ever lmows her shrunken heart is starving ; ' Till, crumbling into dust, grown blind and dumb

With age, at last she hears her sole friend come—

The Darkness, smoothing down her eyelids fast ;

And ahe gains her OWIl resting-place at last. EDITH srlwzrz.