POETRY.

THE ENEMIES.

MINE enemy, who time and oft

Had smitten me with words like swords, And trampled on my answer soft, Till I too smote with angry words, Is dead, and I am fairly quit.

God give him rest. Once well away, Seeing he loved me not a whit, No heart have I to bid him stay.

And yet methinks the God who framed Both him and me had made us such, That we were scarcely to be blamed For loving not each other much.

The little good there was in me,

It was not his, nor in his way ; His good I haply might not see,

Because he lacked one darling trait.

We liked not, and misliking lent Our virtues its own fatal sting, And many a shaft that anger sent Was feathered from a virtue's wing.

The aggressor he, his active life Committed him to this or that : I slipped, but loth, into the strife, Where he was dog and I was cat Nov 'twixt the twain who lately closed In contest on time's petty stage, Eternity bath interposed The shadow of its dateless age.

To-day I saw his resting-place,— A grave that friendship's flowers entwine,— And wondered, with a troubled face, If any hands would cherish mine.

The space about was kept, they said, For some who wished their bones to lay As near as might be to the dead

Whom I in life had wished away.

God give him rest ! The single crime, Mislike of me, should hardly blot His fame with one who many a time Can soothly say, " I like me not."

Perhaps we never fairly met That part in each God meant should live, And so incurred no lasting debt, And have but little to forgive. Thus entering at opposing gates,— For Heaven has many gates, they say,— We each may find a comrade waits Who quarrelled with him by the way.

In jarring notes that vex the ear Throughout life's feeble overture, 'Tis oft the tuning that we hear To make the after-concord sure. I. R.