Mabel.

I. In the sunlight:— Little Mab, the keeper’s daughter, singing by the brooklet’s side, With her playmates singing carols of the gracious Easter-tide; And the violet and the primrose make sweet incense for the quire, In the springlight, when the rosebuds hide the thorns upon the briar. II. In the lamplight:— With a proud defiant beauty, Mab, the fallen, flaunts along, Speaking sin’s words, wildly laughing, she who sang that Paschal song, And a mother lies a-dying in the cottage far away, And a father cries to Heaven, “Thou hast said, ‘I will repay.’” III. In the moonlight:— By the gravestone in the churchyard, Mabel, where her mother sleeps, Like the tearful saint of Magdala, an Easter vigil keeps:— There, trailing cruel thorns, storm-drenched, plaining with piteous bleat, The lost lamb (so her mother prayed) and the Good Shepherd meet. S. R. H.