THE RECLAIMING OF THE ANGEL.

Oh smiling land of the sunset, How my heart to thy beauty thrills— Veiled dimly to-day with the shadow Of the greenest of all thy hills! Where daisies lean to the sunshine, And the winds a plowing go, And break into shining furrows The mists in the vale below; Where the willows hang out their tassels, With the dews, all white and cold, Strung over their wands so limber, Like pearls upon chords of gold; Where in milky hedges of hawthorn The red-winged thrushes sing, And the wild vine, bright and flaunting, Twines many a scarlet ring; Where, under the ripened billows Of the silver-flowing rye, We ran in and out with the zephyrs— My sunny-haired brother and I. Oh, when the green kirtle of May time, Again o'er the hill-tops is blown, I shall walk the wild paths of the forest, And climb the steep headlands alone— Pausing not where the slopes of the meadows Are yellow with cowslip beds, Nor where, by the wall of the garden, The hollyhocks lift their bright heads. In hollows that dimple the hill-sides, Our feet till the sunset had been, Where pinks with their spikes of red blossoms, Hedged beds of blue violets in, While to the warm lip of the sunbeam The check of the blush rose inclined, And the pansy's white bosom was flushed with The murmurous love of the wind. But when 'neath the heavy tresses That swept o'er the dying day, The star of the eve like a lover Was hiding his blushes away, As we came to a mournful river That flowed to a lovely shore, "Oh, sister," he said, "I am weary— I cannot go back any more!" And seeing that round about him The wings of the angels shone— I parted the locks from his forehead And kissed him and left him alone. But a shadow comes over my spirit Whenever I think of the hours I trusted his feet to the pathway That winds through eternity's flowers.