And hubbub, Muriel enter'd with it, 'See! Found in a chink of that old moulder'd floor!' My Miriam nodded with a pitying smile, As who should say 'that those who lose can find.' Then I and she were married for a year, One year without a storm, or even a cloud; And you my Miriam born within the year; And she my Miriam dead within the year. I sat beside her dying, and she gaspt: 'The books, the miniature, the lace are hers, My ring too when she comes of age, or when She marries; you - you loved me, kept your word. You love me still "Io t'amo." - Muriel —no Had graspt a daisy from your Mother's And all her talk was of the babe she (Our old bright bird that still is veering there Above his four gold letters) 'and the light,' She said, was like that light' - and there she paused, And long; till I believing that the girl's Lean fancy, groping for it, could not find One likeness, laugh'd a little and found her two A warrior's crest above the cloud of war'. A fiery phoenix rising from the smoke, The pyre he burnt in.' — 'Nay,' she said, 'the light That glimmers on the marsh and on the grave.' And spoke no more, but turn'd and loved; So, following her old pastime of the brook, She threw the fly for me; but oftener left That angling to the mother. 'Muriel's health Had weaken'd, nursing little Miriam. Strange! She used to shun the wailing babe, and dotes On this of yours.' But when the matin saw That hinted love was only wasted bait, Not risen to, she was bolder. 'Ever since You sent the fatal ring I told her 'sent To Miriam,' 'Doubtless-ay, but ever, since In all the world my dear one sees but you In your sweet babe she finds but you she makes Her heart a mirror that reflects but you.' I gazed into the mirror, as a man Strike upward thro' the shadow; yet at last, Gratitude loneliness - desire to keep So skilled a nurse about you alwaysnay! Some half remorseful kind of pity too Well! well, you know I married Muriel Erne. 'I take thee Muriel for my wedded wife' I had forgotten it was your birthday, child When all at once with some electric thrill A cold air pass'd between us, and the hands Fell from each other, and were join'd again. No second cloudless honeymoon was mine. For by and by she sicken'd of the farce, Than ever you were in your cra moan'd, 'I am fitter for my bed, or for my gra I cannot go, go you.' And then rose, She clung to me with such a hard e brace, So lingeringly long, that half-amazei I felt for what I could not find, the k About me, gone! and gone in th embrace! Then, hurrying home, I found her na in house Or garden up the tower-an icv air Fled by me.-There, the chest was ope all The sacred relics tost about the floorAmong them Muriel lying on her faceI raised her, call'd her, 'Muriel, Murie, wake!' The fatal ring lay near her; the glazed eye Glared at me as in horror. Dead! I took |