I should have deemed it all-too-fair a gift.
And now, and now—I feel your bosoms throb
'Gainst mine in joyful, neighborly response,
I drink the life-warm ardor of your kisses,
I hear the love-thrilled, touching tremolo
Of both your voices, and my dazzled eye
Reads in your" looks and on your glowing cheeks
The true reflex of all that moves your hearts,
While impotent to fathom yet the secret
Of your arrival here, my thoughts stand still.
James Travis.
Thou errest, brother, if thou ween'st that I
Can solve for thee this deep-mysterious riddle.
For lo! as sudden as it dawned on thee.
Inexplicable, as it stands before
Thy staggered mind,—so wondrous and so strange.
It still enwraps my own with dream-like spell.—
Three hours ago I lay in dizzy sleep,
In which appalling night and battle-smoke
Spread o'er my feverish soul a somber sky,
—As dark and dread as my impending fate—
While demon-like, uncouth, gigantic shapes
With hangman's features stretched their withered hands
Up, up to me with ever closer grasp,—
When in the cloud-wrapt back-ground of my dream
Appeared a balmy, mellow-tinted light,
That more and more shed through the desert waste
