274 VOICES OF THE TWILIGHT.
you to come back to your old home in this house, and your new home in my heart; to leave all your schemes for the future; to place your life and happiness in my keeping, and to assure you the trust will not be betrayed. Will you?"
A flood of happiness filled me; my plans, my ambition, my independence melted away, and as I turned toward him, and felt his arms about me, his warm kisses on hair, and cheek, and lips, I knew that the only future I cared to have must be blended with his.
After awhile he told me how from interest in me love had sprung; and how he had deter- mined to let me try the world a little before taking me home; for he seems to have felt sure I should come, and that, after seeing my first disappointment, he could not bear to wait longer. We only waited till Eliza was able to come to our wedding; and last night, just before dusk, Richard and I walked together to the little church beside the shining river, where I first saw him, and with John and Eliza as our only friends, we pledged our faith. And now, at my husband's request, having written all I care to transmit to paper, I close this book, perhaps forever, and sign myself, for the first time, Hilda Home Barrington.
VOICES OF THE TWILIGHT.
BY ADDIE A. SEARLE.
WHEN the glory has died from the hill-tops,
And the blue faded into the gray;
When day is veiled from the dreamer,
And night lingers long in the way;
When the humming is still in the clover,
And the night-Bowers bloom on the lea,
I list in the twilight for voices,
That come through the stillness to me.
There's the ringing of merry laughter,
And the prattle of childish glee;
I peer through the gathering dimness,
For faces I may not see;
But I know that a little angel
Has come through the portals of light,
And with soft arms round me clinging,
Has folded her wings tonight.
Then there comes the laugh of a maiden,
And the chaunt of a school-day strain,
And soft through the evening stillness
Comes, in tenderest tones, my name;
And I list for the sound of a footfall,
For the echo of parted feet;
I grope in vain through the darkness,
No answering touch I greet.
And then, as the shadows deepen,
And darkness begins his reign,
Comes a dearer than childhood's music,
A sweeter than maiden's strain;
From the endless brightness of Heaven,
The home of the guardian band,
It comes, in the childtime of even,
At the touching of memory's wand.
I welcome the gentle presence,
Though I see not the vanished face,
And I know soft arms are about me,
Though I feel not their fond embrace.
White hands are raised in blessing,
I kneel as in childhood there,
And linger last in the twilight,
The tones of a mother's prayer.
PRESENT AND FUTURE.
BY T. C. IRWIN.
By a cottage sat, one eventide,
An old man: withered and gray was he;
His son was resting by his side,
A blooming bride upon his kuee;
Bright and low, and lower yet the orbed day went down before them.
Deep and deeper yet away, the world through starry darkness bore them.
And the father said:—
“Thus the life-light quits my soul,
Wears the radiant chain that bound me;
Toward the spectral deeps I roll;
Woe is me, ah! bitter woe,
Son and daughter, must I go
Far from ye, with nought around me
Save the starry dead?”
Upon a supreme summit bright,
Above a paradisial star,
Three spirits dazzled in the light
Of universes gazed afar.
Vast and rich, and richer yet the radiant spaces spread
around them;
Deep and deeper yet away, the throbbing depths of Being
wound them!
And exclaimed the three:—
“Death and fear for evermore
Have vanished from our spirit’s vision,
Space is ours from shore to shore;
From sun to sun existence turns
In endless gloried godlike dreams,
In realms of bliss and thoughts elysian—
Our soul’s home is—infinity.”
