Mabel.

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.