The saint within the opening tomb
Like marble statue stood;
All fell to earth in deep dismay;
And through their ranks she passed away,
In calm unchanging mood.
No answering sound her footsteps raised
Along the stony floor;
Silent as death, severe as fate,
She glided through the chapel gate,
And none beheld her more.
The alabaster couch was gone;
The tomb was void and bare;
For the last time, with hasty rite,
Even 'mid the terror of the night,
They laid the abbess there.
'Tis said the abbess rests not well
In that sepulchral pile;
But yearly, when the night comes round
As dies of "one" the bell's deep sound
She flits along the aisle.
But whither passed the virgin saint?
To slumber far away,
Destined by Mary to endure,
Unaltered in her semblance pure,
Until the judgment day!
DAVID SHAW, HERO.
BY JAMES BUCKHAM.
The saviour, and not the slayer, he is the braver man.
So far my text—but the story? Thus, then, it runs; from Spokane
Rolled out the overland mail train, late by an hour. In the cab
David Shaw, at your service, dressed in his blouse of drab.
Grimed by the smoke and the cinders. "Feed her well, Jim," he said;
(Jim was his fireman.) "Make up time!" On and on they sped;
Dust from the wheels up-flying; smoke rolling out behind;
The long train thundering, swaying; the roar of the cloven wind;
Shaw, with his hand on the lever, looking out straight ahead.
How she did rock, old Six-forty! How like a storm they sped.
Leavenworth—thirty minutes gained in the thrilling race.
Now for the hills—keener look-out, or a letting down of the pace.
Hardly a pound of the steam less! David Shaw straightened back,
Hand like steel on the lever, face like flint to the track.