SLEEP.

Come, gentle sleep, with the holy night,
  Come with the stars and the white moonbeams,
Come with your train of handmaids bright,
  Blessed and beautiful dreams.

Bring the exile to his home again,
  Let him catch the gleam of its low white wall;
Let his wife cling to his neck and weep,
  And his children come at their father’s call.

Give to the mother the child she lost,
  Laid from her heart to a clay-cold bed;
Let its breath float over her tear-wet cheek,
  And her cold heart warm ’neath its bright young head.

Take the sinner’s hand and lead him back
  To his sinless youth and his mother’s knee;
Let him kneel again ’neath her tender look,
  And murmur the prayer of his infancy.

Lead the aged into that wondrous clime,
  Home of their youth and land of their bliss;
Let them forget in that beautiful world,
  The sin and the sorrow of this.

And gently lead my love, my own,
  Tenderly clasp her snow-white hand,
Wrap her in garments of soft repose,
  And lead her into your mystic land.

Let your fairest handmaids bow at her feet,
  Her path o’er your loveliest roses be;
And let all the flowers with their perfumed lips
  Whisper of me—­of me.

Come, gentle sleep, with the holy night,
  Come with the stars and the white moonbeams,
Come with your train of handmaids bright,
  Blessed and beautiful dreams.

THE SONG OF THE SIREN.

Oh, I am the siren, the siren of the sea,
  The sea, the wondrous sea, that lies forevermore before;
I stand a fairy shape upon the shadow of a cliff
  Where the water’s drowsy ripple laps the phantom of a shore,
And, oh, so fair, so fair am I, I draw all hearts to me,
For I am the siren, the siren of the sea.

All the glory of my golden tresses gleams upon the air,
  How it falls about my snowy shoulders, round and bare and white;
My lips are full of love as rounded grapes are full of wine,
  And my eyes are large and languid, and full of dewy light;
Oh, I lure the idle landsmen many a league for love of me,
For I am the siren, the siren of the sea.

Sometimes they press so near that my breath is on their cheek,
  And their eager hands can almost touch the glowing bowl I bear,
They can see the beaded froth, the ruby glitter of the wine,
  Then I slip from their embraces like a breath of summer air;
Oh, I lightly, lightly glide away, they come no nigher me,
For I am the siren, the siren of the sea.

Sometimes I float along a-standing in a boat,
  Before the ships becalmed, where dusky sailors stand,
And the helmsman drops his oar, and the lookout leaves his glass,
  So I beckon them, and lure them, with the whiteness of my hand;
Oh, this the song I sing, well they listen unto me? 
For I am the siren, the siren of the sea.