S.T.  COLERIDGE.

* * * * *

MY STAR.

All that I know
  Of a certain star
Is, it can throw
  (Like the angled spar)
Now a dart of red,
  Now a dart of blue,
Till my friends have said
  They would fain see, too

My star that dartles the red and the blue! 
Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled;
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. 
What matter to me if their star is a world? 
Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.

ROBERT BROWNING.

* * * * *

A CONSERVATIVE.

The garden beds I wandered by
  One bright and cheerful morn,
When I found a new-fledged butterfly
  A-sitting on a thorn,
A black and crimson butterfly,
  All doleful and forlorn.

I thought that life could have no sting
  To infant butterflies,
So I gazed on this unhappy thing
  With wonder and surprise,
While sadly with his waving wing
  He wiped his weeping eyes.

Said I, “What can the matter be? 
  Why weepest thou so sore? 
With garden fair and sunlight free
  And flowers in goodly store—­”
But he only turned away from me
  And burst into a roar.

Cried he, “My legs are thin and few
  Where once I had a swarm! 
Soft fuzzy fur—­a joy to view—­
  Once kept my body warm,
Before these flapping wing-things grew,
  To hamper and deform!”

At that outrageous bug I shot
  The fury of mine eye;
Said I, in scorn all burning hot,
  In rage and anger high,
“You ignominious idiot! 
  Those wings are made to fly!”

“I do not want to fly,” said he,
  “I only want to squirm!”
And he drooped his wings dejectedly,
  But still his voice was firm;
“I do not want to be a fly! 
  I want to be a worm!”

O yesterday of unknown lack! 
  To-day of unknown bliss! 
I left my fool in red and black,
  The last I saw was this,—­
The creature madly climbing back
  Into his chrysalis.

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN.

* * * * *

FIVE LIVES.

Five mites of monads dwelt in a round drop
That twinkled on a leaf by a pool in the sun. 
To the naked eye they lived invisible;
Specks, for a world of whom the empty shell
Of a mustard-seed had been a hollow sky.

One was a meditative monad, called a sage;
And, shrinking all his mind within, he thought: 
“Tradition, handed down for hours and hours,
Tells that our globe, this quivering crystal world,
Is slowly dying.  What if, seconds hence,
When I am very old, yon shimmering dome
Come drawing down and down, till all things end?”
Then with a weazen smirk he proudly felt
No other mote of God had ever gained
Such giant grasp of universal truth.