So sung the dauntless Saracen,
    Whereat the Prophet-Chief ordains
  That, curst of Allah, loathed of men,
    The faithless one shall die in chains.

  But one vile Christian slave that lay
    A prisoner near that prisoner saith;
  “God willing, I will plant some day
    A vine where thou liest in death.”

  Lo, over Abu Midjan’s grave
    With purpling fruit a vine-tree grows;
  Where rots the martyred Christian slave
    Allah, and only Allah, knows!

THE DYING YEAR.

  The year has been a tedious one—­
    A weary round of toil and sorrow,
  And, since it now at last is gone,
    We say farewell and hail the morrow.

  Yet o’er the wreck which time has wrought
    A sweet, consoling ray is shimmered—­
  The one but compensating thought
    That literary life has glimmered.

  Struggling with hunger and with cold
    The world contemptuously beheld ’er;
  The little thing was one year old—­
    But who’d have cared had she been elder?

DEAD ROSES.

  He placed a rose in my nut-brown hair—­
    A deep red rose with a fragrant heart
    And said:  “We’ll set this day apart,
  So sunny, so wondrous fair.”

  His face was full of a happy light,
    His voice was tender and low and sweet,
    The daisies and the violets grew at our feet—­
  Alas, for the coming of night!

  The rose is black and withered and dead! 
    ’Tis hid in a tiny box away;
    The nut-brown hair is turning to gray,
  And the light of the day is fled!

  The light of the beautiful day is fled,
    Hush’d is the voice so sweet and low—­
    And I—­ah, me!  I loved him so—­
  And the daisies grow over his head!