Select Poetry.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 14, Issue 709, 16 August 1869, Page 1 (Supplement)

Select Poetry.

THE DOORSTEP. rE conference-meeting through at last, We boys around the vestry waited To see the girls come tripping past, Like snow-birds, willing to be mated, Not braver he that leaps the wall. By level musket-flashes lit ten, Than I, who stepped before them all, Who longed to see me get the mitten.. « But, no. she blushed and took my arm i We let the old folks have the highway, And started towards the Maple Farm, - Along a kind of lover's by-way. , 1 can't remember what we said—'Twas nothing worth a song or story. Yet that rude path bv which we sped Seemed all transformed and in a glory. The snow was crisp beneath our feet, The moon was full, the fields were gleaming; By hood and tippet sheltered sweet, Her face with youth and health was beaming. Tho little hand outside the muff—0, sculptor, if you could but mould It I So lightly touched my jncket cuff, To keep it warm I had to hold it. To have her with me there alone—'Twas love and fear and triumph blended! At last we reached the foot-worn stone, Where our delicious journey ended. She shook her ringlets from her hood, And with a " Thank you. Ned," dissembled, But yet I knew she understood With what a darling wish i trembled. A cloud passed kindly overhead, The moon was slyly peeping through it, Yet hid its face, as if it said, " Come '.—now or never '.—do it I do it 1" My lips till then had only known The kiss of mother and of sister; But somehow, full upon her own Sweet, ros,y, darling mouth—l kissed her ! Perhaps 'twas boyish love, yet still, O. listless woman! weary lover! To feel once mote that fresh, wild thrill I'd give But who can live youtli over ? —Atlantic Monthly.