THE GYPSY GIRL.

A STRANGER wandered slowly through a forest dark, one night,

While the autumn leaves, frost-jewelled, flashed with a mystic light,

And through the fane-like vistas glowed the welcome of dancing flame,

As, sweeter than notes of a siren, the words of a love-song came:-

Beloved, I am all a-weary

Of waiting so long for thee;

Sad are my days and dreary,

E'en night-winds moan with me.

The stars, with pitying lustre,

Are striving to check their tears;

And the vine, where full grapes cluster,

Doth share with me my fears.

O love, I want not splendor,

Nor the wealth that is offered me;

I want but thy accents tender,

Dear heart, I want but thee!

The voice sank into silence, but the music lingered still

In the soul of the listening stranger, while the night-winds came at will,

And the firelight beckoned and beckoned, like a querulous, anxious host,

And a white birch-tree stood silently, pale as a startled ghost.

The stranger eagerly hastened; he had heard that voice before,

In his native land, where summer-waves fell ever on summer-shore;

Long years had he moodily listened for the sound of that magic strain,

That mingled with nightingale sweetness the pathos of autumn rain.

There in the glow of the firelight stood lonely, waiting to him,

A maiden wondrous, whose loveliness artist could never limn;

The same sweet look that had charmed him with its magic in bygone days

Gazed sadly forth from those eyes that shone like stars in a tearful haze.

A glance, and the sorrow is over, - the lovers have met again,

And the suffering hath vanished; like frost hath gone all pain;

The dreary winter of waiting sleeps silently cold in the past,

While around the lives of the lovers true sweet summer-bloom is cast.

F. A. T.