HENRY ABBEY.

A

MOTHERHOOD.

Ah, how bright
The years were then,-five golden years that

drew
Our hearts into a union closer yet,

And gave an added holiness to life,The jewel of motherhood that God had set Within my royal diadem of wife!

- Ibid. DEATH. Till one day, as in quest of Paradise,

The sun rolled down the west, all gold and red, An angel put the light out in her eyes, And I was sitting silent with my dead.

- Ibid. ACCOMPLISHMENT. I see no harm; if done, 'twere well done so; And if the end failed in accomplishment, 'Twere well done still.

- The Princess Elizabeth.

EYES.
The tongue's lies, rascal though they be,
Come as right honest villains, claiming nought
Beyond such force as may perchance find home
And lodgment in deception. But the eyes!
All earth and heaven may be so deftly brought
Within their compass that the truth turns churl
And honesty is perjured.

-Ibid.
WORDS.
How like a very poet you shape
The angled words into those beauteous curves
Wherein perfection sits. Such dulcet tones
Li like honey in a maiden's ear,
And drown her senses in a flood as dense
As vapors of red wine.

-Ibid. FAILURE.

When the devil failed To tempt Saint Barnabas, he whispered “Fail!" And lo! the Saint turned villain. Speak no word Which gives a failure breath of life; 'tis fraught With half its own fruition.

- Ibid.

MUSIC.
The sweetest tunes are pregnant with a want,
And writ in minors ever. 'Tis soon past;
The cradle song is but a prelude, sung
To usher in the requiem for the dead;
The requiem's murmurs do but tone the soul
In unison with those who chant the vast,
Exultant strains of ever-living joy.

-Ibid.

JEST.
One must jest sometimes, or one wears too soon
The wrinkles of the wise.

-Ibid.

LADDIN selling the dishes of the genii's ban

quet while the wonderful lamp rested unused in his closet, may stand as a prophetic image of a poet put to business. Imagination, however, does not disqualify a man for practical work, and the subject of this study, Mr. Henry Abbey, has probably been as successful in business as if the gods had not made him poetical. He is at present a flour and grain dealer at Rondout, New York, is vice-president of a bank at Kingston, and a mem. ber of the Produce Exchange, of New York City.

Mr. Abbey was born at Rondout, New York, July 11, 1842. He is the eldest son of Stephen Abbey and Caroline Vail. His great-grandmother was Lucy Knox, for whom is claimed a lineal descent from John Knox the great Scotch Reformer. Mr. Abbey's grandfather came when a boy into New York state from Connecticut. Caroline Vail was a descendant of one of three brother Vails who came over in the Mayflower and whose names are engraved in the monument at Plymouth. It is said that one of the brothers married a daughter of Massasoit and a geneological tree shows that Caroline Vail was a descendant of this marriage.

Mr. Abbey received his education at several institutes in Kingston and the neighborhood. While preparing for college the panic of 1857 brought financial embarrassment to his father and he was compelled to forego his studies. Probably his training was more an affair of libraries than of schools, his determination towards letters being strong enough to survive the deprivation of college. His first book of verse was published in 1862. This and other early work he regards merely as evidence of an intuitive groping for expression. Soon after the publication of his first work, Mr. Abbey became assistant editor of the Rondout Courier. He did not serve many months in that capacity, however, as he left Rondout and went to New York. Here he wrote verses for the New York Leader and enjoyed the acquaintance of Henry Clapp, Jr., George Arnold, Fitzhugh Ludlow and other literary people of the time. From New York he went to Orange, New Jersey, and started the Orange Spectator, which paper, however, was soon discontinued. In 1864 Mr. Abbey returned to Rondout. He was married in 1865 to Mary Louise du Bois daughter of Mr. Elijah du Bois a member of the Holland Society.

In 1872 was published Mr. Abbey's “Ballads of Good Deeds.” Most of the poems in this collection had previously appeared in various periodicalsHarper's Magazine, Appleton's Journal, The Galaxy, Chambers' Journal, and others. This volume, under the same name, but somewhat enlarged, was published in London in 1876 and attracted some

STORM.

THE pale day died in the rain to-night,

And its hurrying ghost, the wind, goes by: The mountains loom in their silent might,

And darkly frown at the sea and sky.

But when at night he came upon the stage,
Cheer after cheer went up from that wide throng,
And flowers rained on him: naught could assuage
The tumult of the welcome, save the song
That he had sweetly sung, with covered face,
For the two beggars in the market-place.

FAITH'S VISTA.
WHEN from the vaulted wonder of the sky

The curtain of the light is drawn aside,

And I behold the stars in all their wide
Significance and glorious mystery,
Assured that those more distant orbs are suns

Round which innumerable worlds revolve,
My faith grows strong, my day-born doubts dis.

solve, And death, that dread annulment which life shuns, Or fain would shun, becomes to life the way,

The thoroughfare to greater worlds on high, The bridge from star to star. Seek how we may,

There is no other road across the sky; And, looking up, I hear star-voices say:

“ You could not reach us if you did not die."

THE SINGER'S ALMS.

In Lyons, in the mart of that French town,
Years since, a woman, leading a fair child,
Craved a small alms of one who, walking down
The thoroughfare, caught the child's glance, and

smiled
To see, behind its eyes, a noble soul.
He paused, but found he had no coin to dole.

His guardian angel warned him not to lose
This chance of pearl to do another good;
So as he waited, sorry to refuse
The asked for penny, there aside he stood,
And with his hat held as by limb the nest
He covered his kind face, and sang his best.

The sky was blue above, and all the lane
Of commerce where the singer stood was filled,
And many paused, and, listening, paused again,
To hear the voice that through and through them

thrilled.
I think the guardian angel helped along
That cry for pity woven in a song.

POETRY, And once I knew a meditative rose That never raised its head from bowing down, Yet drew its inspiration from the stars. It bloomed and faded here beside the road, And, being a poet, wrote on empty air With fragrance all the beauty of its soul.

- A Morning Pastoral.

ART.
The artist labors while he may,
But finds at best too brief the day;
And, tho' his works outlast the time
And nation that they make sublime,
He feels and sees that Nature knows
Nothing of time in what she does,
But has a leisure infinite
Wherein to do her work aright.

- Along the Nile.
ARBUTUS.
As faint as the fond remembrance

Of joy that was only dreamed,
And like a divine suggestion
The scent of the flower seemed.

Trailing Arbutus.
CORAL.

By sad waves tossed, She was a spray of coral fair to see,

The singer stood between the beggars there,
Before a church, and, overhead, the spire,
A slim, perpetual finger in the air
Held toward heaven, land of the heart's desire,
As if an angel, pointing up, had said,
“ Yonder a crown awaits this singer's head.”

The hat of its stamped brood was emptied soon
Into the woman's lap, who drenched with tears
Her kiss upon the hand of help: 't was noon,
And noon in her glad heart drove forth her fears.
The singer, pleased, passed on, and softly thought,
"Men will not know by whom this deed was

wrought."