reason; so I have counted the cost and will be true to my love. I bring this rough quartz specimen torn from the outcropping of the ledge, to those who know gold from grosser metal. I am very much in earnest, and invite a correct assay. It would be wrong to let me spoil a good mountaineer to make a bad poet, however much it might please me.

JOAQUIN MILLER.

The foregoing is the preface to a thin book printed here last winter, but not published further than to send less than half-a-dozen copies to the press. As the reader sometimes is curious to know the origin of a new book, and this includes almost all that could be sought, I let it stand.

The contemplated satisfaction of having been candid with the reader, whatever may be the fate of my book, induces me to write all this; to be candid and plain even in the face of the knowledge

that the world adores the great mysterious, and mistakes the negative virtue of silence for dignity.

After all, if a sincere man has anything to say,

why shall he not say it ?-J. M.

ARAZONIAN.

B

Because the skies were blue, because
The sun in fringes of the sea
Was tangled, and delightfully
Kept dancing on as in a waltz,

And tropic trees bow'd to the seas,

And bloom'd and bore, years through and through,

And birds in blended gold and blue

Were thick and sweet as swarming bees,

And sang as if in Paradise,

And all that Paradise was spring,

Did I too sing with lifted eyes,
Because I could not choose but sing.

With garments full of sea-winds blown
From isles beyond of spice and balm,
Beside the sea, beneath her palm,
She waits as true as chisell'd stone.

My childhood's child! my June in May!
So wiser than thy father is,

These lines, these leaves, and all of this
Are thine, a loose, uncouth bouquet.
So wait and watch for sail and sign;
A ship shall mount the hollow seas,
Blown to thy place of blossom'd trees,
And birds, and song, and summer-shine.

Shall I return with lifted face,
Or head held down as in disgrace,
To hold thy two brown hands in mine?