RILEY.

“WHEN she comes home,” I thought with throbbing heart,

That danced a measure to my mind's refrain.

Again from out the door I leaned and looked,

Where she should come along the leafy lane.

And then she came.— I heard the measured sound

Of slow, oncoming feet, whose heavy tread

Seemed trampling out my life. I saw her face.

Then through my brain a sudden numbness spread.

The earth seemed spun away, the sun was gone,

And time, and place, and thought. There was no thing

In all the universe, save one who lay

So still and cold and white, unanswering

Save by a graven smile my broken moan.

She had come home, yet there I knelt alone.