I heard the voice of Ages,
       I heard it through the gloom;
   It bade me follow, follow on
       To the lonely empty tomb.
           It whisper'd with its icy breath,
           "Maiden, what gain hath Death?"

  And then I saw, or thought I saw,
    The heavens open wide;
   My sister crown'd with asphodels,
     An angel-form beside.
           I heard her whisper, "Would that she
           Might soon fly hitherward with thee!"

  And now I see with holier eyes
     The landscape of my dream,
   All peopled through with angels
     Of calm and lowly mien;
          And when my soul is still, it saith,
         "Maiden, why long for death?"

            FROM FIRST TO LAST.

IN TEN CHAPTERS. CHAPTER THE THIRD.

THE Unwins lived in one of those contracted
domiciles, long lines and terraces of
which now radiate from the nucleus of every
town in England. Three feet deep of parched
and dusty garden divided the parlour from
the road; there was a kitchen behind, and
three chambers over. The smallest of these
was Valentine's bedroom and studio in one;
there he ground colours, smeared canvas or
a plank of wainscot; there he dreamed
dreams and saw visions, and sonnetised on
Rosamund Wilton's beauty.

In all Burnham there breathed not a
happier soul than this pale lanky boy, with
his wrists out of his jacket and his trousers
creeping ambitiously higher and higher until
they got above his boot-tops. To be poor, so
long as one is not absolutely hungry, seems
to have no more effect on some people than
rain has on a duck's back. A dukedom
would not have bribed Valentine Unwin
away from his pencil and his fancies; after
seeing the beautiful Abbey and the glorious
Murillo, he went and shut himself up in his
closet of a room, and was happier, I daresay,
in the kingdom of his own mind than any
crowned and anointed monarch.

Mary got the tea ready—they had no servant,
only a charwoman once a week to clean
the house—and when her father came in
from the school, fagged and rather cross, as it
is permitted to disappointed men to be, she
called to her brother to come down; but
Valentine replied that he was busy just then,
and could not; so the father and daughter
took their evening meal together, and then
Mary carried a cup of tea and a plate of
thick bread and butter up-stairs, and stood
over the pride of her heart until he chose to
partake of them.

Mary Unwin also was happy in her way;
she was living for a purpose and with an
object in view. Her love for Valentine was
an enthusiasm, an absolute negation of self
for his sake. Ah! many and many a time
in later days, when the battle of life was at
the hottest, did her hand, faithful and tender,
wipe the dews of pain and weariness from
his face, and her heart, stedfast and
courageous, support and urge him on until the
victory was worthily won. She was now
labouring diligently in every interval of her
home duties, to perfect herself in the art of
drawing upon stone; for the brother and
sister had a plan of living together in London,
and she intended to make her lithography
available for their mutual support during the
years of preparatory study, which must be
passed through before he could be expected
to achieve any success in painting; so she
also was happy in a vision that the future
was to fulfil. Nothing pleased her better
now than being able to lock up the house as
she had done that afternoon, and go off to
the school with Valentine and her father;
but that was not always practicable, so she
had a stone at home, and was always at work
upon it when any one else might have
supposed that she would desire a rest.

As she stood behind her brother, holding
the cup and plate until it should please him
to take it, her plain face was instinct with
goodness and devotion. Valentine accepted
all her assiduities, not ungratefully and not
even thoughtlessly, but quite as a matter
of course—much as children receive their
mother's love, without seeming to think that
any particular return is needed. She was
ten years his elder, and the care of him had
devolved upon her ever since he was born—
for his mother died in bringing him into the
world.

"O, Mary, are you there—is that my tea?"
he asked, absently, continuing to sketch at
an indistinct outline on a fresh sheet of
paper. Mary said, "Yes," and stood patiently
out of sight behind him, watching his hand.
Its strokes seemed to her weak and unskilled
as yet; but there was the freedom that
promised by-and-by to render with truth and
energy the beautiful conceptions of a poet
mind. Indifferent persons might have
discerned nothing in Valentine Unwin's face if
they had looked at it for a week, or they
might have said, that he was only a plain
and awkward boy; but Mary's loving eyes
saw genius in the pale lineaments, and the
fire of enthusiasm which is its breath of life,
kindling in his grey deep-set eyes.

The walls of his room and hers were covered
with continually changing efforts of his power;
for besides the divine gift of genius, he had
the homely qualities of industry and
perseverance, and that virtue of patience which
can behold in the germ of to-day the glorious
flower it will mature into, and can wait and
watch for its expanding. What the dews
and suns of spring are to the swelling buds,
Mary's never-failing love was to him in his
upward way. Rosamund Wilton in her gay
luxurious home, with her newly returned