On the death of his 7 year old daughter, Byers wrote some poems in her memory. It isn't hard to see how much Helen had been loved by her father.

BABY HELENE.

She was only a child of the May-day,
That came when the sweet blossoms fell,

But rarer than any fair lady

Of whom the old poets may tell.

Then the days brought us everything sweeter
Of sunshine and love in their train,

But better than all and completer,
Was Baby Helene.

With a kiss and a smile she came to us,
The sunshine of God in her hair,

Ah! never a sweet wind that blew us
A blossom so tender and rare.

We sang a new May-song together,
New-found and of jubilant strain,

Ah! our hearts they were light as a feather,
With Baby Helene.

Would she stay with us, love us ? We bid her Unloosen the notes of her song —

And tell where the sweet angels hid her,
And why had we waited so long.

Would they sorrow in Heaven to miss her ?
Would they wait for her, weary to pain ?

Would they anger to see us but kiss her,
Our Baby Hele'ne ?

And all the day long, like new lovers,
Like words that are ever in tune,

Like songs the fresh May-wind discovers,
Like birds that are mating in June, —

Together we loved and we wandered,
Forgetting of sorrow or pain,

Forgetting the sweets that we squandered,
With Baby Helene.

Oh! lips running over to kisses,

Red cheeks kissed to brown by the sun,

Shall we ever again know what bliss is,
When the song and the kisses are done ?

Oh ! baby, brown-haired, on thy tresses
The hands of the angels had lain,

And joy laughed new-born in caresses
Of Baby Hele'ne.

Years went — seven years with their story
More bright than Aladdin's of old,

To love and be loved was our glory,
Our hearts were our castles of gold.

But broken our castles, and falling,

Hope crushed — true hearts bleeding and slain,

God's angels in Heaven were calling
Our Baby Helene.

Dim-eyed, and heart-broken, we waited

The sounds of invisible things,
While the soul of our soul was remated,

Borne off on invisible wings.
In the far-away, purple and golden,

Went up an ineffable strain,
And the far-away gates were unfolden
To Baby Helene.

One moment, God's earth and its brightness
Seemed darkened and turned into dross,

And the manifold stars and their lightness
Were dimmed and as nothing to us.

For the bowl that was golden was broken,
The hearts that were one heart, were twain.

And the last words of love had been spoken

By Baby Hele'ne.

Ah! seven years gone as the dream goes,

Oh ! baby-love, lost to our ken, — Will the brooklet still flow where the stream flows ?

Will the lilies still blossom as then ? Will the sweet tongues of birds be unloosed to

The songs of our love and its pain ?
Will the violets bloom as they used to
For Baby Helene?

Oh! baby-love, heart-sweet, the sunlight
That fell on the way that you went,

Shall be to our feet as the one light,
The lamp the sweet angels have lent.

And the nights and the days shall be lighter,
And the ways that were dark ways be plain,

And the stars where thou art shall be brighter For Baby Helene.

ON A FAIR DEAD GIRL.

How beautiful to die as does the rose,
Sweet fragrance casting on the am'rous air
What if too lovely seemed life's way to close,
When death still leaves us with a scene so
fair.

Like to the rose thy life was one sweet bloom,

Till Fate undid thee from the fair young stem;

It is not fit, this silent pall and plume, These weeping maidens, and these sorrowing men.

Thou hadst fair youth, and life's sweet things the best,

Knew naught of Sorrow, or its lonely consort Pain;

Thou hadst the joys of life — leave us the rest,

Who well have known how much of life is vain.

HELEN.

Helen, sweetest name I know,
I have never seen thee yet.

Have thy eyes a mellow glow?
Are they brown or violet?

Is thy hair a sheen of gold ?

Is it black or is it fair ? Do thy cheeks sweet dimples hold

When the blushes hurry there?

Little matter—light or brown,
Each alike would be divine;

Looking sweet, and looking down,
I would love thee, lady mine.

Helen, sweet, 'twere all the same; I would love thee for the name. WILL IT BE SO ?

When I shall die, perhaps it will be so,
That I shall see with other eyes than these,
Deep in the skies find other lands and seas
And beauteous isles where soft winds come and
go,

And know of things that now I cannot know;
That I shall see new colors to the rose,
New odors find in every breeze that blows,
And thousand hues in yonder arched bow;
That I shall hear new strains of minstrelsy,
Strains that, to us, are but the storm and wind,
Find every sense enlarged, and new to me,
And wonder much that I had been so blind. .
If it be so that death such senses give,
Then death come quick, that I may die and
live.

ON A FAIR DEAD GIRL.

Thy cup, half finished, flushed with joyous wine,

The sad dregs at its bottom thou didst never reach;

Thy night of revels had no morn's repine,
No aching heart, no long-regretted speech.

Thou didst not live the ignomy to own

Of beauty faded, or of roses fled;

Thy cheeks, they paled not, ere the buds were blown, Thou wert not fairer when thou lived, than dead.

Death is no victor thus — we will not weep! Thou walk'st in other paths of beauty now, more strange; It is not Death we call this thing, but Sleep No parting this, but Beauty's secret change.

THE HAPPY ISLES.

Where no dear heart might ever go, to tell How sweet is death, and how all things are well.

Then one did ask what loveliest thing there was,

That was most fair of anything on earth,
Of lovely flower, or eglantine, or rose,
Or tree, or thing of most surpassing worth,
And beauteous even from its very birth, —
Be it of groves, or seas, of human kind, or
skies,

Or songs of winds, of sadness, or of mirth,—
What loveliest thing of all that ever dies,
Were fittest first to be in Paradise.

One said a nightingale, and one the gleam
Of summer sunset by some constant sea, —
And one, sweet apple-blooms that fall and
seem

Wind-kissed, and lulled into an ecstasy
Of odorous death, if such a thing there be.
And others said, for many hastened near,
The loveliest thing in all the world to see,
Surpassing all, to heaven and earth most dear,
By angels welcomed, is a sorrowing tear.

One said the fragrance of a summer rose,
And one the melody of flutes at eve,
Or else the music of a brook that flows,
Murmuring farewell, and yet doth never
leave, —

And some said moonlight nights that weave
In every soul sweet phantasies so deep
That mortals may of immortality conceive,
Nor longer wish their little lives to keep
From that sweet death which some of them
call sleep.

But one there came, of others all the first,
And laid his hand upon a little child,
And quick there seemed a radiance to burst
About his face, ineffable and mild.
" This is the loveliest," he said, and smiled.
" Surpassing this, or lovelier, there is none, —
Rose-leaf of beauty, mortal undefiled.
The pearly gates no soul hath ever won,
That was not like unto this little one."

Then children came, and laid sweet baskets down,

Rose - leaf and violet, and every flower of worth,

And odorous herbs, and many a wreath and crown,

While in their midst stood one of mortal birth,

Herself more fair than any flower of earth. Oh ! beauteous one, — oh ! face more perfect grown,

Though all unchanged, more beautiful thou art, —

E'en in thy angelhood, we still had known Our heart-sweet lost — our loved, our very own.

Was it a vision that I saw her there,
Her face all gleaming in the light of His,
The sunlight shining on her sweet, brown
hair,

That ever had been my delight to kiss,
In the old days, when seeing her was bliss ?
It must have been — and if such things there
be.

In fleeting visions of an hour like this,
What an Elysium the soul must see
In the sweet joys of an eternity !

Tis but a year — but little more, since she
And I were laughing by this beauteous lake;
There is the path, and there the little tree
I used to bend close to the ground, and make
A springing seat — 't was easy for her sake.
There, too, the grove, of Nidelbad the pearl,
The beechen trees no winds could ever break,
The cedars, bending like some plumed earl
To her I loved, the little, laughing girl.

There are the Alps — there they will ever be, —

A thousand years will make no change in them,

Though rivers fail, and all the mighty sea, Still they will wear their gracious diadem, Storm and the clouds their snowy mantles hem,

And they will shine as they have shone of old —

Their tops aflame, as on some evening, when
We watched the sun their palaces unfold, —
The sapphire roofs — the colonnades of gold.

And Zurich lake! thy waters ever will
Be dearer far than other scenes to me,
For I have wandered by thy shores until
My very being seemed akin to thee.
Each bank I knew, and every brook and
tree,

Each vine-clad hill, and every hamlet fair,
And more I loved thee every day, that she
Was born to us amid a scene so rare, —
My heart will be forever turning there.

Forever turning to that beauteous scene,
Where she and I, the happy years agone,
Looked on the hills and the blue lake be-
tween,

The blushing mountains in the dim beyond,
The ice-built palaces, and rocks whereon
A thousand years the frost-king travelleth,
Where the red sun, at evening and at dawn,

Spreads all in gold, as with a fairy's breath.

We looked and dreamed, but never dreamed of death.

And it is done! One morn, the little bird
That waited ever at her window-pane
For some dear crumb, or for some dearer
word,

Plumed its sweet breast, and waited there in vain.

Sweet heart! dear soul! she without any stain,

Too pure for earth, born of far fairer skies,
Thoughtless of death, of darkness, or of pain,
Looking on us as if with other eyes,
Let go our hands and passed to Paradise.

With gentle hands, and gentle prayers, we laid

Her body where the violets do blow;

And if sometimes they should be thought to fade,

With our warm tears we '11 water them, and so For love of her, they will forever grow.

And many days, with broken hearts, we said, " Could one return, or could we only know

She liveth yet, whom we have thus called dead,

Our souls in this might still be comforted."

And days and nights, we waited for a sign, Praying and hoping she might linger there,

That word or look might lessen death's repine,

One single word might lighten our despair — Might make the yoke more possible to bear.

We sought of silence — there was answer none,

We sought of moonlight, and of earth and air,

There was no answer. Would she never come One moment back, and strike all doubting dumb?

And longing thus, as once I wept alone,

With heart bowed down, and face' all wet with tears,

I felt her presence — felt my very own, —

And in that moment was the bliss of years.

Gone were my doubts, and gone were all my fears.

No dream was it — no phantasy could be
So like to her — the very thought endears.
It was no dream, that vision sweet — I see
Her dear form yet, and feel her kissing me.

One moment only, and one sweet embrace —
I felt her warm arms resting on my breast —
Her soft, warm cheek I felt against my face.
A thousand times I 'd put that head to rest,
Those little hands a thousand times caressed.
Dear eyes, sweet eyes! I know their tender
gleam,

How oft their look some sorrowing heart hath blessed —

Dearer this night, than they did ever seem,
Dear one I love, I know it was no dream.

'T was but a moment, but that moment was
Rich in significance of things that are :
As some faint light behind the hill-top shows
The coming moon and her attendant star,

So with new eyes I saw, and from afar
Heard sweetest tones, and in the rosy West
Where they had left the golden gates ajar,
That she might come to give my spirit rest,
I looked and saw the Islands of the Blest.

Or dream, or waking, I may never know,
Alike the joy, no words may ever tell, —
I saw the isles where roses ever blow,
I saw the shores where bright seas ever
swell —

It was the land where the blest spirits dwell.
I saw fair barks, by angels piloted
O'er roseate seas that only rose and fell
To notes of flutes, that thus were hallowM,
While silver moons shed soft light overhead.

I saw the gardens of the happy Blest, —
The lotus-blooms, and golden asphodel,
And flowering shrubs angelic hands had
dressed,

Red-berried ash, and the sweet mountain bell.
And thornless rose that doth forever smell,
And lilies fair, and waters all in tune

With odorous winds that came like fairy spell
Out of the night, to cool the parched noon,
And make the jrear a never-ending June.

I saw the fields that are forever green,
And purple hills that melt into the sea,
The thousand brooks that sing their way
between,

One and a part of His great minstrelsy.
Not far away that happy sea may be,
Not far those sails by rapturous breezes bent,
With mortal eyes, at times, we almost see,
So near they are to our own firmament —
The Blessed Isles, where all men are content.

Gone is the vision of that blessed hour,
Like to some dream that with the morn is
flown.

I saw the Isles, and every tree and flower Melt and grow dim, as when a cloud is blown Across a moon that had that moment shone. But as that moon and all her star-lit train, Will still shine on, when the dark cloud is gone,

So will the clouds that hide my vision wane,
And I shall see the Blessed Isles again.

Shall ever think how very thin the veil
That floats at times betwixt myself and her,
Like mist of morn, or like some dewy sail, —
Ethereal cloud — so vapor-like, as't were
A touch of wind, a gentle breath, might stir
Its shining folds — and I again should see,
Spread out like gold, as in my vision fair,
The Happy Isles, the far-off shining sea,
And her I loved, waiting to welcome me.

So I shall walk as now the earth along,
Dearer to me for one that has been here,
Nor shall the way seem very dark or long
To those Blest Isles whose confines do ap-
pear.

And if, sometimes, in fancy I should hear
A. dear, soft voice, or some light footstep's
tread,

I shall be sure that she is very near,
And, thinking so, be gently comforted,
And live and love, as by her spirit led.
And many times my hand in hers will be,
And we will walk by pleasant ways alone,
And I shall look into her face, and see
The dearest eyes that ever yet have shone —
And cheeks more sweet than any roses
blown.

And when, sometimes, light song and pleasantry

Fill every heart but mine, to silence grown, They will not know that, at that moment, she Sits by my side and keeps me company.

Samuel Hawkins Marshall Byers