Oh, weary are the paths of Earth, and hard! And living hearts alone are ours to guard. At least, begrudge not to the sore dis traught The reverent silence of our pitying thought. Life, too, is sacred; and he best for gives "He errs, but — tenderly! Who says: -Mary Mapes Dodge. THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE G CRICKET REEN little vaulter in the sunny grass, Catching your heart up at the feel of June, Sole voice that's heard amidst the lazy noon When e'en the bees lag at the summon ing brass; And you, warm little housekeeper, who class With those who think the candles come too soon, Loving the fire, and with your trick some tune Nick the glad silent moments as they pass. O sweet and tiny cousins, that belong, One to the fields, the other to the hearth, Both have your sunshine; both, though small, are strong At your clear hearts; and both seem given to earth To sing in thoughtful ears this natural song, In doors and out, summer and winter, mirth. -Leigh Hunt. TIME AND CHANGE TIME and Change, they range and range From sunshine round to thunder! They glance and go as the great winds blow, And the best of our dreams drive under: For Time and Change estrange, estrange And, now they have looked and seen us, O we that were dear, we are all too near With the thick of the world between us. O Death and Time, they chime and chime Like bells at sunset falling!— They end the song, they right the wrong, They set the old echoes calling: For Death and Time bring on the prime Of God's own chosen weather, And we lie in the peace of the Great Release As once in the grass together. -William Ernest Henley. THE CHOIR INVISIBLE Longum illud tempus, quum non ero, magis me movet, quam hoc exiguum.-Cicero. MAY I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence: live In pulses stirr'd to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues. So to live is heaven: To make undying music in the world, Breathing as beauteous order that controls With growing sway the growing life of man. So we inherit that sweet purity For which we struggled, fail'd, and agoniz'd With widening retrospect that bred despair. Rebellious flesh that would not be sub dued, A vicious parent shaming still its child, Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved ; Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies, Die in the large and charitable air. Laboriously tracing what must be, A worthier image for the sanctuary, And shap'd it forth before the multitude, Divinely human, raising worship so To higher reverence more mix'd with love, That better self shall live till human Time Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky |