DAYS.

DAUGHTERS of Time, the hypocritic Days,

Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,

And marching single in an endless file,

Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
To each they offer gifts after his will,

Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all
I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
Turned and departed silent. I, too late,
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

R. W. EMERSON

HUMAN LIFE.

SAD

AD is our youth, for it is ever going,
Crumbling away beneath our very feet;
Sad is our life, for onward it is flowing,

In current unperceived because so fleet;
Sad are our hopes, for they were sweet in sowing,
But tares, self-sown, have overtopped the wheat;
Sad are our joys, for they were sweet in blowing,
And still, O still, their dying breath is sweet:
And sweet is youth, although it hath bereft us
Of that which made our childhood sweeter still;
And sweet is middle life, for it hath left us
A nearer Good to cure an older Ill;

And sweet are all things, when we learn to prize them

Not for their sake, but His who grants them or denies them.

AUBREY DE Vera

THE STREAM OF LIFE.

O

STREAM descending to the sea,
Thy mossy banks between,
The flow'rets blow, the grasses grow,
The leafy trees are green.

In garden plots the children play,
The fields the labourers till,
And houses stand on either hand,
And thou descendest still.

O life descending into death,
Our waking eyes behold
Parent and friend thy lapse attend,
Companions young and old.

Strong purposes our minds possess,
Our hearts affections fill,

We toil and earn, we seek and learn,
And thou descendest still.

O end to which our currents tend,
Inevitable sea,

To which we flow, what do we know,
What shall we guess of thee?

A roar we hear upon thy shore,
As we our course fulfil;
Scarce we divine a sun will shine
And be above us still.

Here
eyes
do regard you,
In Eternity's stillness;
Here is all fulness,

Ye brave, to reward you;
Work, and despair not."

J. W. VON GOETHE. Trans. by THOMAS CARLYI.E

STANZAS.

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HOUGHT is deeper than all speech, Feeling deeper than all thought; Souls to souls can never teach

What unto themselves was taught.

We are spirits clad in veils;

Man by man was never seen; All our deep communing fails

To remove the shadowy screen. Heart to heart was never known;

Mind with mind did never meet; We are columns, left alone,

Of a temple once complete. Like the stars that gem the sky,

Far apart, though seeming near, In our light we scattered lie;

All is thus but starlight here.

What is social company

But a babbling summer stream ? What our wise philosophy

But the glancing of a dream?

Only when the sun of love

Melts the scattered stars of thought; Only when we live above

What the dim-eyed world hath taught;

Only when our souls are fed

By the Fount which gave them birth, And by inspiration led

Which they never drew from earth;

We, like parted drops of rain,
Swelling till they melt and run,
Shall be all absorbed again,
Melting, flowing into one.

THE PROBLEM.

C. P. CRANCH.

LIKE a church; I like a cowl;
I love a prophei of the soul;
And on my heart monastic aisles

Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles;
Yet not for all his faith could see
Would I that cowled churchman be.

Why should the vest on him allure,
Which I could not on me endure?

Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought;
Never from lips of cunning fell
The thrilling Delphic oracle;