A mind for thoughts to pass into,
A heart for loves to travel through,
Five senses to detect things near,
Is this the whole that we are here?

Rules baffle instincts, - instincts rules;

Wise men are bad, — and good are fools;
Facts evil-wishes vain appear,

We cannot go, why are we here?
O may we, for assurance sake,
Some arbitrary judgment take,
And wilfully pronounce it clear,
For this or that 'tis we are here?

Or is it right, and will it do,
To pace the sad confusion through,
And say: "It doth not yet appear,
What we shall be, what we are here"?

Ah, yet, when all is thought and said,
The heart still overrules the head;
Still what we hope we must believe,
And what is given us receive;

Must still believe, for still we hope,
That in a world of larger scope,
What here is faithfully begun
Will be completed, not undone.

My child, we still must think, when we
That ampler life together see,
Some true result will yet appear
Of what we are, together, here.

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH

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.

SAD

HUMAN LIFE.

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 Vere.

THE STREAM OF LIFE.

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 mind 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.

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.

MASON-LODGE.

THE

HE Future hides in it
Gladness and sorrow;

We press still thorow,
Nought that abides in it
Daunting us, — onward.
And solemn before us,
Veiled, the dark Portal,
Goal of all mortal:

Stars silent rest o'er us,
Graves under us silent.

While earnest thou gazest,
Comes boding of terror,
Comes phantasm and error,
Perplexes the bravest
With doubt and misgiving.

But heard are the Voices, -
Heard are the Sages,
The Worlds and the Ages:
"Choose well, your choice is
Brief and yet endless;

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 CARLYLE.

STANZAS.

HOUGHT is deeper than all speech,

TH

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?