Nearer Home

Oh, if my mortal feet

Have almost gained the brink

If it be I am nearer home

Even to-day than I think!

Father, perfect my trust;

Let my spirit feel in death,
That her feet are firmly set
On the rock of a living faith!

THE WATCHERS

W

Arlo Bates

E must be nobler for our dead, be sure, Than for the quick. We might their living eyes

Deceive with gloss of seeming; but all lies

Were vain to cheat a prescience spirit-pure.

Our soul's true worth and aim, however poor,

They see who watch us from some deathless skies With glance death-quickened. That no sad surprise Sting them in seeing, be ours to secure.

Living, our loved ones make us what they dream;

Dead, if they see, they know us as we are.
Henceforward we must be, not merely seem.

Bitterer woe than death it were by far

To fail their hopes who love us to redeem;

Loss were thrice loss that thus their faith should mar.

Life and Death

LIFE AND DEATH

Cosmo Monkhouse

ROM morn to eve they struggled-Life and
Death.

F

At first it seemed to me that they in mirth
Contended, and as foes of equal worth,

So firm their feet, so undisturbed their breath.
But when the sharp red sun cut through its sheath
Of western clouds, I saw the brown arms' girth
Tighten and bear that radiant form to earth,
And suddenly both fell upon the heath.
And then the wonder came-for when I fled
To where those great antagonists down fell
I could not find the body that I sought,
And when or where it went I could not tell:
One only form was left of those who fought,
The long dark form of Death-and it was dead.

HYMN OF TRUST

Oliver Wendell Holmes

LOVE Divine, that stooped to share

Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear,
On Thee we cast each earth-born care,
We smile at pain while Thou art near!

Though long the weary way we tread,
And sorrow crown each lingering year,
No path we shun, no darkness dread,
Our hearts still whispering, Thou art near!

When drooping pleasure turns to grief,
And trembling faith is changed to fear,
The murmuring wind, the quivering leaf,
Shall softly tell us, Thou art near!

On Thee we fling our burdened woe,
O Love Divine, forever dear,
Content to suffer while we know,
Living and dying, Thou art near!

A

Immortality

IMMORTALITY

Richard Henry Dana

ND do our loves all perish with our frames? Do those that took their root and put forth buds,

And their soft leaves unfolded in the

warmth

Of mutual hearts, grow up and live in beauty,

Then fade and fall, like fair, unconscious flowers?

Are thoughts and passions, that to the tongue give speech

And make it send forth winning harmonies,

That to the cheek do give its living glow,

And vision in the eye the soul intense
With that for which there is no utterance-
Are these the body's accidents?—no more?—
To live in it, and when it dies, go out
Like the burnt taper's flame?

O, listen, man!

A voice within us speaks the startling word,
"Man, thou shalt never die!" Celestial voices
Hymn it around our souls: according harps,
By angel fingers touched when the mild stars
Of morning sang together, sound forth still
The song of our great immortality: