ANNIHILATION. GEORGE EDGAR MONTGOMERY. If I could know, as none can know, That in the dark beyond our earth I should not fear to tell The sadly wise and bitter thought That none were born immortal, none Predestined to a God-life wrought Beyond our sky and sun. Nor should I fear to fill my part, With the whole passion of my heart, To love and to desire. For it is true that virtue, power, That any mortal man may be Sublimely stirred, without a sense That in his doing he must see Some future recompense. Yet, though I strove with fervent will To act with noble zeal and grace, And with a faith that each may still Live deathless in the race I think, in lonely hours when sleep Obscures the grief that many bear, That I would turn to heaven and weep With heart-break and despair : For I should then remember one Whose gentle love is more to me Than all the years that time can run, Than earth, and air, and sea; And oh, to part with her were worse Than death and its inhuman fateTo lose her in a universe Whose gods annihilate. CARCASSONNE. (From the French of Gustave Nadaud.) M. E. W. SHERWOOD. How old I am! I'm eighty years! Yet, patient as my life has been, It almost seems a wrong. Alas, our dreams! they come not true; I thought to see fair Carcassonne ! I have not seen fair Carcassonne ! One sees it dimly from the height Through morn and evening's dew; But bitter frosts would fall at night, And on the grapes that yellow blight! I could not go to Carcassonne, I never went to Carcassonne. They say it is as gay all times The gentles ride in gay attire, The bishop the procession leads, Alas! I know not Carcassonne ! Alas! I saw not Carcassonne ! Our Vicar's right; he preaches loud, And bids us to beware. He says: "" O guard the weakest part, And most the traitor in the heart, Against ambition's snare!" Perhaps in autumn I can find Two sunny days with gentle wind; |