When kindred, too, grow cold and shy While listening to our tale,

We'll say, press on, the goal is nigh,
There's no such word as fail.

'Tis when the fuming masses meet
The assayer's furnace glows,
And higher as we raise the heat
A purer metal flows.

If Providence should thus award
Our efforts to prevail,

Then will we shout with one accord,
There's no such word as fail.

Our God is just; revere His will,
Let faith our fears disarm;
His work in season He'll fulfil,

And shelter us from harm.
Then let us trust in Him whose voice
Is heard in every gale,

And even in our prayers rejoice,
There's no such word as fail.

SOONER OR LATER.

Sooner or later the storms shall beat
Over my slumbers from head to feet;
Sooner or later the winds shall rave
In the long grass above my grave.
I shall uot heed them where I lie;
Nothing their sound shall signify—
Nothing the headstone's fret of rain—
Nothing to me the dark day's pain.

Sooner or later the sun shall shine

With tender warmth on that mound of mine;
Sooner or later, in summer air,
Clover and violet blossom there.

I shall not feel in that deep laid rest
The sheeted light fall over my breast,
Nor ever note in those hidden hours
The wind-blown breath of the tossing flowers.

Sooner or later the stainless snows

Shall add their hush to my mute repose;
Sooner or later shall slant and shift,
And heap my bed with their dazzling drift.

Chill though this frozen pall shall seem,
Its touch no colder can make the dream,
That recks not the sweet and sacred dread,
Shrouding the city of the dead.

Sooner or later the bee shall come,
And fill the noon with his golden hum;
Sooner or later, on half-poised wing,
The blue-bird's warble about me ring.

Ring and chirrup, and whistle with glee,
Nothing his music means to me;
None of these things shall know
How sweetly their lover sleeps below.

Sooner or later, far out in the night
The stars shall over me wing their flight;
Sooner or later my darkling dews

Catch the white spark in their silent ooze.

Never a ray shall part the gloom

That wraps me round in the kindly tomb;
Peace shall be perfect for lip and brow,
Sooner or later; oh, why not now?

H. P. Spofford.

MONICA'S WISH.

"Oh! could my grave at Carthage be!
Care not for that, lay me where I fall;
Every where heard will be the judgment call,
But at God's altar, oh! remember me."

Thus Monica, and died in Italy.

Yet fervent had her longing been through all
Her course, for home at last and burial
With her own husband, by the Lybian sea.

Had been; but at the end, to her passion
All beside seemed vain and cheap,
And union before God the only care.

Creeds pass, rites change, no altar standeth whole. Yet as she prayed, her memory we'll keep,

Keep by this life in God, and union there.

:

Matthew Arnold.

We but dream we have our wished-for powers,
Ends we seek we never shall attain;

Ah! some power exists there, which is ours,
Some end is there, we indeed may gain.

A WISH.

I ask not that my bed of death
From bands of greedy heirs be free;
For these besiege the latest breath
Of fortune's favored sons, not me.

I ask not each kind soul to keep

Tearless, when of my death he hears; Let those who weep, if any will,

There are worse plagues on earth than tears.

I ask but that my death may find

The freedom to my life denied, Ask but the folly of mankind,

Then, then at last, to quit my side,

Spare me the whispering crowded room,
The friends who come and gape and go,
The ceremonial air of gloom,

All that makes death a hideous show.

Nor bring to see me cease to live

Some doctor, full of phrase and fame,
To shake his sapient head, and give
The ill he could not cure, a name.

Bring none of these, but let me be,
While all around in silence lies,
Moved to the window, and there see
Once more before my dying eyes,

Bathed in the sacred dews of morn,

The wide aerial landscape spread, The world which was ere I was born,

The world which lasts when I am dead.

Which never was the friendly one,
Nor promised love it could not give,
And lived itself and made us live.

Thus feeling, gazing let me go,
Composed, refreshed, ennobled, clear;

Then, willing, let my spirit go,

To work or wait elsewhere or here.

Matthew Arnold.

LONGING.

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For so the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

NOT KNOWING.

I know not what shall befall me,
God hangs a mist o'er my eyes,
And so each step of my onward path
He makes new scenes to rise e;

And every joy He shall send me comes
As a sweet and glad surprise.

I see not a step before me,

As I tread on another year,