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NUMBER 'IHIMY-THREE
' It can not be that this sweet life of ours,
So grand, so glorious and so beautiful,
So full of mighty promises, is but
The clash of blind and senseless atoms, and
At last dissolves in empty nothingness!
It can not be that its bright, crystal stream
Runs darkling to the deeps of endless death,
When every wave that wooes the winding banks
Sings of the summer skies from whence it came!
What is this in this tenement of clay
That, like a caged wild bird, beats its wings
Against its prison bars, unless it be
A captive spirit, fretting ’neath the chains
Os conscious slavery, struggling to be free?
This ceaseless longing after better things
Than earth hath ever promised, or can give,
Whence comes it if the yearning, homesick soul
Hath not had visions of some happier sphere
To our dim eyes invisible, or else
There lingers still some half-waking dream —
Sweet memories of a former glory lost?
O grand, Invisible and potent essence, Lile!
In vain the student seeks with chemic test
To fathom thy deep mystery. All in vain,
With fierce and fiery questions would he wring,
Poor tortured nature writhing on the rack —
Confession from her suffering, silent lips
Os that mysterious, subtle power that moves,
Controls and regulates her wondrous works.
He sees it laughing in the budding flower;
He hears it trilling in the skylark’s song;
He feels it throbbing in the fiery flood
That leaps like liquid lightning through his veins,
And maddened at the mockery of his powers,
Calls bold, unblushing science to his aid,
Who, armed with scalpel and retort, pursues
With patient search the protean phantom down
Through system, organ, member, molecule
And atom, but to find for all her pains,
There’s that within the lowliest thing that lives
That will not yield to his analysis.
In nature is no death, unless that death
Be called, which is but change to newer forms
Os ever-upward-reaching life. In all
This ceaseless change, beginning finds she none,
Nor prophecy of end. No further seek.
Before us and behind the curtains fall,
Forever shutting from our vision out
The secrets of the silent land beyond.
Across these borders science can not pass;
And proud Philosophy, with gathered skirts,
Stops at the threshold, and with her hand to brow,
Peers, with wide wondering eyes and s'lent lips,
Into the darkness that she dares not trust.
But Faith, Love’s white-winged daughter, lifts the
veil
That shuts the future out, and whispers hope.
The soul, with an unerring instinct that
As far transcends the utmost reach and power
Os weak and faltering reason as the stars
Their pale reflection in the troubled pool,
ATLANTA, GA.. u/%BER, 6 1910.
BIOPSIS
*By TOM F. MCBFfZTH
Proclaims herself a thing of birth divine,
And crowns herself immortal!
We do live!
And it concerns us most not what is life,
But how shall we best use it, that when called
To lay its glittering pageantry aside,
And clothed in death’s pale robe of night, lie down
To that long dreamless sleep that separates
Time’s evening from Eternity’s fair morn,
Our deeds of love, in hearts we leave behind,
May live forever; and across the gulf
That circles round the narrow shores of time,
Waft their sweet perfume, borne on Heavenly airs,
An incense offering to the throne of God.
He lives it best in God’s sight who but lives
To feel, to love, to wonder and adore.
Why fret the years away in vain attempt
To ravgl out what seems to thy false sight
The tangled skeins of things, and set the world
To rights? As if the Lord of all the earth
Had need of help from our poor, puny hands
That do but touch His noblest works to mar them!
Vainglorious man! when wilt thou understand
And own thy nothingness? God rules, not thou!
Thine own poor self, thou canst not govern;
But must needs invoke the hourly help of Him
Whom thou wouldst teach to regulate the world.
Much that thou seest may to thee be wrong:
The times be out of joint, and all awry;
Evil triumphant over good, and vice
Lord over virtue, and all things, but those
Thou guid’st to ruthless ruin, headlong rush,
So ’t seems to thee. God suffers it; be still!
Thou best canst regulate the world’s affairs
By minding thine own little part of it.
Do dreams of fame thy restless heart engage?
With sword or pen thou canst inscribe thy name
Upon the brow of envious Time himself,
And bid defiance to his blighting breath.
But thou must first build round thy human heart
An adamantine wall, impregnable
Alike to Love’s sweet smile or Pity’s tear;
Must on the altar of thy purpose lay
Freedom, and ease, and rest, and calm content,
The joys of home, hope, happiness and Heaven.
An when thou’st reached the lonely mountain top,
And stand at sunset by the glittering thing
For which thou’st left the peaceful vale below,
Thou’lt find the brightness that had lured thee on
Above the dear companionship of men
Was but a mocking gleam of chilling light
Reflected from some bleak and icy cliff
That frowns above eternal fields of snow.
What is not humbly is not rightly done;
And he who works for gold works not for God.
His servants ye must be for whom ye toil,
Nor from another look for recompense.
Serve ye the world and pride, and self and sin?
Be they shall reward you for your work,
And render strict account for every hour,
E’en to the utmost farthing. Murmur not,
However, if they pay but in their coin,
And all too late you find, when life is past,
The hard-earned wages of the devil’s work
Will not pass current at the gate of Heaven.
But if ’tis God ye serve (and ho accepts
A deed of kindness to His lowliest done
As service rendered to Himself), fear not;
As punctual He as is the world to pay
But not in its base currency. His work
Hath, too, its sacrifice; and who would be
Accounted greatest among those tiiat rule
Must cast out ease, and selfishness, and pride,
Ambition’s vanities, and love of praise,
And serve the least in humbleness of heart.
Wouldst thou be leader of some chosen host
Across the desert wilderness of life,
And stand to them in God’s stead on the way;
Bid seas divide, and through the parted wave
Make a sure pathway for their trembling feet;
Strike from the flinty bosom of the rock
l ure, cooling water for their burning thirst;
Cal! manna down from fiery, brazen skies;
Stand in the dark on thundering Sinai’s top,
And with Jehovah face to face converse?
Thou may’st. But be strong. It shall be thine,
In sight of the fair Canaan of thy hopes,
The goal of thy long, weary pilgrimage,
Upon some lowly Nebo’s top to die,
Afar from kindly sympathy of men,
And another lead thy sorrowing people o’er.
But they shall walk in sweetest peace who tread
The lowly path of duty, plain and clear,
Content to do the work that nearest lies,
Not longing after burdens hard to bear,
But cheerful if God sends them. Thus to live
Is life’s supremest wisdom.
Look abroad!
Work, watch and wait,
And trust His tender love whate’er befall.
Thy pathway here may not always be smooth and
even,
And sorrow may sit and sup with thee
When thou hast bidden smiling joy alone.
The vines thou’st tended w'th fond fostering care
May cast their fruit untimely to the ground.
Thou maycst toil with weary hand and brain,
Alone through all the fiery day of life,
And, looking back at ev< ning on the fields,
See thistles growing where in tears thou sowd’st
The golden gra'n at morning, full of hope;
And cruel disappointment come at last
To mock thy wasted years and helpless age.
Be not cast down! .The soul her starry crown
Wins not by what the feeble hands have done,
But what the heart has suffered. ’Tis God’s way
To perfect His beloved and prepare
The precious in His sight to dwell with Him.
The purest souls that ever blessed the earth
Have come forth from the hottest fires of pain.
(Continued on Page 5.)
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