DECEMBER

H

OAR Time about the house betakes him slow,

Seeking an entry for his weariness;

And in that dreadful company Distress

And the sad Night with silent footsteps go.
On my poor hearth the brands are scarce aglow,
And in the woods without pale wanderers press;
Where, waning in the pines from less to less,
Mysterious hangs the hornèd moon, and low.
For now December, full of aged care,
Comes in upon the year and weakly grieves,
Mumbling his lost desires and his despair;
And with mad, trembling hand still interweaves
The dank sear flower-stalks tangled in his hair,
While round about him whirl the rotten leaves.

REGRET

I

HOLD it now more shameful to forget
Than fearful to remember; if I may

Make choice of pain, my Father, I will pray
That I may suffer rather than regret;
And this dull aching at my heart to-day
Is harder far to bear than when I set
My passionate heart some golden thing to get,
And, as I clasped it, it was torn away.

"The world is fair," the elder spirit saith,
"The tide flows fast, and on the further shore

Wait consolations and surprises rare."

But youth still cries, "The love that was my faith

Is broken, and the ruined shrine is bare

And I am all alone for evermore."

G

AILY and greenly let my seasons run:

And should the war-winds of the world uproot

The sanctities of life, and its sweet fruit

Cast forth as fuel for the fiery sun;

The dews be turned to ice; fair days begun

In peace wear out in pain, and sounds that suit
Despair and discord keep Hope's harpstring mute,
Still let me live as love and life were one:
Still let me turn on earth a childlike gaze
And trust the whispered charities that bring
Tidings of human truth; with inward praise
Watch the weak motion of each common thing,
And find it glorious. Still let me raise
On wintry wrecks an altar to the Spring.

SUFFERING

Ο

H ye, all ye, who suffer here below,

Schooled in the baffling mystery of pain,
Who on life's anvil bear the fateful strain,
Wrung as forged iron, hammered blow on blow,
Take counsel with your grief, in that you know
That he who suffers suffers not in vain,

Nay, that it shall be for the whole world's gain,
And wisdom prove the priceless price of woe.

Thus in some new-found land, where no man's feet
Have trod a path, bold voyagers astray
May fall foredone by torturing thirst and heat:
But from the impotent body of defeat

The winners spring who carve a conquering way—
Measured by milestones of their perished clay.

THE AGNOSTIC

[OT in the hour of peril, thronged with foes,

N°

Panting to set their heel upon my head,

Or when alone from many wounds I bled
Unflinching beneath Fortune's random blows;
Nor when my shuddering hands were doomed to close
The unshrinking eyelids of the stony dead;-
Not then I missed my God, not then-but said:
"Let me not burden God with all men's woes!"

But when resurgent from the womb of night
Spring's Oriflamme of flowers waves from the Sod;
When peak on flashing Alpine peak is trod

By sunbeams on their missionary flight;

When heaven-kissed Earth laughs, garmented in light;— That is the hour in which I miss

my God.