ch at flowers
As drowning men at straws, for fear the sea
Should sweep them back to God's Eternity,
Still clinging to the day that once was ours.

No more with fevered brain
Plunging across the gulfs of Space and Time
Would we revisit this our earthly clime
We two, if we could ever come again;

Not as we came of old,
But reverencing the flesh we now despise
And gazing out with consecrated eyes,
Each of us glad of the other's hand to hold.

So we should wander nigh
Our mortal home, and see its little roof
Keeping the deep eternal night aloof
And yielding us a refuge from the sky.

We should steal in, once more,
Under the cloudy lilac at the gate,
Up the walled garden, then with hearts elate
Forget the stars and close our cottage door.

Oh then, as children use
To make themselves a little hiding-place,
We would rejoice in narrowness of space,
And God should give us nothing more to lose.

How good it all would seem
To souls that from the aeonian ebb and flow
Came down to hear once more the to and fro
Swing o' the clock dictate its hourly theme.

How dear the strange recall
From vast antiphonies of joy and pain
Beyond the grave, to these old books again,
That cosy lamp, those pictures on the wall.

Home! Home! The old desire!
We would shut out the innumerable skies,
Draw close the curtains, then with patient eyes
Bend o'er the hearth; laugh at our memories,
Or watch them crumbling in the crimson fire.

ART, THE HERALD

"The voice of one crying in the wilderness"

I

Beyond; beyond; and yet again beyond!
What went ye out to seek, oh foolish-fond?
Is not the heart of all things here and now?
Is not the circle infinite, and the centre
Everywhere, if ye would but hear and enter?
Come; the porch bends and the great pillars bow.

II

Come; come and see the secret of the sun;
The sorrow that holds the warring worlds in one;
The pain that holds Eternity in an hour;
One God in every seed self-sacrificed,
One star-eyed, star-crowned universal Christ,
Re-crucified in every wayside flower.

THE OPTIMIST

Teach me to live and to forgive
The death that all must die
Who pass in slumber through this heaven
Of earth and sea an