ever stands still, nor souls either: they ever go up
or go down;
And hers has been steadily soaring--but how has it been
with your own?

She has struggled and yearned and aspired, grown purer and wiser each year:
The stars are not farther above you in yon luminous atmosphere!

For she whom you crowned with fresh roses, down yonder, five summers ago,
Has learned that the first of our duties to God and ourselves is to grow.

Her eyes they are sweeter and calmer: but their vision is clearer as well;
Her voice has a tender cadence, but is pure as a silver bell.

Her face has the look worn by those who with God and his angels have talked:
The white robes she wears are less white than the spirits with whom she has walked.

And you? Have you aimed at the highest? Have you, too,
aspired and prayed?
Have you looked upon evil unsullied? Have you conquered it
undismayed?

Have you, too, grown purer and wiser, as the months
and the years have rolled on?
Did you meet her this morning rejoicing in the triumph
of victory won?

Nay, hear me! The truth cannot harm you. When to-day
in her presence you stood
Was the hand that you gave her as white and clean as that
of her womanhood?

Go measure yourself by her standard; look back on the years
that have fled:
Then ask, if you need, why she tells you that the love of her
girlhood is dead.

She cannot look down to her lover: her love, like her soul, aspires;
He must stand by her side, or above her, who would kindle its
holy fires.

Now farewell! For the sake of old friendship I have ventured
to tell you the truth,
As plainly, perhaps, and as bluntly as I might in our earlier youth.

Julia C. R. Dorr [1825-1913]

A TRAGEDY

Among his books he sits all day
To think and read and write;
He does not smell the new-mown hay,
The roses red and white.

I walk among them all alone,
His silly, stupid wife;
The world seems tasteless, dead and done--
An empty thing is life.

At night his window casts a square
Of light upon the lawn;
I sometimes walk and watch it there
Until the chill of dawn.

I have no brain to understand
The books he loves to read;
I only have a heart and hand
He does not seem to need.

He calls me "Child"--lays on my hair
Thin fingers, cold and mild;
Oh! God of Love, who answers prayer,
I wish I were a child!

And no one sees and no one knows
(He least would know or see),
That ere Love gathers next