conceived.

"No Musician ever held your spirit
Charmed and bound in his melodious chains;
But, be sure, he heard, and strove to render,
Feeble echoes of celestial strains.

"No real Poet ever wove in numbers
All his dream, but the diviner part,
Hidden from all the world, spake to him only
In the voiceless silence of his heart.

"So with Love: for Love and Art united
Are twin mysteries: different yet the same;
Poor indeed would be the love of any
Who could find its full and perfect name.

"Love may strive; but vain is its endeavour
All its boundless riches to unfold;
Still its tenderest, truest secret lingers
Ever in its deepest depths untold.

"Things of Time have voices: speak and perish.
Art and Love speak; but their words must be
Like sighings of illimitable forests
And waves of an unfathomable sea."

And can it be that death shall put the final seal of irretrievable ruin
on all this uncompleted effort? Can it be that the grave shall whelm all
this unuttered love in endless silence? Ah, what a wild waste of
precious treasure, what a mad destruction of fair designs, what an
utter failure, life would be if death must end all!

The very reasonableness of our nature, our sense of order, declare the
impotence of Death to create such a wreck. And most of all our deep
affections cry out against the conclusion of despair. They will not hear
of dissolution. They reach out their hands into the darkness. They
demand and they promise an unending fellowship, a deepening communion, a
more perfect satisfaction. Do you remember what Thackeray wrote? "If
love lives through all life, and survives through all sorrow; and
remains steadfast with us through all changes; and in all darkness of
spirit burns brightly; and if we die, deplores us forever, and still
loves us equally; and exists with the very last gasp and throb of the
faithful bosom, whence it passes with the pure soul beyond death, surely
it shall be immortal. Though we who remain are separated from it, is it
not ours in heaven? If we love still those whom we lose, can we
altogether lose those whom we love?"

To deny this instinct is to deny that which lies at the very root of our
life. If love perishes with death, then our affections are our worst
curses, the world is the cruellest torture-house, and "all things work
together for evil to those who love." Do you believe it? Is it poss