n us die.
Great Sculptor, hew and polish us; nor let
Hidden and lost thy form within us lie!

Spare not the stroke! Do with us as thou wilt!
Let there be naught unfinished, broken, marred;
Complete thy purpose that we may become
Thy perfect image, thou our God and Lord!

--Horatius Bonar.

The childish smile is fair, but lovelier far
The smiles which tell of griefs that now no longer are.

--John Sterling.

A BLESSING IN TEARS

Home they brought her warrior dead;
She nor swoon'd nor uttered cry.
All her maidens, watching, said,
"She must weep or she will die."

Then they praised him, soft and low,
Call'd him worthy to be loved,
Truest friend, and noblest foe;
Yet she neither spoke nor moved.

Stole a maiden from her place,
Lightly to the warrior stept,
Took the face-cloth from the face;
Yet she neither moved nor wept.

Rose a nurse of ninety years,
Set his child upon her knee;
Like summer tempest came her tears:
"Sweet my child, I live for thee."

--Alfred Tennyson.

EVERY DAY

O trifling task so often done,
Yet ever to be done anew!
O cares which come with every sun,
Morn after morn, the long years through!
We sink beneath their paltry sway--
The irksome calls of every day.

The restless sense of wasted power,
The tiresome round of little things,
Are hard to bear, as hour by hour
Its tedious iteration brings;
Who shall evade or who delay
The small demands of every day?

The bowlder, in the torrent's course
By tide and tempest lashed in vain,
Obeys the wave-whirled pebble's force
And yields its substance grain by grain;
So crumble strongest lives away
Beneath the wear of every day.

Who finds the lion in his lair,
Who tracks the tiger for his life
May wound them ere they are aware,
Or conquer them in desperate strife,
Yet powerless he to scathe or slay
The vexing gnats of every day.

The steady strain that never stops
Is mightier than the fiercest shock;
The constant fall of water drops
Will groove the adamantine rock;
We feel our noblest powers decay
In feeble wars with every day.

We rise to meet a heavy blow--
Our souls a sudden bravery fills--
But we endure not always so
Th