delight.

The stars come nightly to the sky;
The tidal wave unto the sea;
Nor time nor space, nor deep nor high,
Can keep my own away from me.

--John Burroughs.

THE LARGER HOPE

O, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void
When God hath made the pile complete;

That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shriveled in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.

Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last--far off--at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.

So runs my dream; but what am I?
An infant crying in the night;
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope through darkness up to God.

I stretch lame hands of faith and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.

--Alfred Tennyson.

DESPONDENCY REBUKED

Say not, the struggle naught availeth;
The labor and the wounds are vain;
The enemy faints not, nor faileth;
And as things have been they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be--in yon smoke concealed--
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes, silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow--how slowly!
But westward, look, the land is bright!

--Arthur Hugh Clough.

COMMIT THY WAY

Commit thy way to God,
The weight which makes thee faint;
Worlds are to him no load,
To him breathe thy complaint.
He who for winds and clouds
Maketh a pathway free,
Through wastes or hostile crowds,
Can make a way for thee.