ring now the hidden seal.

There's never a dream so happy
But the waking makes us sad;
There's never a dream of sorrow
But the waking makes us glad;
We shall look some day with wonder
At the troubles we have had.

Yet sometimes glimmers on my sight,
Through present wrong, the eternal right;
And, step by step, since time began,
I see the steady gain of man.

--John Greenleaf Whittier.

FARTHER ON

I hear it singing, singing sweetly,
Softly in an undertone,
Singing as if God had taught it,
"It is better farther on!"

Night and day it sings the song,
Sings it while I sit alone,
Sings so that the heart may hear it,
"It is better farther on!"

Sits upon the grave and sings it,
Sings it when the heart would groan,
Sings it when the shadows darken,
"It is better farther on!"

Farther on? How much farther?
Count the milestones one by one?
No! no counting--only trusting,
"It is better farther on!"

NEW EVERY MORNING

Every day is a fresh beginning,
Every morn is the world made new;
You who are weary of sorrow and sinning,
Here is a beautiful hope for you--
A hope for me and a hope for you.

All the past things are past and over,
The tasks are done and the tears are shed;
Yesterday's errors let yesterday cover;
Yesterday's wounds, which smarted and bled,
Are healed with the healing which night has shed.

Yesterday is a part of forever,
Bound up in a sheaf which God holds tight;
With glad days, and sad days, and bad days, which never
Shall visit us more with their bloom and their blight,
Their fullness of sunshine or sorrowful night.

Let them go, since we cannot relieve them;
Cannot undo, and cannot atone;
God in his mercy, receive, forgive them!
Only the new days are our own.
To-day is ours, and to-day alone.

Here are the skies all burnished brightly,
Here is the spent earth all reborn;
Here are the tired limbs springing lightly
To face the sun, and to share with the morn
In the chrism of dew and the cool of dawn.

Every day is a fresh beginning;
Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain,
And, spite of all sorrow and old sinning,
And puzzle forecasted, and possible pain,
Take heart with the day, and begin agai