et years;
Past all our dreamland hopes, and doubts, and fears,
He guides our steps. Through all the tangled maze
Of sin, of sorrow, and o'erclouded days
We know his will is done;
And still he leads us on.

And he, at last,
After the weary strife--
After the restless fever we call life--
After the dreariness, the aching pain,
The wayward struggles which have proved in vain,
After our toils are past,
Will give us rest at last.

THE DEVIL IS A FOOL

Saint Dominic, the glory of the schools,
Writing, one day, "The Inquisition's" rules,
Stopt, when the evening came, for want of light.
The devils, who below from morn till night,
Well pleased, had seen his work, exclaimed with sorrow,
"Something he will forget before to-morrow!"
One zealous imp flew upward from the place,
And stood before him, with an angel face.
"I come," said he, "sent from God's Realm of Peace,
To light you, lest your holy labors cease."
Well pleased, the saint wrote on with careful pen.
The candle was consumed; the devil then
Lighted his _thumb_; the saint, quite undisturbed,
Finished his treatise to the final word.
Then he looked up, and started with affright;
For lo! the thumb blazed with a lurid light.
"Your thumb is burned!" said he. The child of sin
Changed to his proper form, and with a grin
Said, "I will quench it in the martyrs' blood
Your book will cause to flow--a crimson flood!"

Triumphantly the fiend returned to hell
And told his story. Satan said, "'Tis well!
Your aim was good, but foolish was the deed;
For blood of martyrs is the Church's seed."

--Herder, tr. by James Freeman Clarke.

PROVIDENCE

We all acknowledge both thy power and love
To be exact, transcendent, and divine;
Who dost so strongly and so sweetly move,
While all things have their will, yet none but thine,

For either thy _command_ or thy _permission_
Lay hands on all: they are thy right and left:
The first puts on with speed and expedition;
The other curbs sin's stealing pace and theft.

Nothing escapes them both; all must appear
And be disposed and dressed and tuned by thee,
Who sweetly temperest all. If we could hear
Thy skill and art what music would it be!

Thou art in small things great, nor small in any;
Thy even pra