mory than to eye,
And dearer yet to anguish than to comfort, will
We hold him by our love, that shall not die,

For while it doth not, thus he cannot. Try!
Who can put out the motion or the smile?
The old ways of being noble all with him laid by?
Because we love he is. Then trust awhile.

--Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward.

OUR TWO GIFTS

Two gifts God giveth, and he saith
One shall be forfeit in the strife--
The one no longer needed: life,
No hand shall take the other, death.

--John Vance Cheney.

ATHANASIA

The ship may sink,
And I may drink
A hasty death in the bitter sea;
But all that I leave
In the ocean grave
Can be slipped and spared, and no loss to me.

What care I
Though falls the sky
And the shriveling earth to a cinder turn;
No fires of doom
Can ever consume
What never was made nor meant to burn!

Let go the breath!
There is no death
To a living soul, nor loss, nor harm.
Not of the clod
Is the life of God--
Let it mount, as it will, from form to form.

--Charles Gordon Ames.

LIFE

Life! I know not what thou art,
But know that thou and I must part;
And when, or how, or where we met
I own to me's a secret yet.

But this I know--when thou art fled,
Where'er they lay these limbs, this head,
No clod so valueless shall be
As all that there remains of me.
O whither, whither dost thou fly?
Where bend unseen thy trackless course?
And in this strange divorce,
Ah, tell where I must seek this compound, I?

Life! we've been long together,
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
'Tis hard to part when friends are dear.
Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear;
Then steal away, give little warning,
Choose thine own time;
Say not "Good Night," but in some brighter clime
Bid me "Good Morning."

--Anna Letitia Barbauld.

THE STRUGGLE

"Body, I pray you, let me go!"
(It is a soul that struggles so.)
"Body, I see on yonder height
Dim reflex of a solemn light;
A flame that shineth from the place
Where Beauty walks with naked face;
It is a flame you cannot see--
Lie down, you clod, and set me free.

"Body, I pray you, let me go!"
(It is a soul that striveth so.)
"Bo