n high,
Shall check the murmur and the sigh.

When death o'er nature shall prevail,
And all the powers of language fail,
Joy through my swimming eyes shall break
And mean the thanks I cannot speak.

But oh, when that last conflict's o'er,
And I am chained to earth no more,
With what glad accents shall I rise
To join the music of the skies!

The cheerful tribute will I give
Long as a deathless soul shall live;
A work so sweet, a theme so high,
Demands and crowns eternity!

CHAPTER XVIII.

LAST DAYS.

"Sin can never taint thee now,
Nor doubt thy faith assail,
Nor thy meek trust in Jesus Christ
And the Holy Spirit fail;
And there thou'rt sure to meet the good,
Whom on earth thou lovedst best,
Where the wicked cease from troubling,
And the weary are at rest."

Slowly, but surely, the time came when Francis was compelled to drop
all attempt at work. We do not read that he suffered or grieved over
this--not even when the blindness which had been gradually creeping
upon him suddenly climaxed, and he was plunged into almost total
darkness. In the midst of all, his faith shone brighter and brighter,
and his love for God grew in intensity. His confidence in God was
such, that when he found himself, in what ought to have been the prime
of life, a broken-down, pain-tortured wreck, not the faintest shadow
of a regret for the golden years that "might have been," had his path
been a less stormy one, ruffled the interior calm of his soul. His
life had been lived, and was being lived in the will of God, and
nothing outside that will could possibly happen to him. So, in the
serene confidence that _all_ things--no matter how disastrous they
might appear to human understanding--would surely work together for
good, he lay down in his narrow cell at the Portiuncula, to _suffer_
the Divine will with the same glad, ready obedience with which he had
heretofore hastened to perform it. In no instance do we read of his
faith failing him. Not for the smallest fraction of a second. The
story of his last days is one of the most vivid pictures of the
triumph of a soul over every earthly hindrance. It has its parallel in
the story of Gethsemane and Calvary.

[Sidenote: "_Thy Will be Done._"]

Before we continue our narrative, let us for a moment take a realizing
view of Francis, his condition and circumstances. As we have said
before,