FROM THANATOPSIS So live that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, that moves To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed William Cullen Bryant. MOSSES AND LICHENS Moss and lichens: Meek creatures! The first mercy of the earth, veiling with hushed softness its dintless rocks. No words that I know of will say what mosses are. None are delicate enough, none perfect enough, none rich enough. How is one to tell of the rounded bosses of furred and beaming green-the starred divisions of rubied bloom, fine filmed, as if the rock spirits could spin porphyry as we do glass the traceries of intricate silver, and fringes of amber, lustrous, arborescent, burnished through every fiber into fitful brightness and glossy traverses of silken change, yet all subdued and pensive, and framed for simplest, sweetest offices of grace. They will not be gathered, like the flowers, for chaplet or love token; but of these the wild bird will make his nest and the wearied child his pillow. And as the earth's first mercy, so they are its last gift to us. When all other service is vain, from plant and tree, the soft mosses and gray lichens take up their watch for the headstone. The woods, the blossoms, the gift-bearing grasses have done their parts for a time, but these do service forever. Trees for the builder's yard, flowers for the bride's chamber, corn for the granary, moss for the grave. Yet as in one sense the humblest, in another they are the most honored of the earth children, unfading as motionless, the worm frets them not, and the autumn wastes not. Strong in lowliness, they neither blanch in heat nor pine in frost. To them, slow-fingered, constant-hearted, is entrusted the weaving of the dark eternal tapestries of the hills; to them, slow-penciled, iris-dyed, the tender framing of their endless imagery. Sharing the stillness of the unimpassioned rock, they share also its endurance; and while the winds of departing spring scatter the white hawthorn blossom like drifted snow, and summer dims on the parched meadow the drooping of its cowslip-gold, far above, among the mountains, the silver lichen-spots rest, star-like, on the stone; and the athering orange stain upon the edge of yonder western peak reflects the sunsets of a thousand years. By the Contributor:-The reader will not fail to notice that this beautiful conclusion is in verse: The gathering orange stain Upon the edge of yonder western peak This we conceive to be, upon the whole, the finest passage of its order in the world; the most poetical, the most beautifully-imagined ard the most exquisitely expressed. COOL PHILOSOPHY Johnny had told a falsehood and his mother was anxiously talking with him. "The Bible says, Johnny," she told him, "that no one who tells lies can go to heaven." "Mamma," he asked, "did you ever tell a lie?" "I dare say I did, my son, when I was very small like you, and did not realize how wicked it was.' "Did papa ever tell a lie?" "Perhaps he might, when he was a little boy; but he would not do it now." "Well," remarked the young philosopher, "I don't know as I care about going to heaven, if there isn't going to be anybody there but God and George Washington." Anonymous. O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! [Written in memory of President Lincoln, to whom the poem refers as the captain of the ship of State.] O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring: But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells: For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck, You've fallen cold and dead. My Captain does not answer me, his lips are pale and still, My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won, Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells! But I with mournful tread, Walk the deck: my Captain lies Fallen cold and dead. Walt Whitman. "GOOD-BYE" [Said to have been written by Ah Foo Lin, a Chinese student, in a friend's album.] There is a word, of grief the sounding token; There is a word bejeweled with bright tears, The memories it crystals cannot die, HE FOUND IT A well-known Indiana man, (He found it.) John Welch by curiosity (Dispatches state) was goaded; He squinted in his old shotgun To see if it was loaded. (It was.) A man in Macon stopped to watch He wondered if his finger was A Maine man read that human eyes He went to see if it would work Upon an angry bull. (It wouldn't.) San Francisco Bulletin. THE WONDROUS CROSS When I survey the wondrous cross And pour contempt on all my pride. Forbid it, Lord! that I should boast, Save in the death of Christ, my God; All the vain things that charm me most I sacrifice them to His blood. See, from His head, His hands, His feet, |