Are passing with the flood.

The gory beast of war is cowed;

The world's great heart with grief is bowed. Blow, bugle, blow!

The day has dawned at last.

STAINS

THEODOSIA GARRISON

The three ghosts on the lonesome road,
Spake each to one another,

"Whence came that stain about your mouth
No lifted hand may cover?"

"From eating of forbidden fruit,

Brother, my brother."

The three ghosts on the sunless road

Spake each to one another,

Whence came that red burn on your feet

No dust or ash may cover?"

"I stamped a neighbor's heart-flame out, Brother, my brother."

The three ghosts on the windless road
Spake each to one another,

"Whence came that blood upon your hand

No other hand may cover?"

"From breaking of a woman's heart, Brother, my brother."

"Yet on the earth clean men we walked,
Glutton and Thief and Lover;
White flesh and fair it hid our stains

That no man might discover."

"Naked the soul goes up to God,

Brother, my brother."

THE TRUE HEAVEN

PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE

The bliss for which our spirits pine,
That bliss we feel shall yet be given,
Somehow in some far realm divine

Some marvellous state we call a heaven,

Is not the bliss of languorous hours
A glory of calm measured range,
But life which feeds our noblest powers
On wonders of eternal change.

A heaven of action, freed from strife,
With ampler ether for the scope
Of an unmeasurable life

And an unbaffled boundless hope.

A heaven wherein all discords cease
Self-torment, doubt, distress, turmoil,
The care of whose majestic peace
Is god-like power of endless toil.

Toil without tumult, strain or jar,
With grandest reach of range indeed,
Unchecked by even the farthest star
That trembles through infinitude;

In which to soar to higher heights
Through widening ethers stretched abroad,
Till in our onward, upward flights
We touch at last the feet of God.

Time swallowed in eternity

No future evermore: no past,
But one unending NOW, to be
A boundless circle around us cast!

THE CONTINUING CITY

LAURENCE HOUSMAN

God, who made man out of dust,
Willed him to be

Not to known ends, but to trust
His decree.

This is our city, a soul

Walled within clay;

Separate hearts of one whole,

Bound we obey.

All that He meant us to be,

Could we discern,—

Life had no meaning,—or we

Had not to learn.

Thou, beloved, doubt not the truth

Eyesight makes dim!

All life, to age from youth,

Brings us to Him:

Him Whom thou hast not seen,

Canst not yet know:

Human hearts stand between,

His to foreshow.

Couldst thou possess thine own,

That were the key;

He, to Whom hearts are known,

Keeps it from thee.

Thou all thy days must live,

Thyself the quest ;

Plucking the heart to give

From thine own breast.

Till thou, from other eyes,

At kindred calls,

Seest thine own towers arise,
And thine own walls,-

Where, conquering the wide air,

Peopling its waste,

Citadels everywhere

Like stars stand based:

Losing thy soul, thy soul

Again to find;

Rendering toward that goal

Thy separate mind.

THE SPIRES OF OXFORD

WINIFRED M. LETTS

I saw the spires of Oxford
As I was passing by,
The grey spires of Oxford

Against a pearl-grey sky;

My heart was with the Oxford men Who went abroad to die.

The years go fast in Oxford,
The golden years and gay,
The hoary colleges look down
On careless boys at play.

But when the bugles sounded war
They put their games away.

They left the peaceful river,
The cricket-field, the Quad,
The shaven lawns of Oxford
To seek a bloody sod-

They gave their merry youth away
For country and for God.

God rest you, merry gentlemen,

Who laid your good lives down,
Who took the Khaki and the gun,
Instead of cap and gown.

God bring you to a fairer place

Than even Oxford town.

THE DAY IS COMING

WILLIAM MORRIS

Come hither lads and hearken, for a tale there is to tell, Of the wonderful days a'coming, when all shall be better than well.

And the tale shall be told of a country, a land in the midst of

the sea,

And folk shall call it England in the days that are going to be.

There more than one in a thousand in the days that are yet to

come,

Shall have some hope of the morrow, some joy of the ancient home.

For then-laugh not, but listen, to this strange tale of mine, All folk that are in England shall be better lodged than swine.

Then a man shall work and bethink him, and rejoice in the deeds of his hand,

Nor yet come home in the even too faint and weary to stand.

Men in that time a'coming shall work and have no fear
For to-morrow's lack of earning and the hunger-wolf anear.

I tell you this for a wonder, that no man then shall be glad Of his fellow's fall and mishap to snatch at the work he had.

For that which the worker winneth shall then be his indeed, Nor shall half be reaped for nothing by him that sowed no seed.