Poems

If e'er the brilliant day be dulled with care, Or ways seem balked by sense of limitation; Watch! lest within the burden of thy prayer The suppliant's cry outweigh Love's affirmation. If e'er life seems to breathe of self and sin, And on heaven's stillness mortal voice is falling, Watch! lest them let the subtle tempter in To drown the music of Christ's whispered calling.

O thou afflicted, tempest-tossed, Awake from troubled dreams! Arise, and fling thy portals wide To catch the first faint beams. For light is breaking in the east, And o'er the shim'ring sea The curtains of the night withdraw, And day hath dawned for thee! Then, weary heart, look up, rejoice! For all creation sings: The Sun of righteousness shall rise With healing in his wings.

" My burden is too heavy, Lord," I trembling said. "I can no farther carry it!" And tears I shed.

True consciousness is like the sea,      Unbounded, free. Like white ships to and fro, Thoughts come and go      All silently.

The night of materialism wanes. —Science and Health, p.

Why move ye such a saddened throng throughout a weary world of woe, The heavy fear of dreaded death upon thine eyelids hanging low, When life eternal swings thy way, where God's own angels singing go. And death is done, did ye but know! The far hereafter is today—it holds no place for trembling tears.

God give us love To check the battle's ruthless rain. And bring again to life the slain; To make the paths of peace more plain.

God's kingdom does not come With the emblazoned silken banners flying, With shrilling of the trumpet's clarion crying, With the deep roll of drum. But, as vague dreams of night Fade into nothing when we rouse from sleeping To find the sun his morning vigil keeping, Bathing the world in light; So, as one may obey The "still small voice," he wakes to find the seeming Of sin, disease, and death was but the dreaming.

Be this the prayer of all the sons of light, "That war shall be no more": for wisdom rules Omnipotent in earth as in the height Of heaven supreme: the learning of the schools With Him is foolishness, the cult of fools, Its practice is deceit, engend'ring strife, Its fruit a fury forging murd'rous tools To slay His children, as with slaughterer's knife, Though God Himself upholds the eternity of life. "Thou shalt not kill;" What answer have the ages? The cry of murdered multitudes: the crime, The tragedy of history's awful pages: The blood-stained footprints on the sands of time; See how the forges flare from morning prime Till morn in tears return; for far and near Illumined is the midnight arc sublime: They shape more mail-girt ships, more warrior gear, And vie with friends or foes,—more fatuous year by year.

The legend runs: When men in ancient days Did stated service in the temple courts, And when their work was o'er, again came forth Into the garish light of common ways, Then on them blindness fell, nor did it lift Until the half-forgotten homely tasks Familiar grew, and earthly ministries Once more revealed the world to holden eyes. And ever thus it was, and passing strange: Sight while they served within the temple court, But blindness when they walked among their kind; Nor could they hold that vision of the light And render service midst their fellow-men.