Thought is deeper than all speech,
Feeling deeper than all thought;
Souls to souls can never teach

What unto themselves was taught.

We are spirits clad in veils;
Man by man was never seen;
All our deep communing fails

To remove the shadowy screen.

Heart to heart was never known;
Mind with mind did never meet;

We are columns left alone

Of a temple once complete.

Like the stars that gem the sky,
Far apart though seeming near,

In our light we scattered lie;

All is thus but starlight here.

What is social company

But a babbling summer stream?

What our wise philosophy

But the glancing of a dream?

56

THE WILD ROSE BY THE RAILROAD.

Only when the sun of love

Melts the scattered stars of thought,

Only when we live above

What the dim-eyed world hath taught,

Only when our souls are fed

By the fount which gave them birth,
And by inspiration led

Which they never drew from earth,

We, like parted drops of rain,

Swelling till they meet and run,

Shall be all absorbed again,

Melting, flowing into one.

CRANCH

THE WILD ROSE BY THE RAILROAD.

On its straight iron pathway the long train was rush

ing,

With its noise and its smoke and its great human

load;

And I saw where a wild rose in beauty was blushing,

Fresh and sweet, by the side of the hot, dusty road.

Untrained were its branches, untended it flourished;

No eye marked its budding, or mourned its decay;

THH WILD ROSE BY THE RAILROAD. 57

But its leaves by the soft dew of Heaven were nour

ished,

And it opened its buds to the warm light of day.

I asked why it grew there, where none prized its beauty;

For, of thousands that passed, none had leisure to

stay;

And the answer came, sweetly, "I do but my duty;
I was told to bloom here, by the side of the way."

There are those on life's pathway whose spirits are willing

To dwell where the busy crowd passes them by ; But the dew from above on their lives is distilling, And they bloom in the smile of the All-Seeing Eye.

They are loved by the few; let the wild rose remind them,

When tempted from duty's lone pathway to stray, They, too, have a place and a mission assigned them, Though it be but to grow by the side of the way.

S.

58

PRAYING IN SECRET.

PRAYING IN SECRET.

I NEED not leave the jostling world,
Or wait till daily tasks are o'er,

To fold my hands in secret prayer,
Within the close-shut closet door.

There is a voiceless cloistered room
Within me, open every day;

Where, though my feet may join the throng,
My soul may enter in and pray.

When I have banished wayward thought,

Of sinful works the fruitful seed,
When folly wins the ear no more,
The closet door is shut indeed.

No human step approaching, breaks
The blissful stillness of the place;

No shadow steals across the light

That falls from my Redeemer's face.

One listening, even, cannot know

When I have crossed the threshold o'er, For He, alone, who hears my prayer

Has heard the shutting of the door.

WE call them weeds, the while with slender fingers
Earth's wounds and scars they seek to cover o'er;
On sterile sands where scarce the rain-drop lingers,
They grow and blossom by the briny shore.

We call them weeds;-did we their forms but study,
We many a secret might enfolded find;
Each tiny plant fulfills its heaven-taught mission,
And bears the impress of immortal mind.

We call them weeds-the while their uses hidden
Might work a nation's weal, a nation's woe;

Send through each wasted frame the balm of healing,
And cause the blood with youth's quick pulse to

flow.

Weeds yet they hold in bonds the mighty ocean! Their slender threads bind firm the sandy shore; Navies may sink amid its wild commotion,

These humble toilers ne'er their work give o'er.

And who shall say the feeblest thought avails not
To bind the shifting sands upon life's beach?
Some heart may treasure what we've long forgot,

The faintest word some soul with power may

reach.