Ah, who shall say

What vast expansions shall be ours that day?
What transformations of this house of clay,

To fit the heavenly mansions and the light of day?
Ah, who shall say?

But this we know,

We drop a seed into the ground,

A tiny, shapeless thing, shrivelled and dry,
And, in the fulness of its time, is seen

A form of peerless beauty, robed and crowned
Beyond the pride of any earthly queen,
Instinct with loveliness, and sweet and rare
The perfect emblem of its Maker's care.

This from a shrivelled seed?—
-Then may man hope indeed!

For man is but the seed of what he shall be,
When, in the fulness of his perfecting,

He drops the husk and cleaves his upward way,
Through earth's retardings and the clinging clay
Into the sunshine of God's perfect day.

No fetters then! No bonds of time or space!

But powers as ample as the boundless grace

That suffered man, and death, and yet, in tenderness,
Set wide the door and passed Himself before-
As He had promised-to prepare a place.

Yea, we may hope!

For we are seeds,

Dropped into earth for heavenly blossoming.
Perchance, when comes the time of harvesting,
His loving care

May find some use for even a humble tare.

We know not what we shall be-only this-
That we shall be made like Him-as He is.

THE CONCLUSION

SIR WALTER Raleigh

(Found in his Bible in the Gatehouse at Westminster)

Even such is time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, are all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days;

But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust.

AWAY!

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

I cannot say, and I will not say
That he is dead! He is just away!

With a cheery smile, and a wave of the hand,
He has wandered into an unknown land.

And left us dreaming how very fair
It must be, since he lingers there.

And you, O you, who the wildest yearn
For the old-time step and the glad return,-

Think of him faring on, as dear

In the love of There as the love of Here;

Mild and gentle as he was brave,-
When the sweetest love of his life he gave

To simple things: where the violets grew
Pure as the eyes they were likened to,

The touches of his hands have strayed
As reverently as his lips have prayed.

Think of him still as the same, I say;
He is not dead-he is just away!

IMMORTALITY

GEORGE WILLIAM RUSSELL (A. E.)

We must pass like smoke or live within the spirit's fire; For we can do no more than smoke unto the flame return; If our thought has changed to dream, our will untu desire, As smoke we vanish though the fire may burn.

Lights of infinite pity star the grey dusk of our days:
Surely here is soul: with it we have eternal breath:

In the fire of love we live, or pass by many ways,
By unnumbered ways of dream, to death.

MY BIRTH

MINOT J. SAVAGE

I had my birth when the stars were born,
In the dim æons of the past:

My cradle cosmic forces rocked,
And to my first was linked my last.

Through boundless space the shuttle flew,
To weave the warp and woof of fate:

In my begetting were conjoined

The infinitely small and great.

The outmost star on being's rim,
The tiniest sand-grain of the earth,
The farthest thrill and nearest stir

Was not indifferent to my birth.

And when at last the earth swung free,

A little planet by the moon,

For me the continent arose,

For me the ocean roared its tune;

For me the forests grew; for me
The electric force ran to and fro;
For me tribes wandered o'er the earth,
Kingdoms rose, and cities grew.

For me religions waxed and waned;
For me the ages garnered store;
For me ships traversed every sea;

For me the wise ones learned their lore;

For me, through fire and blood and tears,
Man struggled onward up the height,
On which, at last, from heaven falls
An ever clearer, broader light.

The child of all the ages, I,

Nursed on the exhaustless breast of time; By heroes thrilled, by sages taught,

Sung to by bards of every clime.

Quintessence of the universe,

Distilled at last from God's own heart,

In me concentered now abides

Of all that is the subtlest part.

The product of the ages past,

Heir of the future, then, am I; So much am I divine that God Cannot afford to let me die.

If I should ever cease to be,

The farthest star its mate would miss, And, looking after me, would fall

Down headlong darkening to the abyss.

For, if aught real that is should cease,
If the All-Father ever nods,

That day across the heavens would fall
Ragnorok, twilight of the Gods.

From ADONAIS

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

He is made one with Nature: there is heard
His voice in all the music, from the moan
Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird;
He is a presence to be felt and known

In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,
Spreading itself where'er that Power may move
Which has withdrawn His being to its own;
Which wields the world with never-wearied love,
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.

He is a portion of the loveliness

Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear
His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress

Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there
All new successions to the forms they wear;
Torturing the unwilling dross that checks its flight
To its own likeness, as each mass may bear;

And bursting in its beauty and its might,

From trees and beast and men into the Heaven's light.

The splendors of the firmament of time
May be eclipsed but are extinguished not;
Like stars to their appointed height they climb,
And death is a low mist which cannot blot
The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought
Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair,
And love and life contend for it, for what
Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there

And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.