AT TWILIGHT TIME.

Α

T twilight time,

The musing hour,

When the past re-lives,

And we feel the power

Of the subtle spell that awhile calls back The treasures we've lost along life's track,

We sit and dream,

Till the present falls

In the shadow that rises

And sinks on the walls;

And the old time only is living and true, And dreams are the things that now we do.

Then on the stairs

Is the patter and fall

Of the little feet

That ran through the hall;

We hear the old shout of frolic and glee; And again the lost darling is on our knee.

The little shoes,

The doll, the cart,

The half-worn frock,

O! who would part

With these treasured trifles that hold the key
To the sacred chamber of memory?

The tears may fall,

The heart may swell;

The loss is bitter :

Yet who can tell

From a mother's love, what treasure vast Could buy these waifs of a shipwrecked past?

Our human love

Is but a ray:

In God's great heart

Is full-orbed day:

If the toys of our children we cherish and bless, Is God's love for his little ones smaller or less?

126

MEMORY.

MEMORY! the cup of joy

Thou holdest full to happy lips!
But bitter waters Sorrow sips
From goblets she would fain destroy.

For Memory is but torture now:

She makes the dead past live again, In one wild whirl of heart and brain, While o'er the lost my head I bow.

I look through mists of tears, and see

My blessed, bright-haired boy once more;
I hear his footfall on the floor,

He's running through the hall for me.

I see his playthings scattered round;
I hear his merry laugh ring out;
I start, and listen for his shout,
A mother's heaven was in that sound.

I think of all he was to me;

I dream of all he would have been :

O, had I not such glory seen,

I had escaped this agony!

O, tear the shape from out my heart,
And let it be I had no boy!

This memory of former joy
Is present sorrow's bitterest part.

And yet, and yet, - no, let me keep

The thought of bliss that once was mine:
This sacred grief my life shall twine,

And live upon the tears I weep.

Perhaps 'twill blossom out some day,

With flowers of hope; for heaven's sunrise May follow this earth's sunset; and my eyes May smile once more to meet its gladdening ray.

128

PART SIXTH.

HAPPINESS,

I. -THE PLEASANT WAY.

ROM the small number of persons at any special

FROM

time in the world, who are earnestly and heartily seeking to walk in the ways of wisdom, we must conclude that there are practically very few people who believe the words of the proverb.1 Wisdom, in the Bible, stands for a practical recognition of the laws of righteousness and truth, for the way of God; but the common belief of men, as represented in the prominent religions of the world, seems to be that pleasure is found almost anywhere else rather than here. The word "pleasure" is very rarely connected with doing right in this life. We say it is pleasant to do wrong; and the popular speakers and the poets have represented the flowery paths of sin, and, in contrast with those, have pictured the narrow, steep, and rugged way, the way of virtue, a way that is rough, so that the feet bleed in trying to climb; a way that is so

1 "Her ways are ways of pleasantness."