August 11

Then, welcome each rebuff That turns Earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!

IF the very law of life is a law of change; if every blossom of beauty has its root in fallen leaves; if love, and thought, and hope would faint beneath too constant light, and need for their freshening the darkness and the dews; if it is in losing the transient that we gain the Eternal: then let us shrink no more from sorrow, and sigh no more for rest; but have a genial welcome for vicissitude, and make quiet friends with loss and Death. Through storm and calm, fresh be our courage, and quick our eye, for the various service that may await us. Nay, when God Himself turns us not hither and thither, when He sends us no changes for us to receive and consecrate, be it ours to create them for ourselves, by flinging ourselves into generous enterprises and worthy sacrifice; by the stirrings of sleepless aspiration, and all the spontaneous vicissitudes of holy and progressive souls; keeping always the moral spaces round us pure and fresh by the constant thought of truth and the frequent deed of love. And then, when, for us too, death closes the great series of mortal changes, the past will lie behind us green and sweet as Eden, and the future before us in the light of eternal peace. Tranquil and fearless-we shall resign ourselves to God, to conduct us through that ancient and invisible way which has been sanctified by the feet of all the faithful, and illumined by the passage of the Man of griefs.

JAMES MARTIN- EAU, Hours of Thought

JOY BUILT WITH PAIN

II

Aug-

Evening

The city lieth foursquare, the length and the breadth and the height of it are equal.

(LOVE speaks.)

YOUR tears unheeded, and your prayers made nought, Thus and no otherwise through all have wrought,

That if, the while ye toiled and sorrowed most

The sound of your lamenting seemed all lost,

And from my land no answer came again,

It was because of that your care and pain

A house was building, and your bitter sighs

Came hither as toil-helping melodies,

And in the mortar of our gem-built wall

Your tears are mingled mid the rise and fall

Of golden trowels tinkling in the hands

Of builders gathered wide from all the lands.—

—Is the house finished? Nay, come help to build

Walls that the sun of sorrow once did gild

Through many a bitter morn and hopeless eve,

That so at last in bliss ye may believe;

Then rest with me, and turn no more to tears,

For then no more by days and months and years,

By hours of pain come back, and joy passed o'er

We measure time that was—and is no more.

WILLIAM

MORRIS

2 F

ONE LOVE