TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream! "
For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest !
And the grave is not its goal;
"Dust thou art, to dust returnest!"
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,

In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act-act in the living Present!

Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us. Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perchance another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.

LONGFELLOW.

K

BUT how shall we be glad?

We that are journeying through a vale of tears,
Encompassed with a thousand woes and fears,
How should we not be sad?

Angels, that ever stand.

Within the presence-chamber, and there raise
The never-interrupted hymn of praise,
May welcome this command;

Or they whose strife is o'er

Who all their weary length of life have trod,
As pillars now within the temple of God,

That shall go out no more.

But we who wander here—

We who are exiled in this gloomy place,
Still doomed to water earth's unthankful face
With many a bitter tear-

Bid us lament and mourn;

Bid us that we go mourning all the day,

And we will find it easy to obey,

Of our best things forlorn;

F

But not that we be glad.

If it be true the mourners are the blest,
Oh, leave us, in a world of sin, unrest,
And trouble, to be sad.

I spake, and thought to weep,-
For sin and sorrow, suffering and crime,
That fill the world, all mine appointed time.
A settled grief to keep.

When lo! as day from night,

As day from out the womb of night forlorn,
So from that sorrow was that gladness born,
Even in mine own despite.

Yet was not that by this

Excluded; at the coming of that joy

Fled not that grief, nor did that grief destroy
The newly-risen bliss.

But side by side they flow,

Two fountains flowing from one smitten heart,
And ofttimes scarcely to be known apart-

That gladness and that woe;

Two fountains from one source,

Of which from two such neighbouring sources ran,

That aye for him who shall unscal the one

The other flows perforce.

"REJOICE EVERMORE."

And both are sweet and calm,

Fair flowers upon the banks of either blow;
Both fertilise the soil, and where they flow

Shed round them holy balm.

ARCHBISHOP TRENCH.

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