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And then at last he would sit with Him
And break the bread as the day grew dim.

VI

While the cobbler mused, there passed his pane
A beggar drenched by the driving rain.
He called him in from the stony street
And gave him shoes for his bruiséd feet.
The beggar went and there came a crone,
Her face with wrinkles of sorrow sown.
A bundle of fagots bowed her back,

And she was spent with the wrench and rack.
He gave her his loaf and steadied her load
As she took her way on the weary road.
Then came to his door a little child,
Lost and afraid in the world so wild,
In the big, dark world. Catching it up,
He gave it the milk in the waiting cup,
And led it home to its mother's arms,
Out of the reach of the world's alarms.

VII

The day went down in the crimson west
And with it the hope of the blesséd Guest,
And Conrad sighed as the world turned gray:
"Why is it, Lord, that your feet delay?
Did You forget that this was the day?"
Then soft in the silence a Voice he heard:
"Lift up your heart, for I kept my word.
Three times I came to your friendly door;
Three times my shadow was on your floor.
I was the beggar with bruiséd feet;
I was the woman you gave to eat;
I was the child on the homeless street!"

79

THE FOOL'S PRAYER

EDWARD ROWLAND SILL

The royal feast was done; the King
Sought some new sport to banish care,
And to his jester cried: "Sir Fool,
Kneel now, and make for us a prayer!"

The jester doffed his cap and bells,
And stood the mocking court before;
They could not see the bitter smile
Behind the painted grin he wore.

He bowed his head, and bent his knee
Upon the monarch's silken stool;
His pleading voice arose: "O Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool!

"No pity, Lord, could change the heart From red with wrong to white as wool:

The rod must heal the sin; but, Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool!

66

'Tis not by guilt the onward sweep Of truth and right, O Lord, we stay; 'Tis by our follies that so long

We hold the earth from heaven away.

"These clumsy feet, still in the mire,
Go crushing blossoms without end;
These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust
Among the heartstrings of a friend.

"The ill-timed truth we might have kept-
Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung!
The word we had not sense to say-

Who knows how grandly it had rung!

"Our faults no tenderness should ask,

The chastening stripes must cleanse them all;
But for our blunders—Oh, in shame
Before the eyes of heaven we fall.

"Earth bears no balsam for mistakes;

Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool
That did his will; but Thou, O Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool!"

The room was hushed; in silence rose
The King, and sought his gardens cool,
And walked apart, and murmured low,
"Be merciful to me, a fool!"

80

OPPORTUNITY

EDWARD ROWLAND SILL

This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:-
There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;
And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged

A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords
Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's banner
Wavered, then staggered back, hemmed in by foes.
A craven hung along the battle's edge,

And thought, "Had I a sword of keener steel-
That blue blade that the king's son bears, but this

Blunt thing!" he snapt and flung it from his hand,
And lowering crept away and left the field.

Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead,
And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,
Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand,
And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shout
Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down,
And saved a great cause that heroic day.

81

THE REVERIE OF POOR SUSAN

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears, Hangs a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three

years:

Poor Susan has pass'd by the spot, and has heard

In the silence of morning the song of the bird.

'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? She sees A mountain ascending, a vision of trees;

Bright volumes of vapor through Lothbury glide,
And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.1

Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale
Down which she so often has tripp'd with her pail;
And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's,
The one only dwelling on earth that she loves.

She looks, and her heart is in heaven: but they fade,
The mist and the river, the hill and the shade;
The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise,
And the colors have all pass'd away from her eyes!

1. Wood Street, Lothbury, Cheapside. London streets.

82

COLUMBUS

JOAQUIN MILLER

Behind him lay the gray Azores,
Behind the Gates of Hercules; 1
Before him not the ghost of shores,
Before him only shoreless seas.
The good mate said: "Now must we pray,
For lo! the very stars are gone.

Brave Adm'r'l, speak, what shall I say?"
"Why, say: 'Sail on! sail on! and on!'"

"My men grow mutinous day by day;

My men grow ghastly wan and weak."
The stout mate thought of home; a spray
Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek.
"What shall I say, brave Adm'r'l, say,

If we sight naught but seas at dawn?"
"Why, you shall say at break of day:
'Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!'"

They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow,
Until at last the blanched mate said:
"Why, now not even God would know
Should I and all my men fall dead.
These very winds forget their way,

For God from these dread seas is gone. Now speak, brave Adm'r'l, speak and say"He said: "Sail on! sail on! and on!"

1. Gates of Hercules. The Straits of Gibraltar.

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