GEORGE MACDONALD

Ah, what a life! From youth to age
Keeping the faith, in noble rage.
Ah, what a life! From knightly youth.
Servant and champion of the truth.

Not once, in all his length of days,
That falchion flashed for paltry ends;
So wise, so pure, his words and ways,
Even those he conquered rose his friends.

For went no rancor with the blow;
The wrong and not the man, his foe.
He smote not meanly, not in wrath;
That truth might speed he cleaved a path.

The lure of place he well could scorn
Who knew a mightier joy and fate-

The passion of the hope forlorn,
The luxury of being great,

The deep content of souls serene
Who gain or lose with equal mien;
Defeat his spirit not subdued

Nor victory marred his noble mood.

GEORGE MACDONALD

AH, loving, exquisite, enraptured soul,
Who wert to me a father and a friend;

Who imaged and brought near, all humanly,

The sweetness and the majesty of him

Who in Judea melted human hearts,

And won the world by loveliness and love;

Dear spirit, who to the Infinite Purity

393

Past, without change, and humbly unabashed

If farewell we must say, it is that thou
So far beyond, above, we,- alien so
From grace like thine,- may hardly follow close
Thy shining feet in fields of endless light
When to the goal of souls reborn we pass.

Yet couldst thou not rest happy in that world
Thou saw'st with eyes anointed, near that Christ
Who was to thee a human brother and friend,
If we, thy brothers, with thee came not nigh.

If ever saint with the Eternal strove,

Then wouldst thou, wilt thou, strive and supplicate
That not one soul be lost or suffer ill,

If so may be, but win to the Infinite Love
That was the faith, strength, life of all thy days.

Our hearts are heavy; O, yet give we thanks,
As thou didst give when died one dear to thee,
Thanks that thou livedst—that we knew and loved,
Even in the flesh, one who was one with God.

JOSEPHINE SHAW LOWELL

It was but yesterday she walked these streets,
Making them holier. How many years,
With all her widowed love, immeasurably
She ministered unto the abused and stricken,
And all the oppressed and suffering of mankind;
Herself forgetting, but never those in need;
Her whole, sweet soul lost in her loving work;
Pondering the endless problem of the poor.

In ceaseless labor, swift, unhurriedly, She sped upon her tireless ministries, Climbing the stairs of poverty and wrong,

JOSEPHINE SHAW LOWELL

Endeavoring the help that shall not hurt,
Seeking to build in every human heart

A temple of justice that no brother's burden
Should heavier prove through human selfishness.

In memory I see that brooding face

That now seemed dreaming of the heroic past
When those most dear to her laid loyal lives
On the high altar of freedom; and again
That thinking, inward-lighted countenance
Drooped, saddened by the pain of humankind,
Tho' resolute to help where help might be,
And with undying faith illuminate.

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She was our woman of sorrows, whose pure heart Was pierced by many woes; and yet long since Her soul of sympathy entered the peace And calm eternal of the eternal mind; Inheritor of noble lives, she held,

Even to the end, a spirit of cheerfulness,

And knowledge keen of the deep joy of being
By pain all unsubdued. Sister and saint,

Who to life's darkened passageways brought light,
Who taught the dignity of human service,
Who made the city noble by her life,

And sanctified the very stones her feet
Prest in their sacred journeys!

Most High God!

This city of mammon, this wide, seething pit

Of avarice and lust, hath known Thy saints,

And yet shall know. For faith than sin is mightier, And by this faith we live - that in Thy time,

In Thine own time, the good shall crush the ill;
The brute within the human shall die down;

And love and justice reign, where hate prevents That love which in pure hearts reveals Thine own And lights the world to righteousness and truth.

"ONE ROSE OF SONG"

(MARY PUTNAM JACOBI)

ONE rose of song

For one sweet deed

On her grave I fling.

But, O, how can I sing

When she takes no heed!

My rose of song

For a fragrant deed,

Tho' she takes no heed,

Still must I bring.

Tho' she needs no praise,

Tho' she hears not my song

On her journey long

In the new, strange ways –

O still must I sing,

My rose I must fling,

Just to ease my heart

Of the sorrow and smart.

In a far-off land

She stretched forth her hand

To me and to mine.

And now, for a sign,
This song I sing

And this rose I bring.

Tho' she take no heed

On her journey long,

LOST LEADERS

Yet a soul shall hear,
Some soul shall take heed,
And the rose and the deed,
They shall sow their seed.

JOHN MALONE

397

THIS actor in great Shakespeare's shadow moved;
He thought his thoughts, he lived in Shakespeare's age.
His were the tenets of that mighty stage:
Therefore we mourn; therefore was he beloved.

"LOST LEADERS"

"LOST leaders"

I

no, they are not lost

Like shrunken leaves the wild wind tost.

Them only shall we mourn who failed;

When came the fight-who faltered, quailed.

Raged not through blood and battle grime
These heroes of our land and time;

The foes they fought, with dauntless deed,
Were shameless vice and maddened greed.

III

Not lost, not lost the noble dead

By them our doubting feet are led.
Stars of our dark, sun of our day,
They guide, they light the climbing way.

IV

And if, in their celestial flight,

The mist hath hid those forms from sight,