"Pour out thy life like the rush of a river, wasting its waters forever and ever, through the burnt sands that reward not the river, silent or songful thou nearest the sea. Scatter thy life as the summer shower's pouring. What if no bird through the pearl-rain is soaring? What if no blossom looks upward adoring? Look to the life that was lavished for thee!

"Give though thy heart may be wasted and weary, laid on the altar all ashen and dreary, though from its pulses a faint Miserere, beats to thy soul the sad passage of fate; bind it with cords of unshrinking devotion; smile at the song of its restless emotion; 'tis the stern hymn of eternity's ocean; hear, and in silence thy future await.

"Almost the day of thy giving is over. Ere from the grass dies the bee-haunted clover, thou wilt have vanished from friend and from lover. What shall thy longing avail in the grave? Give us the heart gives whose fetters are breaking--life, love and hope, all thy dreams and thy waking. Soon Heaven's river, thy soul-fever slaking--thou shalt know God and the gift that He gave." [ Selected ]