r unknown--
Crying for help to the desert: not even an echo replies.
Doomed unto death like the moon, like the midget that men call man,
Wrinkled with age and agony the old Earth rolls her rounds;
Shrinking and shuddering she rolls--an atom in God's great sea--
Only an atom of dust in the infinite ocean of space.
What to him are the years who sleeps in her bosom there?
What to him is the cry wrung out of the souls of men?
_Change, Change, Change_, and the sea gnaws on at the land:
Dead Ashes, what do you care?--it breaks not the sleep of the dead.

Down into the darkness at last, Daniel,--down into the darkness at last;
Laid in the lap of our Mother, Daniel,--sleeping the dreamless sleep,--
Sleeping the sleep of the babe unborn--the pure and the perfect rest:
Aye, and is it not better than this fitful fever and pain?
Aye, and is it not better if only the dead soul knew?

Up--out of the darkness at last, Daniel,--out of the darkness at last;
Into the light of the life eternal--into the sunlight of God,
Singing the song of the soul immortal freed from the fetters of flesh:
Aye, and is it not better than this fitful fever and pain?
Aye, and is it not better than sleeping the dreamless sleep?
Hark! from the reel of the spheres eternal
the freed soul answereth "_Aye_."
Aye--Aye--Aye--it is better, brothers,
if it be but the dream of the famished soul.

MINNETONKA[BY]

[BY] The Dakota name for this beautiful lake is _We-ne-a-tan-ka_--Broad
Water. By dropping the "a" before "tanka" we have changed the name to
_Big Water_.

I sit once more on breezy shore, at sunset in this glorious June,
I hear the dip of gleaming oar, I list the singers' merry tune.
Beneath my feet the waters beat, and ripple on the polished stones,
The squirrel chatters from his seat; the bag-pipe beetle hums and drones.
The pink and gold in blooming wold,--the green hills mirrored in the lake!
The deep, blue waters, zephyr-rolled, along the murmuring pebbles break.
The maples screen the ferns, and lean the leafy lindens o'er the deep;
The sapphire, set in emerald green, lies like an Orient gem asleep.
The crimson west glows
like the breast of _Rhuddin_[CA] when he pipes in May,
As downward droops the sun to rest, and shadows gather on the bay.
In amber sky the swallows fly and sail and circle o'er the deep;
The light-winged night-hawks whir and cry; the silver pike and salmon leap.
The rising moon, o'er isle and du