peless years, you do not come and say,
"Dear child, I'm glad that you are here to-day."

Who heeds not experience, trust him not; tell him
The scope of our mind can but trifles achieve;
The weakest who draws from the mine will excel him--
The wealth of mankind is the wisdom they leave.

--John Boyle O'Reilly.

A pious friend one day of Rabia asked
How she had learned the truth of Allah wholly;
By what instructions was her memory tasked?
How was her heart estranged from the world's folly?

She answered, "Thou who knowest God in parts
Thy spirit's moods and processes canst tell:
I only know that in my heart of hearts
I have despised myself and loved him well."

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

--William Shakespeare.

THE DESERT'S USE

Why wakes not life the desert bare and lone?
To show what all would be if she were gone.

--John Sterling.

So live that, when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not like the quarry slave at night
Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him and lies down to pleasant dreams.

--William Cullen Bryant.

The time is short.
If thou wouldst work for God it must be now.
If thou wouldst win the garlands for thy brow,
Redeem the time.

I sometimes feel the thread of life is slender;
And soon with me the labor will be wrought;
Then grows my heart to other hearts more tender;
The time is short.

The man who idly sits and thinks
May sow a nobler crop than corn;
For thoughts are seeds of future deeds,
And when God thought, the world was born.

--George John Romanes.

Thought is deeper than all speech,
Feeling deeper than all thought;
Souls to souls can never teach
What unto themselves was taught.

--Christopher Pearse Cranch.

That thou mayst injure no man dovelike be,
And serpentlike that none may injure thee.

The poem hangs on the berry bush