inherent trust,
"If ashes to ashes, dust to dust?"

Despair.

Ill fares the heart, when hope has fled;
When vanishes each prospect fair,
When the last flickering ray has sped,
And naught remains but mute despair;
When inky blackness doth enshroud
The hopes the heart once held in store,
As some tall pine, by great winds bowed,
Doth snap, and when the tempest's o'er,
Its noble form, magnificent and proud,
Doth prostrate lie, nor ever riseth more;
Thus breaks the heart, which sees no hope before.

Ill fares the heart, when hope has fled;
That heart is as some ruin old,
With ancient arch and wall, o'erspread
With moss, and desolating mold;
Whose banquet halls, where once the sound
Of revelry rang unconfined,
Now, with the hoot of owls resound,
Or echo back the mournful wind;
In whose foul nooks the gruesome bat is found.
The heart a ruin is, when unresigned;
No hope before, and but regret behind.

[Illustration:
"Its noble form magnificent and proud,
Doth prostrate lie, nor ever riseth more."

IRONTON PARK, OURAY COUNTY, COLORADO.]

Ill fares the heart, when hope has fled;
That heart, to fate unreconciled,
Though throbbing, is as truly dead
As though by foul decay defiled;
That heart is as a grinning skull,
With smiling mockery, and stare
Of eyeless sockets, or the hull
Of shipwrecked vessel, bleached and bare,
Derelict, morbid, apathetic, dull,
As drowning men, who clutch the empty air,
The heart goes down, which feels but blind despair.

Hidden Sorrows.

For some the river of life would seem
Free from the shallow, the reef, or bar,
As they gently glide down the silvery stream
With scarcely a ripple, a lurch, or jar;
But under the surface, calm and fair,
Lurk the hidden snags, and the secret care;
The waters are deepest where still, and clear,
And the sternest anguish forbids a tear.

For others, the pathway of life is strewn
With many a thorn, for each rose or bud;
And their journey o'er mountain, o'er moor, and dune,
Can be plainly tracked by footprints of blood;
But deeper still lies the hidden smart
Of some secret sorrow, which gnaws the heart,
And rankles under a surface clear;
For the sternest anguish forbids a tear.

But, when the journey's end we see,
At the bar of the Judge of quick and dead,
The cross, which the one bore silently
May outweigh his of the bloodstained tread.
The cross unseen, and the cross of light