f rewards and pleasures as it
is--so that to see the day break or the moon rise, or to meet a friend,
or to hear the dinner-call when he is hungry, fills him with surprising
joys--this world is yet for him no abiding city. Friendships fall
through, health fails, weariness assails him; year after year, he must
thumb the hardly varying record of his own weakness and folly. It is a
friendly process of detachment. When the time comes that he should go,
there need be few illusions left about himself. _Here lies one who meant
well, tried a little, failed much_:--surely that may be his epitaph, of
which he need not be ashamed. Nor will he complain at the summons which
calls a defeated soldier from the field: defeated, ay, if he were Paul
or Marcus Aurelius!--but if there is still one inch of fight in his old
spirit, undishonoured. The faith which sustained him in his life-long
blindness and life-long disappointment will scarce even be required in
this last formality of laying down his arms. Give him a march with his
old bones; there, out of the glorious sun-coloured earth, out of the day
and the dust and the ecstasy--there goes another Faithful Failure!

From a recent book of verse, where there is more than one such beautiful
and manly poem, I take this memorial piece: it says better than I can,
what I love to think; let it be our parting word.

"A late lark twitters from the quiet skies;
And from the west,
Where the sun, his day's work ended,
Lingers as in content,
There falls on the old, gray city
An influence luminous and serene,
A shining peace.

"The smoke ascends
In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires
Shine, and are changed. In the valley
Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun,
Closing his benediction,
Sinks, and the darkening air
Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night--
Night, with her train of stars
And her great gift of sleep.

"So be my passing!
My task accomplished and the long day done,
My wages taken, and in my heart
Some late lark singing,
Let me be gathered to the quiet west,
The sundown splendid and serene,
Death."[2]

[1888.]

[Footnote 2: From _A Book of Verses_ by William Ernest Henley. D. Nutt,
1888.]

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CHRISTMAS SERMON***

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