ss even;
Nor let our hearts be dispossessed
Of faith that he disposeth best
All things in earth and Heaven.

"Be not Anxious."

"Be careful for nothing," Phil. iv. 6. Revised version, "Be not anxious."

Of all the precepts in the Book
By word of inspiration given,
That bear the import, tone, and look
Of messages direct from heaven,
From Revelation back to Genesis
Is nothing needed half so much as this.

Ah, well the great apostle spake
In admonition wise and kind,
Who bade humanity forsake
The petty weaknesses that bind
The spirit like a bird with pinioned wings,
That to a broken bough despairing clings.

Were all undue anxiety
Eliminated from desire,
Could feverish fears and fancies be
Consumed on some funeral pyre,
Like holy hecatomb or sacrifice,
'Twould be accepted up in Paradise.

Could this machinery go on
Without the friction caused by fret,
What greater loads were lightly drawn,
More easily were trials met;
Then might existence be with blessings rife,
And lengthened out like Hezekiah's life.

Oh, be not anxious; trouble grows
When cherished like a secret grief;
It is the worm within the rose
That eats the heart out leaf by leaf;
And though the outer covering be fair,
The weevil of decay is busy there.

In deep despondency to pine,
Or vain solicitude,
Is to deny this truth divine
That God is great and good;
That he is Ruler over earth and Heaven,
And so disposes and makes all things even.

Mount Vernon.

Subdued and sad, I trod the place
Where he, the hero, lived and died;
Where, long-entombed beneath the shade
By willow bough and cypress made,
The peaceful scene with verdure rife,
He and the partner of his life,
Beloved of every land and race,
Are sleeping side by side.

The summer solstice at its height
Reflected from Potomac's tide
A glare of light, and through the trees
Intensified the Southern breeze,
That dallied, in the deep ravines,
With graceful ferns and evergreens,
While Northern cheeks so strangely white
Grew dark as Nubia's pride.

What must this homestead once have been
In boundless hospitality,
When Greene or Putnam may have met
The