versal good,
And forge the links that yet shall hold
The world in common Brotherhood!
"O, comrades of the Mystic Quest!
Who seek the Highest and the Best!
Where'er the goal for which we strive--
Whate'er the knowledge we may win--
This truth supreme shall live and thrive,
'Tis love that makes the whole world kin!
The love sublime and purified,
That puts all dross of self aside
To live for others--to uphold
Before our own a brother's cause:
This is the master power shall mould
The nobler customs, higher laws!
"Then shall all wars, all discords cease,
And, rounded to perpetual peace,
The bounteous years shall come and go
Unvexed; and all humanity,
Nursed to a loftier type, shall grow
Like to that image undefiled,
That fair reflex of Deity,
Who, first, beneath the morning skies
And glowing palms of paradise,
A God-like man, awoke and smiled!"
* * * * Like some weird strain of music, spent
In one full chord, the sweet voice ceased;
A faint white glow smote up the east,
Like wings uplifting--and a cry
Of winds went forth, as if the night
Beneath the brightening firmament
Had voiced, in hollow prophecy,
The affirmation: "By and by!"
HOW KATIE SAVED THE TRAIN.
The floods were out. Far as the bound
Of sight was one stupendous round
Of flat and sluggish crawling water!
As, from a slowly drowning rise,
She looked abroad with startled eyes,
The engineer's intrepid daughter.
Far as her straining eyes could see,
The seething, swoolen Tombigbee
Outspread his turbulent yellow tide;
His angry currents swirled and surged
O'er leagues of fertile lands submerged,
And ruined hamlets, far and wide.
Along a swell of higher ground,
Still, like a gleaming serpent, wound
The heavy graded iron trail;
But, inch by inch, the overflow
Dragged down the road bed, till the slow
Back-water crept across the rail.
And where the ghostly trestle spanned
A stretch of marshy bottom-land,
The stealthy under current gnawed
At sunken pile, and massive pier,
And the stout bridge hung airily where
She sullen dyke lay deep and broad.
Above the hollow, droning sound
Of waves that filled the watery round,
She heard a distant shout and din--
The levees of the upper land
Had crumbled like a wall of sand,
And the wild floods were pouring in!
She saw the straining dyke give way--
The quaking trestle reel and sway.
Yet hold together, bravely, still!
She saw the rushing waters drown
The piers
|