I know not; dare not ask of them;
Their souls are read by God alone;
But he who would their lives condemn,
Should pause before he cast a stone.

So full is life of hate and greed,
So vain the world's poor tinselled show,
What wonder that some souls have need
To flee from all its sin and woe?

I would not join them; yet, in truth,
I feel, in leaving them at prayer,
That something precious of my youth,
Long lost to me, is treasured there.

THE POSTERN GATE

I chose me a lovely garden,
Beneath whose ivied wall
A lake's blue wavelets murmur
As evening shadows fall,--

A garden, whose leafy windows
Frame visions of Alpine snow
On peaks that burn to crimson
In sunset's afterglow.

And there, in its sweet seclusion,
I built me a mansion fair,
With many a classic statue
And Eastern relic rare,

And volumes, whose precious pages
Hold all that the wise have said,--
The latest among the living,
The greatest among the dead.

And I sat in those fragrant arbors
Of laurel and palm and pine,
And held in the tranquil twilight
My darling's hand in mine;

And said "We will here be happy,
And let the mad world go;
Its gold no longer tempts us,
Still less do its pomp and show;

"No more shall its cares annoy us,
And under these stately trees
With Nature and Art and Letters
Our souls shall take their ease."

But a brood of griefs pursued us,
Like evil birds of prey;
They lodged in the trees' tall branches,
They shadowed the cloudless day;

They flew to the darkened casement,
And beat on the wind-swept shade,
And oft in the sleepless midnight
We listened and were afraid;

And daily came the tidings
Of folly and crime and woe,
And one by one kept dying
The friends of long ago.

For the Past is ever one's master,
And Memory mocks at space,
And Trouble travels with us,
However swift our pace;

And envy is always envy,
Though called by a foreign name,
And perfidy, greed, and malice
Are everywhere the same.

I thought I had left behind me
That gloomy realm of care,
But really one never leaves it,
Its shadow is everywhere.

So I learned at last the lesson
That walls, and gates, and keys
Can never exclude life's sorrows;
They enter as they please.

And if we ever acquire
The perfect life we crave,
A subtle warning tells us
Its background is the grave.

Perhaps I have almost reached it,
For when I am walking late,
I see a shrouded stranger
Beside my postern gate;

And a sudden chill c