From change to change unceasingly,
His soul's wings never furled!

That's a new question; still remains the fact,
Nothing endures: the wind moans, saying so;
We moan in acquiescence: there's life's pact,
Perhaps probation,--do _I_ know?
God does: endure His act!

Only, for man, how bitter not to grave
On his soul's hands' palms one fair, good, wise thing
Just as he grasped it! For himself, death's wave;
While time first washes--ah, the sting!--
O'er all he'd sink to save.

SEVEN WEEKS IN THE GREAT YO-SEMITE.

It is as hard to leave San Francisco as to get there. To a traveller
paying his first visit it has the interest of a new planet. It ignores
the meteorological laws which govern the rest of the world. There is no
snow there. There are no summer showers. The tailor recognizes no
aphelion or perihelion in his custom: the thin woollen suit which his
patron had made in April is comfortably worn until April again. The only
change of stockings there is from wet to dry, or from soiled to clean.
Save that in so-called winter frequent rainfalls alternate with spotless
intervals of amber weather, and that _soi-disant_ summer is one entire
amber mass, its unbroken divine days concrete in it, there is no
inequality on which to forbid the banns between May and December. In San
Francisco there is no work for the scene-shifter of Nature: the wealth
of that great dramatist, the year, resulting in the same manner as the
poverty of dabblers in private theatricals,--a single flat doing service
for the entire play. Thus, save for the purpose of notes-of-hand, the
Almanac of San Francisco might replace its mutable months and seasons
with one great kindly, constant, sumptuous All The Year Round.

Out of this benignant sameness what glorious fruits are produced! Fruit
enough metaphorical: for the scientific man or artist who cannot make
hay while such a sun shines from April to November must be a slothful
laborer indeed. But fruit also literal: for what joy of vegetation is
lacking to the man who every month in the year can look through his
study-window on a green lawn, and have strawberries and cream for his
breakfast,--who can sit down to this royal fruit, and at the same time
to apricots, peaches, nectarines, blackberries, raspberries, melons,
figs both yellow and purple, early apples, and grapes of three kinds?

Another delightful fact of San Francisco is the