"Should some new star, in the fair evening sky, Kindle a blaze, startling so keen an eye Of flamings eminent, athwart the dews, Our thoughts would say, No doubt That star will soon burn out. What is the use? "Who'll care for me, when I am dead and gone? Not many now, and surely, soon, not one; "Spirit of Beauty! Breath of golden lyres! Perpetual tremble of immortal wires! "Doth not all struggle tell, upon its brow, "Love first, with most, then wealth, dis- That he who makes it is not easy now, tinction, fame, Quicken the blood and spirit on the game. Some try them all, and all alike accuse: 'I have been all,' said one, 'And find that all is none.' What is the use? "In woman's love we sweetly are undone, Willing to attract, but harder to be won, Harder to keep is she whose love we choose. Loves are like flowers that grow What is the use? But hopes to be? Vain hope that dost abuse! Coquetting with thine eyes, And fooling him who sighs. What is the use? "Go pry the lintels of the pyramids; Lift the old kings' mysterious coffin-lidsThis dust was theirs whose names these stones confuse, These mighty monuments ERASTUS W. ELLSWORTH. "Did not he sum it all, whose Gate of Pearls Blazed royal Ophir, Tyre, and Syrian girls, The great, wise, famous monarch of the Though rolled in grandeur vast, What is the use? "O, but to take, of life, the natural good, "Give me a hermit's life, without his beads, His lantern-jawed, and moral-mouthing creeds; Systems and creeds the natural heart abuse. What need of any book, What is the use? "I love, and God is love; and I behold Man, Nature, God, one triple chain of gold, Nature in all sole oracle and muse. What is the use?" Seeing this man so heathenly inclined, - Thou dost amaze me that thou dost mistake The wanderingrivers for the fountain lake. Plainly, this world is not a scope for bliss, What man is, in desires, 323 Souls on a globe that spins our lives away, A multitudinous world, where Heaven and Hell, Strangely in battle met, Dust though we are, and shall return to dust, Yet being born to battles, fight we must; Then since we see about us sin and dole, And some things good, why not, with hand and soul, Wrestle and succor out of wrong and But what and where are we? what now Put thou thine edge to the great weeds So shalt thou find the use of life, and see To make me own this hind of princes Thy Lord, at set of sun, Approach and say, "Well done!" This at the last: They clutch the sapless fruit, Ashes and dust of the Dead Sea, who suit Their course of life to compass happiness; UNKNOWN. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. (From "THE LONDON PUNCH.") You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier, You, who with mocking pencil wont to trace, Broad for the self-complacent British sneer, His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face. His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair, His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, His lack of all we prize as debonair, Of power or will to shine, of art to please. You, whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh, Judging each step, as though the way were plain; Reckless, so it could point its paragraph, Of chief's perplexity or people's pain. Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet The stars and stripes he lived to rear anew, Between the mourners at his head and feet, Say, scurril-jester, is there room for you? Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer, To lame my pencil, and confute my pen, peer, This rail-splitter a true-born king of |