These Stars Of Earth, These

A Word That Has Been Said May Be Unsaid-it Is But Air. But When A Deed Is Done, It Cannot Be Undone, Nor Can Our Thoughts Reach Out To All The Mischiefs That May Follow.

For It Is The Fate Of A Woman Long To Be Patient And Silent, To Wait Like A Ghost That Is Speechless, Till Some Questioning Voice Dissolves The Spell Of Its Silence. Hence Is The Inner Life Of So Many Suffering Women Sunless And Silent And Deep, Like Subterranean Rivers Runnng Through Caverns Of Darkness.

Look At This Vigorous Plant That Lifts Its Head From The Meadow, See How Its Leaves Are Turned To The North, As True As The Magnet; This Is The Compass-flower, That The Finger Of God Has Planted Here In The Houseless Wild, To Direct The Traveller's Journey. Over The Sea-like, Pathless, Limitless Waste Of The Desert, Such In The Soul Of Man Is Faith.

The Helicon Of Too Many Poets Is Not A Hill Crowned With Sunshine And Visited By The Muses And The Graces, But An Old, Mouldering House, Full Of Gloom And Haunted By Ghosts.

What Seems To Us But Dim Funeral Tapers May Be Heaven's Distant Lamps.