JULY TWENTY-FIRST

The evening air grows dusk and brown;
I must go forth into the town,

To visit beds of pain and death,

Of restless limbs, and quivering breath,
And sorrowing hearts, and patient eyes
That see, through tears, the sun go down,
But nevermore shall see it rise.
The poor in body and estate,

The sick and the disconsolate,

Must not on man's convenience wait.

JULY TWENTY-SECOND

The Golden Legend

Never stoops the soaring vulture
On his quarry in the desert,
On the sick or wounded bison,
But another vulture, watching

From his high aerial look-out,

Sees the downward plunge, and follows;
And a third pursues the second,
Coming from the invisible ether,
First a speck, and then a vulture,
Till the air is dark with pinions.

The Song of Hiawatha

So disasters come not singly;

But as if they watched and waited,
Scanning one another's motions,
When the first descends, the others
Follow, follow, gathering flock-wise
Round their victim, sick and wounded,
First a shadow, then a sorrow,

Till the air is dark with anguish.

The Song of Hiawatha

JULY TWENTY-FOURTH

Let us be patient! These severe afflictions

Not from the ground arise,

But oftentimes celestial benedictions

Assume this dark disguise.

Resignation

JULY TWENTY-FIFTH

We see but dimly through the mists and vapors ;

Amid these earthly damps,

What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers

May be heaven's distant lamps.

JULY TWENTY-SIXTH

Resignation

We have no titlè-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates

From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,

And hold in mortmain still their old estates.

Haunted Houses

JULY TWENTY-SEVENTH

We meet them at the doorway, on the stair,
Along the passages they come and go,
Impalpable impressions on the air,

A sense of something moving to and fro.

The stranger at my fireside cannot see

The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear; He but perceives what is; while unto me

All that has been is visible and clear.

Haunted Houses

JULY TWENTY-EIGHTH

They come, the shapes of joy and woe,
The airy crowds of long ago,

The dreams and fancies known of yore,
That have been, and shall be no more.
They change the cloisters of the night
Into a garden of delight;

They make the dark and dreary hours
Open and blossom into flowers!

The Golden Legend

JULY TWENTY-NINTH

Alas! our memories may retrace
Each circumstance of time and place,
Season and scene come back again,

And outward things unchanged remain;

The rest we cannot reinstate;
Ourselves we cannot re-create,
Nor set our souls to the same key
Of the remembered harmony!

JULY THIRTIETH

The Golden Legend

Air, I want air, and sunshine, and blue sky,
The feeling of the breeze upon my face,

The feeling of the turf beneath my feet,
And no walls but the far-off mountain tops.
Then I am free and strong,—once more myself.
The Spanish Student

JULY THIRTY-FIRST

How canst thou walk in these streets, who hast trod the green turf of the prairies?

How canst thou breathe in this air, who hast breathed the sweet air of the mountains?

To the Driving Cloud

NO One alone my thoughts arise,
The Eternal Truth, the Good and Wise,

To Him I cry,

Who shared on earth our common lot,

But the world comprehended not

His deity.

Coplas de Manrique

AUGUST SECOND

Lo! where the crucified Christ from his cross is gazing upon you!

See! in those sorrowful eyes what meekness and holy compassion!

“O

Hark! how those lips still repeat the prayer, "O Father, forgive them!"

Let us repeat that prayer in the hour when the wicked assail us,

Let us repeat it now, and say, "O Father, forgive them!"

The Children of the Lord's Supper