LONELINESS

The world is full of lonely hearts. Some are made lonely by the ravages of death, some by misfortune, and some by their own strange moods.

Endearing companionships on earth are rare, yet without them life is very apt to be an experience in isolation of spirit. Many people fail to find kindred spirits, and others lose them after finding them. Satisfactory friendships are as frail as they are few.

Broken hearts are all around us: disconsolate Rachels weeping for their children; widowed women, tearful in their gloom; innocent children crying in the night and crying in the light for the parent that can never return.

I'm lonely since my mother died,

Though friends and kindred gather near;

I can not check the rising tide,

Nor stay the falling of a tear.

But there is one good feature about loneliness-it can not be handed down to others. We shall perhaps each be lonely in turn, but our personal loneliness will go into the grave with us. What a fine arrangement that is! Sufficient unto each life is the loneliness thereof.

COURTESY LESLIE'S WEEKLY, COPYRIGHTED 1913

THE TITANIC'S TERRIBLE DOOM

At midnight, April 14, 1912, the largest and finest ship in the world, built at the cost of eight million dollars, struck an iceberg four hundred miles off the coast of Newfoundland and later sank. About twenty-two hundred persons were on board, of whom about sixteen hundred perished. The calamity produced a heartache as widespread and lasting as any of history.

THE TITANIC

Deep down in ocean cavern vast,
Forever hid from view,
The peerless ship is rudely cast,
With passengers and crew.

No more her pennants bright shall wave!
No more her lights shall shine!
No monument can mark her grave
In that exploreless brine.

Around her proud and stately sides
Deep-ocean eddies play,

Where, in the cold and murky tides,
Sea-monsters sport and prey.

Roll on, O waves! her requiem sing!
Keep silence, caverns deep!
The while her dead together cling
In long and dreamless sleep.

And as the future ages roll,

Till seas shall yield their dead, Titanic's fate shall stir the soul

With horror keen and dread.

REGRET

O depth of grief! O pain of mind!
O longing for the vanished hand!
O sorrow keen! O woe enshrined!
O record that must ever stand!

What joy was mine! What dear concern!
What satisfaction in my own!

But now what fires of anguish burn

Where once such sweetness had its throne!

O mourning deep for heartless word!
O penitence for blind neglect!

O fell remorse by memory stirred,

For love and trust so rudely wrecked!

O idol of my heart, return!

Let me but speak the word once spurned! Let me recall the words I mourn!

Let me but act on truth since learned!

Come back! Come back! my loved and lost!
For one brief hour by grace impelled!
Too late I learn the boundless cost

Of thoughtless speech and love withheld!