MARGARET J. PRESTON.

MARGARET J. PRESTON.

[U. S. A.]

READY.

I WOULD be ready, Lord,

My house in order set,

None of the work thou gavest me To do, unfinished yet.

I would be watching, Lord,
With lamp well trimmed and clear,
Quick to throw open wide the door,
What time thou drawest near.

I would be waiting, Lord,

Because I cannot know

If-in the night or morning watch, I may be called to go.

I would be working, Lord,

Each day, each hour, for thee; Assured that thus I wait thee well, Whene'er thy coming be.

I would he living, Lord,

As ever in thine eye;

For whoso lives the nearest thee
The fittest is to die.

A BIRD'S MINISTRY.

FROM his home in an Eastern bungalow,
In sight of the everlasting snow
Of the grand Himalayas, row on row,
Thus wrote my friend :-

"I had travelled far From the Afghan towers of Candahar, Through the sand-white plains of SindeSagar;

"And once, when the daily march was o'er, As tired I sat in my tented door, Hope failed me, as never it failed before.

“In swarming city, at wayside fane, By the Indus' bank, on the scorching

plain,

I had taught, and my teaching all

seemed vain.

fears

their eyes,

"Some pray for wealth, and seem to pray aright;

They heap until themselves are out of sight;

Yet stand, in charities, not over shoes, And ask of their old age

As an old ledger page,

What is the use?....

"The strife for fame and the high praise of power,

Is as a man, who, panting up a tower, Bears a great stone, then, straining all his thews,

Heaves it, and sees it make
A splashing in a lake.

What is the use?...

"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;
And should I sing like an immortal Muse,
Men, if they read the line,
Read for their good, not mine;
What is the use? . . . .

"Spirit of Beauty! Breath of golden lyres!

Perpetual tremble of immortal wires!
Divinely torturing rapture of the Muse!
Conspicuous wretchedness!
Thou starry, sole success!—
What is the use?

"Doth not all struggle tell, upon its brow, That he who makes it is not easy now, 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
Of mighty discontents.
What is the use?

"Did not he sum it all, whose Gate of Pearls Blazed royal Ophir, Tyre, and Syrian girls,

The great, wise, famous monarch of the
Jews?

Though rolled in grandeur vast,
He said of all, at last :

What is the use?

"O, but to take, of life, the natural good,
Even as a hermit caverned in a wood,
More sweetly fills my sober-suited views,
Than sweating to attain
Any luxurious pain.
What is the use?

"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,
Or spiritual crook?

What is the use?

"I love, and God is love; and I behold Man, Nature, God, one triple chain of gold,

Nature in all sore oracle and muse.
What should I seek, at all,
More than is natural?

What is the use?"

Seeing this man so heathenly inclined,-
So wilted in the mood of a good mind,
I felt a kind of heat of earnest thought;
And studying in reply,
Answered him, eye to eye:

Thou dost amaze me that thou dost mistake

The wanderingrivers for the fountain lake.
What is the end of living?-happiness?
An end that none attain,
Argues a purpose vain.

Plainly, this world is not a scope for bliss,
But duty. Yet we see not all that is,
Or may be, some day, if we love the
light.

What man is, in desires,
Whispers where man aspires.

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Souls on a globe that spins our lives away,

A multitudinous world, where Heaven and Hell,

Strangely in battle met,
Their gonfalons have set.

Dust though we are, and shall return to dust,

Yet being born to battles, fight we must;
Under which ensign is our only choice.
We know to wage our best,
God only knows the rest.

Then since we see about us sin and dole,
And some things good, why not, with
Wrestle and succor out of wrong and
hand and soul,

Come, here is work-and a rank fieldbegin.

-to-day?

of sin;

Approach and say, "Well done!"

peer,

This rail-splitter a true-born king of

Rough culture,
fruit may bear,

If but their stocks be of right girth and
grain.

So he grew up, a destined work to do, And lived to do it; four long-suffering years'

Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report, lived through,

And then he heard the hisses change to cheers.

E'en through the awful gloom,
Which hovers o'er the tomb,

That light of love our guiding star shall be;

Our spirits shall not dread
The shadowy way to tread,

striven;

lead to thee!