HYMNS OF FAITH.

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“O, the weakness and the madness
Of a heart that holdeth sadness
When all else is light and gladness!

"Though thy treasure death hath taken,
They that sleep are not forsaken,
They shall hear the trump, and waken.

"Shall not He who life supplieth
To the dead seed, where it lieth,
Quicken also man, who dieth?

"Yea, the power of death was ended
When He, who to hell descended,
Rose, and up to heaven ascended.

"Rise, my soul, then, from dejection,
See in nature the reflection.

Of the dear Lord's resurrection.

"Let this promise leave thee never:

If the might of death I sever,

Ye shall also live forever!"

In "Dreams and Realities," a poem published in "Harper's Bazar" after Phoebe's death, she exclaims:

"If still they kept their earthly place,
The friends I held in my embrace,

And gave to death, alas !

Could I have learned that clear calm faith
That looks beyond the bounds of death,

And almost longs to pass?"

Thus, through the heavy cloud of human loss and longing the lark-like song arose into the very precinct of celestial light, sweet with unfaltering faith and undying love to the very last. The timid soul that fainted in its mortal house grew reassured and calm, rising to the realization of eternal verities. The world is better because this woman lived, and loved, and believed. She wrote, not to blazon her own being upon the world, not to drop upon the weary multitude the weight of an oppressive personality. She drew from the deep wells of an unconscious and overflowing love the bright waters of refreshment and health. Her subtler insight, her finer intuition, her larger trust, her more buoyant hope, are the world's helpers, all. The simplest word of such a soul thrills with an inexpressible life. It helps to make us braver, stronger, more patient, and more glad. We fulfill the lowliest task more perfectly, are more loyal to our duty, more loving to each other and to. God, in the turmoil of the world, in the wearing care of the house, in sorrow as well as in joy, if by a single word we are drawn nearer to the all-encircling and everlasting Love. To do this, as a writer, was the mission of Phoebe Cary. Perhaps no lines which she has written express more characteristically or perfectly her devout and childlike faith in a loving Father's ordering. of her earthly life, than the poem which closes her "Poems of Faith, Hope, and Love."

RECONCILED.

O years, gone down into the past;
What pleasant memories come to me,

HYMNS OF FAITH.

Of your untroubled days of peace,
And hours almost of ecstasy!

Yet would I have no moon stand still,
Where life's most pleasant valleys lie;
Nor wheel the planet of the day

Back on his pathway through the sky.

For though, when youthful pleasures died,
My youth itself went with them, too;
To-day, aye! even this very hour,

Is the best time I ever knew.

Not that my Father gives to me
More blessings than in days gone by;
Dropping in my uplifted hands

All things for which I blindly cry:

But that his plans and purposes

Have grown to me less strange and dim; And where I cannot understand,

I trust the issues unto Him.

And, spite of many broken dreams,
This have I truly learned to say,

The prayers I thought unanswered once,
Were answered in God's own best way.

And though some dearly cherished hopes
Perished untimely ere their birth,

Yet have I been beloved and blessed

Beyond the measure of my worth.

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And sometimes in my hours of grief,
For moments I have come to stand
Where, in the sorrows on me laid
I felt a loving Father's hand.

And I have learned the weakest ones
Are kept securest from life's harms;
And that the tender lambs alone

Are carried in the Shepherd's arms.

And sitting by the wayside blind,
He is the nearest to the light,
Who crieth out most earnestly,

"Lord, that I might receive my sight!

O feet, grown weary as ye walk,
Where down life's hill my pathway lies,
What care I, while my soul can mount,
As the young eagle mounts the skies!

O eyes, with weeping faded out,
What matters it how dim ye be?
My inner vision sweeps, untired,
The reaches of eternity!

O death, most dreaded power of all,

When the last moment comes, and thou

Darkenest the windows of my soul,

Through which I look on nature now;

Yea, when mortality dissolves,

Shall I not meet thine hour unawed?

My house eternal in the heavens

Is lighted by the smile of God!

THE wittiest woman in America is dead. There are others who say many brilliant things; but I doubt if there is another so spontaneously and pointedly witty, in the sense that Sidney Smith was witty, as Phœbe Cary. The drawback to almost everybody's wit and repartee is that it so often seems premeditated. It is a fearful chill to a laugh to know that it is being watched for, and had been prepared beforehand. But there was an absolute charm in Phoebe's wit; it was spontaneous, so coruscating, so "pat." Then it was full of the delight of a perpetual surprise. She was just as witty at breakfast as she was at dinner, and would say something just as astonishingly bright to one companion, and she a woman, as to a roomful of cultivated men, doing their best to parry her flashing scimitars of speech. Though so liberally endowed with the poetic utterance and insight, she first beheld every object literally, not a ray of glamour about it; she saw its practical and ludicrous relations first, and from this absolutely matter-of-fact perception came the sparkling utterance which saw it, caught it, played with it, and held it up in the same instant. It is pleasant to think of a friend who made you laugh so many happy times, but who never made you weep.