"How foolish your songs!" said a lump of clay;
"What is there, I ask, to prove them?
Just look at the walls between you and the day,
Now, have you the strength to move them?"
But under the ice and under the snow
The pale little sprout kept singing,
"I cannot tell how, but I know, I know,
I know what the days are bringing.
"Birds, and blossoms, and buzzing bees,
Blue, blue skies above me,
Bloom on the meadows and buds on the trees
And the great glad sun to love me."
A pebble spoke next: "You are quite absurd,"
It said, "with your song's insistence;
For _I_ never saw a tree or a bird,
So of course there are none in existence."
"But I know, I know," the tendril cried,
In beautiful sweet unreason;
Till lo! from its prison, glorified,
It burst in the glad spring season.
THE TIMES
The times are not degenerate. Man's faith
Mounts higher than of old. No crumbling creed
Can take from the immortal soul the need
Of that supreme Creator, God. The wraith
Of dead beliefs we cherished in our youth
Fades but to let us welcome new-born Truth.
Man may not worship at the ancient shrine
Prone on his face, in self-accusing scorn.
That night is past. He hails a fairer morn,
And knows himself a something all divine;
Not humble worm whose heritage is sin,
But, born of God, he feels the Christ withal.
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