The Worlds Best Poetry, Volume 4 | Page 5

for us the highest truth in forms of beauty; they have made it winsome and real and dear and memorable. Is there anything better than this, that one man can do for another?
Washington Gladden
[Footnote A: "The Great Poets and their Theology."]
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY:?"RELIGION AND POETRY."?By Washington Gladden
POEMS OF THE HIGHER LIFE:?THE DIVINE ELEMENT--(God, Christ, the Holy Spirit)?PRAYER AND ASPIRATION?FAITH: HOPE: LOVE: SERVICE?SABBATH: WORSHIP: CREED?SELECTIONS FROM "PARADISE LOST"?HUMAN EXPERIENCE?DEATH: IMMORTALITY: HEAVEN?SELECTIONS FROM "THE DIVINE COMEDY"
INDEX: AUTHORS AND TITLES
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
JOHN MILTON
Photogravure from an engraving.
THE CHILD JESUS IN THE TEMPLE
_One of Heinrich Hoffmann's wonderful scenes in the life of Christ: the earnest, wise-faced Boy, and the eager or doubtful but thoughtful Scribes and Doctors of the Law, are graphically depicted._
ISAAC WATTS
From a contemporary engraving.
THE HOLY NIGHT
"It was the winter wild?While the heaven-born Child?All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies."
From photogravure after a painting by Martin Feuerstein.
CHARLES WESLEY
From a contemporary engraving.
THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD
"Knocking, knocking, ever knocking??Who is there??'Tis a pilgrim, strange and kingly,?Never such was seen before."
From photo-carbon print after the painting by Holman Hunt.
SIR GALAHAD
"My strength is as the strength of ten,?Because my heart is pure."
From photogravure after the painting by George Frederick Watts.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
From a photogravure after life-photograph.
DINA M. MULOCK CRAIK
From a life-photograph by Elliott and Fry, London.
THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN
"Two went to pray? O, rather say,?One went to brag, the other to pray;?One nearer to God's altar trod,?The other to the altar's God."
From engraving by Brend'amour, after a design by Alexander Bida.
DANTE ALIGHIERI
_After a photograph from the fresco by His friend Giotto, discovered under the whitewash on a watt of the Bargello palace; now in the Museo Nazionale, Florence, Italy_.
POEMS OF THE HIGHER LIFE
POEMS OF THE HIGHER LIFE
I.
THE DIVINE ELEMENT.

SONG.
FROM "PIPPA PASSES."
The year's at the spring,?And day's at the morn;?Morning's at seven;?The hill-side's dew-pearled;?The lark's on the wing;?The snail's on the thorn;?God's in His heaven--?All's right with the world.
ROBERT BROWNING.

A PASSAGE IN THE LIFE OF SAINT AUGUSTINE.
Long pored Saint Austin o'er the sacred page,?And doubt and darkness overspread his mind;?On God's mysterious being thought the Sage,?The Triple Person in one Godhead joined.?The more he thought, the harder did he find?To solve the various doubts which fast arose;?And as a ship, caught by imperious wind,?Tosses where chance its shattered body throws,?So tossed his troubled soul, and nowhere found repose.
Heated and feverish, then he closed his tome,?And went to wander by the ocean-side,?Where the cool breeze at evening loved to come,?Murmuring responsive to the murmuring tide;?And as Augustine o'er its margent wide?Strayed, deeply pondering the puzzling theme,?A little child before him he espied:?In earnest labor did the urchin seem,?Working with heart intent close by the sounding stream.
He looked, and saw the child a hole had scooped,?Shallow and narrow in the shining sand,?O'er which at work the laboring infant stooped,?Still pouring water in with busy hand.?The saint addressed the child in accents bland:?"Fair boy," quoth he, "I pray what toil is thine??Let me its end and purpose understand."?The boy replied: "An easy task is mine,?To sweep into this hole all the wide ocean's brine."
"O foolish boy!" the saint exclaimed, "to hope?That the broad ocean in that hole should lie!"?"O foolish saint!" exclaimed the boy; "thy scope?Is still more hopeless than the toil I ply,?Who think'st to comprehend God's nature high?In the small compass of thine human wit!?Sooner, Augustine, sooner far, shall I?Confine the ocean in this tiny pit,?Than finite minds conceive God's nature infinite!"
ANONYMOUS.

MEDITATIONS OF A HINDU PRINCE.
All the world over, I wonder, in lands that I never have trod, Are the people eternally seeking for the signs and steps of a God? Westward across the ocean, and Northward across the snow, Do they all stand gazing, as ever, and what do the wisest know?
Here, in this mystical India, the deities hover and swarm Like the wild bees heard in the tree-tops, or the gusts of a gathering storm; In the air men hear their voices, their feet on the rocks are seen, Yet we all say, "Whence is the message, and what may the wonders mean?"
A million shrines stand open, and ever the censer swings, As they bow to a mystic symbol, or the figures of ancient kings; And the incense rises ever, and rises the endless cry?Of those who are heavy laden, and of cowards loth to die.
For the Destiny drives us together, like deer in a pass of the hills; Above is the sky and around us the sound of the shot that kills; Pushed by a power we see not, and struck by a hand unknown, We pray to the trees for shelter, and press our lips to a stone.
The trees wave a shadowy answer, and the rock frowns hollow and grim, And the form and the nod of the demon are caught in the twilight dim; And we look to the sunlight