Count each affliction, whether light or grave, God’s messenger sent down to thee; do thou With courtesy receive him; rise and bow; And, ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave Permission first His heavenly feet to lave; Then lay before Him all thou hast; allow No cloud or passion to usurp thy brow, Or mar thy hospitality; no wave Of mortal tumult to obliterate Thy soul’s marmoreal calmness. Grief should be Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate; Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free; Strong to consume small troubles; to commend Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to the end. HUMAN LIFE BY AUBREY DE VERE Sad is our youth, for it is ever going, Crumbling away beneath our very feet; Sad is our life, for onward it is flowing, In current unperceived because so fleet; Sad are our hopes, for they were sweet in sowing, But tares, self-sown, have overtopped the wheat; Sad are our joys, for they were sweet in blowing; And still, O still, their dying breath is sweet; And sweet is youth, although it hath bereft us Of that which made our childhood sweeter still; And sweeter our life’s decline, for it hath left us A nearer Good to cure an older Ill; And sweet are all things, when we learn to prize them Not for their sake, but His who grants them or denies them. CARDINAL MANNING BY AUBREY DE VERE I learn’d his greatness first at Lavington: The moon had early sought her bed of brine, But we discours’d till now each starry sign Had sunk: our theme was one and one alone: “Two minds supreme,” he said, “our earth has known; One sang in science; one served God in song; Aquinas--Dante.” Slowly in me grew strong A thought, “These two great minds in him are one; ‘Lord, what shall this man do?’” Later at Rome Beside the dust of Peter and of Paul Eight hundred mitred sires of Christendom In Council sat. I mark’d him ’mid them all; I thought of that long night in years gone by And cried, “At last my question meets reply.” SONG BY AUBREY DE VERE Seek not the tree of silkiest bark And balmiest bud, To carve her name while yet ’tis dark Upon the wood! The world is full of noble tasks And wreaths hard won: Each work demands strong hearts, strong hands, Till day is done. Sing not that violet-veined skin, That cheek’s pale roses, The lily of that form wherein Her soul reposes! Forth to the fight, true man! true knight! The clash of arms Shall more prevail than whisper’d tale, To win her charms. The Warrior for the True, the Right, Fights in Love’s name; The love that lures thee from that flight Lures thee to shame: That love which lifts the heart, yet leaves The spirit free,-- That love, or none, is fit for one Man-shap’d like thee.