Burrow amain; Dig like a mole; Fill every vein With half-burned coal; Puff the keen dust about, And all to choke me out. Fill music's ways With creaking cries, That no loud praise May climb the skies; And on my laboring chest Lay mountains of unrest. My slumber steep In dreams of haste, That only sleep, No rest I taste-- With stiflings, rimes of rote, And fingers on the throat. Satan, thy might I do defy; Live core of night, I patient lie: A wind comes up the gray Will blow thee clean away. Christ's angel, Death, All radiant white, With one cold breath Will scare thee quite, And give my lungs an air As fresh as answered prayer. So, Satan, do Thy worst with me, Until the True Shall set me free, And end what He began, By making me a man. "It is not much of poetry, Ruth!" he said, raising his eyes from the paper; "--no song of thrush or blackbird! I am ashamed that I called it a cock-crow--for that is one of the finest things in the world--a clarion defiance to darkness and sin--far too good a name for my poor jingle--except, indeed, you call it a Cochin-china-cock-crow--from out a very wheezy chest!" "'My strength is made perfect in weakness,'" said Ruth solemnly, heedless of the depreciation. To her the verses were as full of meaning as if she had made them herself. "I think I like the older reading better--that is, without the _My_," said Polwarth: "'Strength is made perfect in weakness.' Somehow--I can not explain the feeling--to hear a grand aphorism, spoken in widest application, as a fact of more than humanity, of all creation, from the mouth of the human God, the living Wisdom, seems to bring me close to the very heart of the universe. Strength--strength itself--all over--is made perfect in weakness;--a law of being, you see, Ruth! not a law of Christian growth only, but a law of growth, even all the growth leading up to the Christian, which growth is the highest kind of creation. The Master's own strength was thus perfected, and so must be that of His brothers and sisters. Ah, what a strength must be his!--how patient in endurance--how gentle in exercise--how mighty in devotion--how fine in its issues,-perfected by such suffering! Ah, my child, you suffer sorely sometimes--I know it well! but shall we not let patience have her perfect work, that we may--one day, Ruth, one day, my child--be perfect and entire, wanting nothing?" Led by the climax of his tone, Ruth slipped from her stool on her knees. Polwarth kneeled beside her, and said: