"What ails the world?" An echo came -- "Ails the world?" The minstrel bands, With famous or forgotten hands, Lift up their lyres in all the lands, And chant alike, and ask the same From him whose soul first soared in song, A thousand, thousand years away, To him who sang but yesterday, In dying or in deathless lay -- "What ails the world?" comes from the throng. They fain would sing the world to rest; And so they chant in countless keys, As many as the waves of seas, And as the breathings of the breeze, Yet even when they sing their best -- When o'er the list'ning world there floats Such melody as 'raptures men -- When all look up entranced -- and when The song of fame floats forth, e'en then A discord creepeth through the notes -- Their sweetest harps have broken strings, Their grandest accords have their jars, Like shadows on the light of stars, And somehow, something ever mars The songs the greatest minstrel sings. And so each song is incomplete, And not a rhyme can ever round Into the chords of perfect sound The tones of thought that e'er surround The ways walked by the poet's feet. "What ails the world?" he sings and sighs; No answer cometh to his cry. He asks the earth and asks the sky -- The echoes of his song pass by Unanswered -- and the poet dies. A Thought There never was a valley without a faded flower, There never was a heaven without some little cloud; The face of day may flash with light in any morning hour, But evening soon shall come with her shadow-woven shroud. There never was a river without its mists of gray, There never was a forest without its fallen leaf; And joy may walk beside us down the windings of our way, When, lo! there sounds a footstep, and we meet the face of grief. There never was a seashore without its drifting wreck, There never was an ocean without its moaning wave; And the golden gleams of glory the summer sky that fleck, Shine where dead stars are sleeping in their azure-mantled grave. There never was a streamlet, however crystal clear, Without a shadow resting in the ripples of its tide; Hope's brightest robes are 'broidered with the sable fringe of fear, And she lures us, but abysses girt her path on either side. The shadow of the mountain falls athwart the lowly plain, And the shadow of the cloudlet hangs above the mountain's head, And the highest hearts and lowest wear the shadow of some pain, And the smile has scarcely flitted ere the anguish'd tear is shed. For no eyes have there been ever without a weary tear, And those lips cannot be human which have never heaved a sigh; For without the dreary winter there has never been a year, And the tempests hide their terrors in the calmest summer sky.