Oh! never, as long as the heart pulses quicker At the dear name of Country may yours be forgot; Nor may we, till the last puny life spark shall flicker, Your deeds from the tablets of Memory blot! Spirits afloat in the night-shrouds that bound us, Souls of the "Has-Been" and of the "To-Be," Keep the fair light of Liberty shining around us, Till our souls may go back to the mighty SOUL-SEA. =St. Johns, Mich., 1886= (Decoration Day). THE CHRISTIAN'S FAITH (The two following poems were written at that period of my life when the questions of the existence of God and the divinity of Jesus had but recently been settled, and they present the pros and cons which had been repeating themselves over and over again in my brain for some years.) We contrast light and darkness,--light of God, And darkness from the Stygian shades of hell; Fumes of the pit infernal rising up Have clouded o'er the brain, laid reason low;-- For when the eye looks on fair Nature's face And sees not God, then is she blind indeed! No night so starless, even in its gloom, As his who wanders on without a hope In that great, just Hereafter all must meet!-- No heart so dull, so heavy, and so void, As that which lives for this chill world alone! No soul so groveling, unaspiring, base, As that which, here, forgets the afterhere! And still through all the darkness and the gloom Its voice will not be stilled, its hopes be quenched; It cries, it screams, it struggles in its chains, And bleeds upon the altar of the mind,-- Unwilling sacrifice to thought misled. The soul that knows no God can know no peace. Thus speaketh light, the herald of our God! In that far dawn where shone each rolling world First lit with shadowed splendor of the stars, In that fair morning when Creation sang Its praise of God, e'er yet it dreamed of sin, Pure and untainted as the source of life Man dwelt in Eden. There no shadows came, No question of the goodness of our Lord, Until the prince of darkness tempted man, And, yielding to the newly born desire, He fell! Sank in the mire of ignorance! And Man, who put himself in Satan's power, Since then has wandered far in devious ways, Seeing but now and then a glimpse of light, Till Christ is come, the living Son of God! Far in his heavenly home he viewed the world, Saw all her sadness and her sufferings, Saw all her woes, her struggles, and her search For some path leading up from out the Night. Within his breast the fount of tears was touched; His great heart swelled with pity, and he said: "Father, I go to save the world from sin." Ah! What power but a soul divinely clad In purity, in holiness and love, Could leave a home of happiness and light For this lost World of suffering and death? He came: the World tossed groaning in her sleep;