Brother, thy heart is troubled at my word; Sister, I see the cloud is on thy brow. He will not blame me, He who sends not peace, But sends a sword, and bids us strike amain At Error's gilded crest, where in the van Of earth's great army, mingling with the best And bravest of its leaders, shouting loud The battle-cries that yesterday have led The host of Truth to victory, but to-day Are watchwords of the laggard and the slave, He leads his dazzled cohorts. God has made This world a strife of atoms and of spheres; With every breath I sigh myself away And take my tribute from the wandering wind To fan the flame of life's consuming fire; So, while my thought has life, it needs must burn, And burning, set the stubble-fields ablaze, Where all the harvest long ago was reaped And safely garnered in the ancient barns, But still the gleaners, groping for their food, Go blindly feeling through the close-shorn straw, While the young reapers flash their glittering steel Where later suns have ripened nobler grain! We listened to these lines in silence. They were evidently written honestly, and with feeling, and no doubt meant to be reverential. I thought, however, the Lady looked rather serious as he finished reading. The Young Girl's cheeks were flushed, but she was not in the mood for criticism. As we came away the Master said to me--The stubble-fields are mighty slow to take fire. These young fellows catch up with the world's ideas one after another,--they have been tamed a long while, but they find them running loose in their minds, and think they are ferae naturae. They remind me of young sportsmen who fire at the first feathers they see, and bring down a barnyard fowl. But the chicken may be worth bagging for all that, he said, good-humoredly. X