Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark; For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crost the bar. GEORGE MEREDITH LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT[12] On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose. Tired of his dark dominion, swung the fiend Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened, Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose. Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those. And now upon his western wing he leaned, And now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened, And now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows. Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars With memory of the old revolt from Awe, He reached a middle height, and at the stars, Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank. Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank, The army of unalterable law. WILLIAM E. HENLEY INVICTUS Out of the night that covers me, Black as a pit from Pole to Pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud; Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the Shade; And yet the menace of the years Finds and still finds me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll: I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul. THOMAS HARDY NEW YEAR'S EVE[13] "I have finished another year," said God, "In gray, green, white, and brown; I have strewn the leaf upon the sod, Sealed up the worm within the clod, And let the last sun down." "And what's the good of it?" I said. "What reasons made you call From formless void this earth we tread, When nine-and-ninety can be read Why nought should be at all? "Yea, Sire; why shaped you us, 'who in This tabernacle groan'? If ever a joy be found herein, Such joy no man had wished to win If he had never known!" Then he: "My labors--logicless-- You may explain; not I: Sense-sealed I have wrought, without a guess That I evolved a Consciousness To ask for reasons why. "Strange that ephemeral creatures who By my own ordering are, Should see the shortness of my view, Use ethic tests I never knew, Or made provision for!" He sank to raptness as of yore, And opening New Year's Day Wove it by rote as theretofore, And went on working evermore In his unweeting way. RALPH WALDO EMERSON CIVILIZATION[14]