POETRY

If any little thought of ours
Can make one life the stronger;
If any cheery smile of ours
Can make its brightness longer;
The let us speak that thought today,
With tender eyes aglowing,
So God may grant some weary one
Shall reap from our glad sowing.

THE CHARIOT

Because I could not stop for death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And immortality.

WE slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of grazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling on the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

Emily Dickinson

THE ABIDING LOVE

It singeth low in every heart,
We hear it each and all,-
A song of those who answer not,
However we may call;
They throng the silence of the beast,
We see them as of yore,-
The kind, the brave, the truth, the sweet,
Who walk with us no more.

John White Chadwick

SHADOW-SELVES

This learned I from a shadow for a tree,
That to and fro did sway against a wall;
Our shadow-selves, our influnce, may fall
Where we ourselves can nover be.

Anna E. Hamilton

LIFE'S MIRROR

There are loyal hearts, there are spirits brave,
There are souls that are pure and true;
Then give to the world the best you have,
And the best will come to you

Give love, and love to your life will flow'
A strength in your utmost need;
Have faith, and a score of hearts will show
Their faith in your word and deed.

Give truth, and your gift will be paid in kind,
And honor will honor will meet;
And a smile that is sweet will surely find
A smile that is just as sweet.

Give sorrow and pity to those who mourn;
You will gather in flowers again
The scattered seeds of your thought outborne,
Through the sowing seemed but vain.

For life is the minor of king and slave-
'Tis just what we are and do;
Then give to the world the best you have
And the best will come back to you.

Madeline Bridges

INFLUENCE

Drop a pebble in the water,
And its ripples reach out far;
And the sunbeams dancing on them
May reflect them to a star.

Give a smile to someone passing,
Thereby making his morning glad;
It may greet you in the evening
When you own heart may be sad.

Do a deed of simple kindness;
Through its end you may not see,
It may reach, like widening ripples,
Down a long eternity.

Joseph Norris

PRAYER

Give me sense of humor, Lord;
Give me the grace to see a joke,
To get some happiness from life,
And pass it on to other folk.

Chester Cathedral

CHOICE

Our lives are songs, God wrights the words
And we set them at music at pleasure;
And the song grows glad, of sweet or sad,
As we chose to fashion the measures.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

SUNSET

The day is done,
The sun has set,
Yet light still tints the sky;

My heart stands still In reverence,
For God is passing by.

Ruth Alla Wager

WHY - WHEN - WHERE

It is not so much where you live,
As how, and why, and when you live,
That answers in the affirmative,
Of maybe in the negative,
The question-Are you fit to live?

It is not so much where you live,
As how you live, and whether good
Flows from you through you neighborhood.

And why you live, and whether Time
Is at its nadir or its prime,
And whether you descend or climb.

It is not so much where you live,
As whether while you live you live
And to the world your highest give,
That you are truly fit to live.

John Oxenham

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