É« AFTER LONG AGES

None bat thé woodman and he see tiie thin waned moott arising vnth stars in pale and silent beauty before tfae Sun.

Sweet are the uses of Life.

The Stranger glides to and fro ; hours and centuries and thousand-year stretches he waits.

Among the childiren of mankind he waits. . . . He is a long, a pœt, a soldier, a priest, a figrpricker, a pariah.

It is indiffèrent ; he sees ail and passes with ail. . . .

He sees the down-trodden and outcast ; he sees the selôsh and tyrannical — he looks them right in the face, but they do not see him ;

He sees the patient and heroic ; but he utters no word either of praise or blame.^

He is secure of his arrivai ; ail things lead on to his advent.

What he desires, what he alone dreams of, that ail mortal things through aU time and space never-ceasingly occupy themselves to perform.*

The simplest things, and the greatest things, help :

The primrose on the tree-root calls, love calls glancing from eyes of depth unfathomed.*

He may tany long in the ante-chambers, " lost in strange mazes, wandering — in an and sorrow, lonely despised and fallen "* — ^but Cinderella shall at last be wedded to the Prince of Heaven, Love " sees her once and rests no more till he has rescued and redeemed her." •

1 r. D„ p. 223. • Jôfi., p. 224. » Ibid,, p. 227. * Ibid.t p. 228. • Ibid,, p. 230,