From her "Poems."
=377.= THE DUMB CREATION.
Deal kindly with those speechless ones,
That throng our gladsome earth;
Say not the bounteous gift of life
Alone is nothing worth.
What though with mournful memories
They sigh not for the past?
What though their ever joyous now
No future overcast.
No aspirations fill their breast
With longings undefined;
They live, they love, and they are blest
For what they seek they find.
They see no mystery in the stars,
No wonder in the plain,
And Life's enigma wakes in them,
No questions dark and vain.
To them earth is a final home,
A bright and blest abode;
Their lives unconsciously flow on
In harmony with God.
To this fair world our human hearts
Their hopes and longings bring,
And o'er its beauty and its bloom,
Their own dark shadows fling.
Between the future and the past
In wild unrest we stand,
And ever as our feet advance,
Retreats the promised land.
And though Love, Fame, and Wealth, and Power
Bind in their gilded bond,
We pine to grasp the unattained—
The something still beyond.