Across the English meadows sweet,
Across the smiling sunset land,
I see them walk with faltering feet,
Brother and sister, hand in hand.
They know the hour of parting nigh,
They pass into the dying day,
And, lo! against the sunset sky
Looms up the madhouse gaunt and gray.
He keeps the lonely lamp aglow,
While old loves whisper in the air
Of unforgotten long ago
Before his heart had known despair.
He waits till she may come once more
From out the darkness to his side,
To share the changeless love of yore
When all the old, old loves have died.
Between me and this gentle book,
Shining with humor rich and quaint,
The sad scene rises, and I look
Upon a jester—or a saint.
I lift my eyes, still brimming o’er
With love and laughter—and there falls
Across the page forever more,
The shadow of the madhouse walls!
SONG.
BY WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
Hark, hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings,
And Phœbus ’gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies;
And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes:
With everything that pretty bin,
My lady sweet, arise,
Arise, arise.
LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT.
BY CARDINAL NEWMAN.
Cardinal Newman was born in London in 1801 and died in 1890. He graduated from Oxford, and was ordained in 1824. He was the recognized leader of the high church party in England until 1845, when he united with the Roman Catholic Church. He was appointed rector of the Catholic university at Dublin in 1854, and was made a Cardinal by the Pope in 1879.