"In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;"
for sympathy is worth nothing, is, indeed, not itself, unless it has in it somewhat of personal pain. It is the hereafter that gives to
"the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still,"
its own infinite meaning. Our hearts and our understandings follow Ailie and her "ain man" into that world where there is no pain, where no one says, "I am sick." What is all the philosophy of Cicero, the wailing of Catullus, and the gloomy playfulness of Horace's variations on "Let us eat and drink," with its terrific "for," to the simple faith of the carrier and his wife in "I am the resurrection and the Life"?
I think I can hear from across the fields of sleep and other years Ailie's sweet, dim, wandering voice trying to say,—
Our bonnie bairn's there, John, She was baith gude and fair, John, And we grudged her sair, John, To the land o' the leal.
But sorrow's sel' wears past, John, The joys are comin' fast, John, The joys that aye shall last, John, In the land o' the leal.
EDINBURGH, 1861.
{Illustration: a cherub}