Flowers in the fields, and odors on the air,
The spring-time everywhere;
Music of singing birds and rippling rills,
Soft breezes from the hills;
So broke the sweetest season, long ago,
Far from this death-cold snow.
In that blest land which smiles to every eye,
Most favored from on high;
And in one town whose sheltering mountains stand
Broad breast-plates of the land;
So fair a spring-time sure was never seen,
Since Eden's walks were green.
A sudden glory flashed upon the air,
A face unearthly fair;
A beauty given but to those alone
The nearest to the throne;
The great archangels who upon their hair
The seven planets wear.
Lightly as diamonds—such the form that now,
With brilliant eyes and brow.
Paused by the humble dwellings of the poor.
Entered the humblest door,
Veiling his awful beauty, far too bright,
With wide wings, strong and white.
Within the dwelling where his flight was stayed
A kneeling woman prayed.
The angel bowed before that holy face,
And hailed her "Full of Grace."
No other title, not the kingly name
Which David's line can claim;
Not highest rank, though unto her was given
Queenship of earth and heaven;
Not as that one who gave life to the dead,
Bruising the serpent's head;
Not even as mother of the Sacrificed,
The world-redeeming Christ.
This thought might be a sermon, while yet we,
Heirs of eternity,
Walk this brief, sin-surrounded tract of life.
Wage this short, sharpest strife,
Which must be passed and won before the rest.
The triumph of the blessed.
And when the hour supreme of fate shall come,
And at our promised home
We wait in breathless and expectant dread
Between the quick and dead,
Then may the angel warders of the place
Welcome us, "Full of Grace."
Translated From L'Economiste Belge.
How Our History Will Be Told In The Year 3000.
In those days—our latest posterity loquitur—the people were not entirely freed from the savage instincts of their ancestors, the anthropophagi, those ferocious contemporaries of the deluge and such great inundations of the world. True, they did not still eat their enemies, nor break their skulls with clubs; they did not pierce their bodies with arrows of bone and flint; but they did the work more delicately, entirely according to the rules of art, with the precision of a surgeon who cuts off a limb, or the coolness of a butcher who bleeds a sheep. By dint of inventions, calculations, and trials of every kind, they fabricated, at last, most ingenious tools, very convenient and very simple, and which they handled with equal dexterity. They were not instruments of natural philosophy, chemistry, astronomy, or mathematics; our fathers possessed, it is true, objects of this kind, but they did not think it proper to put them in the hands of the people. Their thermometers, microscopes, telescopes, and electrical machines remained in the shade of libraries or the cabinets of the learned. The people were ignorant of their names and uses, while they well understood the management of the tools of which I speak. So you will suppose these were very useful articles, as they were so generally employed in every clime and nation, and their object to moralize and instruct mankind, as governments consented to their gratuitous distribution among their subjects—went farther, even, and imposed their use. But alas! no; they were only tools of death and carnage, worthy to figure among the arms and instruments of torture of preceding ages; for while some shot off bullets, others threw to enormous distances balls of brass and steel, that made holes in human walls, burnt up towns, and sunk ships.
The men of this time were called "civilized"! Strange to say, they had abolished torture, and wished to do away with the pain of death. The scaffold horrified them, and the sight of the gallows gave them a vertigo! They had journals and books filled with beautiful phrases in honor of peace and civilization. But they did not comprehend the sense of aphorisms which they repeated incessantly and inscribed everywhere, on the fronts of their temples, and the first page of their constitutions.
Their age to them was the age of light, and they seemed ready to burst with pride when they considered their enormous riches, the fame of their arts, and the extent of their sciences. And, in appearance, one might have believed them wise, and as good as the beings who inhabit the more favored planets of our solar system. They had noble aspirations and a generous ardor.
In the penumbra in which they were plunged, a confused mass of whirling and exasperated workers was alone distinguishable, hungry, indefatigable, running up and down, like busy ants seeking their subsistence. The ear heard only a deafening and monotonous noise, like the buzzing of a hive. But in spite of shocks and hurts, inevitable from such a clamorous multitude, order and harmony seemed about being established, when suddenly the same beings who until then had appeared so laborious and active, were seized with a sort of rage, and set violently upon each other. The red light of incendiarism and the thundering brightness of battle thus demonstrated to the astonished gaze of philanthropists and thinkers, that vices, sanguinary passions, and brutal instincts, always alive and always indomitable, were only hidden in shade, and awaiting the favorable moment to break their bonds and annihilate civilization. By the artificial and slightly tarnished light of their sciences, philosophers had gathered round them men of policy and amiability, civilized and peaceable, distinguished by good manners, and saying pretty things about fraternity and progress; but the light that broke upon them, the evidence that disenchanted them in this shock of nations, showed them only coarse and ignorant crowds, capable of committing, in their folly and cruelty, every crime and every infamy. They had believed that the type of their epoch was the man of business, industrial or negotiating, the sharp worker, armed for competition, and prepared for the incessant struggles of production; and behold! suddenly this personage quits the scene, transforming himself into a fantastical being, clothed in brilliant colors, his head ornamented with cock's feathers, his step stiffened, his manners brusque, and his voice short and sonorous. At the first boom of the cannon, the rolling of the drum, or the sound of a warlike march, millions of men, clothed in red, like the common hangman, marched out of the shade, furnished with instruments suitable for bleeding, scorching, disembowelling, crushing, burning, and stopping the breath of their neighbors. And perhaps you think these men were the refuse of society; that they came from low haunts and prisons; had neither heart nor intelligence; that they were given up to public execration. You never were more mistaken. Each one of these auxiliaries of death was considered healthy in mind and body, vigorous and intelligent, honest and disciplined. To exercise his trade suitably, he was obliged to possess a crowd of precious qualities, know perfectly how to behave himself, be honorable, and of unimpeachable integrity!
As to the great generals, they were wise men, and men of the world. They were expected to study mathematics, as it specially teaches order and harmony; history, which proves that violence and force have never established anything; and many other sciences, which one would have imagined capable of directing their thoughts from their impious career, and rendering them pacific and humane.