"What with my bairns and sickly wife," "How glorious is the rich man's state ! "In spite of what the Scripture teaches, "Where'er I look, howe'er I range, Quoth John, "Our ignorance is the cause 'Tis all that man can see below. "Seest thou that carpet, not half done, Which thou, dear Dick, hast well begun? Behold the wild confusion there, So rude the mass, it makes one stare! "A stranger, ignorant of the trade, Would say, no meaning's there conveyed ; For where's the middle, where's the border? Thy carpet now is all disorder." Quoth Dick, "My work is yet in bits, Besides, you reason like a lout Why, man, that carpet's inside out." Says John, "Thou say'st the thing I mean, This world, which clouds thy soul with doubt, "As when we view these shreds and ends, So, when on earth things look but odd, "No plan, no pattern, can we trace ; Nor see the beauteous upper side. "But when we reach that world of light, And view those works of God aright, Then shall we see the whole design, And own the workman is divine. "What now seem random strokes, will there All honor and design appear, Then shall we praise what here we spurned, For then the carpet shall be turned." "Thou'rt right," quoth Dick, "no more I'll grumble That this sad world's so strange a jumble; My impious doubts are put to flight, For my own carpet sets me right." CH. LIT. V. — -20 But, at length, the changing seasons, One gay morning in the springtime, Little buds, green, pink, and white, From the tender twigs outreaching, Softly opened to the light. Two or three warm days of sunshine, Two or three baptizing showers, And the buds burst forth in blossoms Fair and sweet as summer flowers. Each white blossom, rosy-tinted, 'Mid the petals madly plunging, Girls and boys bend down the branches, On the boughs the white hen roosted, With their canopies above them, Breezes came and kissed the blossoms, But, at last, too rudely sportive, Shook them, tore them from the tree. Falling thus, all widely scattered, There a carpet soft they made, Heaps on heaps of velvet petals Woven in with light and shade. Still the sturdy cups that held them Pushing upward, warm and eager, Hard and hairy. Will such atoms Will the apple robe of beauty Wrap their meager forms at length? All the days of June delightful, When the damask roses grew, And the robin redbreast saw them Larger, larger, all through July August came, came forth her young ones, Robin said, "Of course my children |