The syndicated smile! 
If you have kept it all the while,
You’ve vindicated
The indicated,
Syndicated
Smile.

St. Clair Adams.

FAIRY SONG

The great beneficent forces of life are not exhausted when once used, but are recurrent.  The sun rises afresh each new day.  Once a year the springtime returns and “God renews His ancient rapture.”  So it is with our joys.  They do not stay by us constantly; they pass from us and are gone; but we need not trouble ourselves—­they are sure to come back.

  Shed no tear!  O shed no tear! 
  The flower will bloom another year. 
  Weep no more!  O weep no more! 
  Young buds sleep in the root’s white core. 
  Dry your eyes!  O dry your eyes,
  For I was taught in Paradise
  To ease my breast of melodies—­
      Shed no tear.

  Overhead! look overhead,
  ’Mong the blossoms white and red—­
  Look up, look up—­I flutter now
  On this flush pomegranate bough. 
  See me! ’tis this silvery bill
  Ever cures the good man’s ill. 
  Shed no tear!  O shed no tear! 
  The flowers will bloom another year. 
  Adieu, adieu—­I fly, adieu,
  I vanish in the heaven’s blue—­
      Adieu, adieu!

John Keats.

PRAISE THE GENEROUS GODS FOR GIVING

Some of us find joy in toil, some in art, some in the open air and the sunshine.  All of us find it in simply being alive.  Life is the gift no creature in his right mind would part with.  As Milton asks,

  “For who would lose,
  Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
  These thoughts that wander through eternity,
  To perish rather, swallowed up and lost
  In the wide womb of uncreated night,
  Devoid of sense and motion?”

  Praise the generous gods for giving
    In a world of wrath and strife,
  With a little time for living,
    Unto all the joy of life.

  At whatever source we drink it,
    Art or love or faith or wine,
  In whatever terms we think it,
    It is common and divine.

  Praise the high gods, for in giving
    This to man, and this alone,
  They have made his chance of living
    Shine the equal of their own.

William Ernest Henley.

COWARDS

We might as well accept the inevitable as the inevitable.  There is no escaping death or taxes.

  Cowards die many times before their deaths: 
  The valiant never taste of death but once. 
  Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
  It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
  Seeing that death, a necessary end,
  Will come, when it will come.

William Shakespeare.

THE WORD