“It has been on the desolate ocean
      When the lightening struck the mast;
    It has heard the cry of the drowning,
      Who sank as they hurried past. 
    The words of despair and anguish
      That were heard by no living ear;
    The gun that no signal answered—­
      It brings them all to us here. 
    Hark to the voice of the wind!”

It shakes angrily the trees whose limbs are swaying in protest against the onslaught; it carries the leaves rustling to the ground, and in its fury uproots the giant oaks, which groan in agony as they are hurled to the ground, lying like soldiers on the field of battle.

    “Hark to the voice of the wind!”

Its fury is abated, and softly, like a benediction it enters the room where the weary mother is watching by the bedside of her sick child; it gently fans the fevered head; it touches with a caress the parched lips of the babe, and with murmur of song it lulls the child to rest.

    “Hark to the voice of the wind.”

It enters the counting room of the tired man of business, bringing a perfume of flowers:  he lays down his pen, while his thoughts go back to the home of his boyhood, to the meadows, to the hillside covered with flowers, the new-mown hay, and the tired brain is refreshed, he knows not how, and the unseen messenger is gone—­

    “Hark to the voice of the wind!”

It visits the silent City of the Dead and gently scatters the leaves over the new-made grave of a young child, sighing softly the while, the voice now rising, now falling, sobbing and moaning, and at last dies away in a melancholy sound, like the strings of an Aeolian harp touched by unseen hands.

    “Hark to the music of the wind!”

Human nature approaches the Divine in moments of great sacrifice, forgiveness and self-forgetfulness.

PASSING THOUGHTS

“It seems the fate of woman to wait in silence while men act,” ’Men must work and woman must weep.’

* * * * *

How delightful it must be to understand one’s own nature thoroughly, to know that no whirlwind will ever sweep us off the beaten track, no stormy passions stir the calm placidity of our life.  But is that life?  No, give me the glories of expectation, the wildest exhaltation; the heart beating, the brain throbbing, the stormiest passions with force enough to carry everything before them, even if they bring deep grief—­that is life.

* * * * *

People who deal in dry, hard facts are not interesting.  They may make themselves names in the financial world, may become railway magnates and coal kings, may control the money market; but they are not interesting.  They are the prose of life.  They who see the clouds forming into fantastic shapes, the glories of a sunset, the shadows in pools, the colour on a bird’s wing, the rose tint on the cheek of a child,—­they and such as they are the poetry of life.