WE CANNOT BE ALONE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2499, 5 February 1902, Page 59

WE CANNOT BE A LONE.

" In truth, it is an utter solitude."

— Wordsworth. " Alone with God and silencs in the hills."

—Kendall. Alone where creature never chmb'd before, 0 vast, gloom-girded, solitary glen! 1 wander under woods where streams and winds Make melancholy music evermore. O, if there be no blessedness reserved For after-times, if Life and Love are vain, Yet am I mightier than the orbit Sol Might measure when the reons are no more, And it is sweet to suffer, — sweeter far Than shallow mortals can conceive.

No song Was ever fraught with soul that did not burn Its way from out the suffering spirit. My song Would well with such humanity as soars Above the snowy, 3ilvered summits till 'Tis sacred as the stars; — the purple life That throbs to virgin paps — the mystic light That burns in misted mother eyes what time Sh» holds the tender infant to her heart — The mother's pride in sinewy, stalwart sons^ — And all the range of manly tliought and toil For highest, noblest ends:— but what are

these? What are the myriad yearnings that beset The solitary soul without the crown Of Life — unending progress and the power To rise to archangehc altitudes, Yea to the very feet of glorious God ? O, if there be no blessed-ness reserved For souls that suffer, still 'tis sweet indeed To sing in utter solitude, to hear The thousand echoes far from cliff to cloud Their solemn strains prolong. Sweet music

- swells Athwart the vastness of the outer void, Such music as might make a million years Seem but a deep, delicious breath, and lift The creature" far from sordidness and sin. Ye rugged mountains, girt with rolling gloom, Say, could ye crunch me were ye hurled upon this trembling tenement? I look beyond The battles that have been, that are to be, And question of the silences supreme. Deep psalmody that sways this cosmes-swung Spherule amid innumerable spherts Gives eloquent answer— God is All in All. Ah, truly, there is blessedness reserved For those who toil nnd suffer in the night. Unnumbered deviations may converge, And every creature feel the spirit bonds That bind our myriad interests as one. Ah, then, no spanless solitude will gird The silent, famished, sympathetic heart, But telepathic blessednesses touch The thought continually with Life and Love. Charles Oscab Palmer. Brent'jrood Farm, December, 1901.