TO A FRIEND IN TIME OF TROUBLE.

Believe the word our gentle augur spake: Sweet are the uses of adversity. Sweet ever, and in naught so sweet as this: That tho’ the heavens be barred, if we but hold An equal, tranquil, will-illumined mind, Such greatness in us, laborless, must earn Great answers; cheer from all created things, And interchange of love by natural right With the high few; a kinship not of clan. Be these thy present comfort. Like a man Who tends a watchlight on the hills alone, At Childermas, (and thro’ a night so cold The red dots of the rowan-berry twirl, Incorporate with a small, stiff cone of ice, And the wind breaks his flail and swineherds hear Outside the pine-boles crack with frost in the heart,) Thou shalt, ere long, upon a distant peak Descry a doubted smoke, a likelier spark, A shadow shot across a glare, and then A spurt of flame that bares the under sea; And climb by much and more of certitude To praising God some other even as thou Beneath his natal star himself maintains, And in salute of souls co-ordinate, There, till he perish, guards his lineal fire. Louise Imogen Guiney.