TO PROF. C. F. RICHARDSON
(For the dedication of a book.)
SUCH as the seashore gathers from the sea — Shells whose glad opal sunlight makes more glad, And dead men's bones by bitter seaweed clad — Teacher and friend, these songs I send to thee. Gay things and ghastly mingled, seem to me Here are alike; the merry and the sad, The trivial and tragic, good and bad, For so I find the ways of life to be. Evil and good are woven upon the loom Of fate in such inextricable wise That no man may be bold to judge and say, "This thing is good, that evil," till the day When God shall blazon on regenerate skies The justice of His pardon and His doom.