Still a new trial waits.

The blessed health

Heaven's boon, thro' which with unbow'd form we bear

Burdens and ills, forsook him. Maladies

Of fierce and festering virulence attack'd

His swollen limbs. Incessant, grinding pains

Laid his strength prostrate, till he counted life

A loathed thing. Dire visions frighted sleep

That sweet restorer of the wasted frame,

And mid his tossings to and fro, he moan'd

Oh, when shall I arise, and Night be gone!

Despondence seized him. To the lowliest place

Alone he stole, and sadly took his seat

In dust and ashes.

She, his bosom friend

The sharer of his lot for many years,

Sought out his dark retreat. Shuddering she saw

His kingly form like living sepulchre,

And in the maddening haste of sorrow said

God hath forgotten.

She with him had borne

Unuttered woe o'er the untimely graves

Of all whom she had nourished,—shared with him

The silence of a home that hath no child,

The plunge from wealth to want, the base contempt

Of menial and of ingrate;—but to see

The dearest object of adoring love

Her next to God, a prey to vile disease

Hideous and loathsome, all the beauty marred

That she had worshipped from her ardent youth

Deeming it half divine, she could not bear,

Her woman's strength gave way, and impious words

In her despair she uttered.

But her lord

To deeper anguish stung by her defect

And rash advice, reprovingly replied

Pointing to Him who meeteth out below

Both good and evil in mysterious love,

And she was silenced.

What a sacred power

Hath hallow'd Friendship o'er the nameless ills

That throng our pilgrimage. Its sympathy,

Doth undergird the drooping, and uphold

The foot that falters in its miry path.

It grows more precious, as the hair grows grey.

Time's alchymy that rendereth so much dross

Back for our gay entrustments, shows more pure

The perfect essence of its sanctity,

Gold unalloyed.

How doth the cordial grasp,

Of hands that twined with ours in school days, now

Delight us as our sunbeam nears the west,

Soothing, perchance our self-esteem with proofs

That 'mid all faults the good have loved us still,

And quickening with redoubled energy

To do or suffer.

The three friends of Job

Who in the different regions where they dwelt

Teman, and Naamah and the Shuhite land,

Heard tidings of his dire calamity,

Moved by one impulse, journey'd to impart

Their sorrowing sympathy.

Yet when they saw

Him fallen so low, so chang'd that scarce a trace

Remained to herald his identity

Down by his side upon the earth, they sate

Uttering no language save the gushing tear,—

Spontaneous homage to a grief so great.

Oh Silence, born of Wisdom! we have felt

Thy fitness, when beside the smitten friend

We took our place. The voiceless sympathy

The tear, the tender pressure of the hand

Interpreted more perfectly than words

The purpose of our soul.

We speak to err,

Waking to agony some broken chord

Or bleeding nerve that slumbered. Words are weak,

When God's strong discipline doth try the soul;

And that deep silence was more eloquent

Than all the pomp of speech.

Yet the long pause

Of days and nights, gave scope for troubled thought

And their bewildered minds unskillfully

Launching all helmless on a sea of doubt

Explored the cause for which such woes were sent,

Forgetful that this mystery of life

Yields not to man's solution. Passing on

From natural pity to philosophy

That deems Heaven's judgments penal, they inferr'd

Some secret sin unshrived by penitence,

That drew such awful visitations down.

While studying thus the wherefore, with vain toil

Of painful cogitation, lo! a voice

Hollow and hoarse, as from the mouldering tomb,

"Perish the day in which I saw the light!

The day when first my mother's nursing care

Sheltered my helplessness. Let it not come

Into the number of the joyful months,

Let blackness stain it and the shades of death

Forever terrify it.

For it cut

Not off as an untimely birth my span,

Nor let me sleep where the poor prisoners hear

No more the oppressor, where the wicked cease

From troubling and the weary are at rest.

Now as the roar of waves my sorrows swell,

And sighs like tides burst forth till I forget

To eat my bread. That which I greatly feared

Hath come upon me. Not in heedless pride

Nor wrapped in arrogance of full content

I dwelt amid the tide of prosperous days,

And yet this trouble came."

With mien unmoved

The Temanite reprovingly replied:

"Who can refrain longer from words, even though

To speak be grief? Thou hast the instructor been

Of many, and their model how to act.

When trial came upon them, if their knees

Bow'd down, thou saidst, "be strong," and they obey'd.

But now it toucheth thee and thou dost shrink,

And murmuring, faint. The monitor forgets

The precepts he hath taught. Is this thy faith,

Thy confidence, the uprightness of thy way?

Whoever perish'd being innocent?

And when were those who walk'd in righteous ways

Cut off? How oft I've seen that those who sow

The seeds of evil secretly, and plow

Under a veil of darkness, reap the same.

In visions of the night, when deepest sleep

Falls upon men, fear seiz'd me, all my bones

Trembled, and every stiffening hair rose up.

A spirit pass'd before me, but I saw

No form thereof. I knew that there it stood,

Even though my straining eyes discern'd it not.

Then from its moveless lips a voice burst forth,

"Is man more just than God? Is mortal man

More pure than He who made him?

Lo, he puts

No trust in those who serve him, and doth charge

Angels with folly. How much less in them

Dwellers in tents of clay, whose pride is