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Truth is altogether ineffably, holily beautiful.  Beauty has always truth in it, but seldom unadulterated.

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The poet’s soul should be like the ocean, able to carry navies, yet yielding to the touch of a finger.

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ORIGINAL POETRY

AZELA.

BY MISS ALICE CAREY.

  From the pale, broken ruins of the heart,
  The soul’s bright wing, uplifted silently,
  Sweeps thro’ the steadfast depths of the mind’s heaven,
  Like the fixed splendor of the morning star—­
  Nearer and nearer to the wasteless flame
  That in the centres of the universe
  Burns through the o’erlapping centuries of time. 
  And shall it stagger midway on its path,
  And sink its radiance low as the dull dust,
  For the death-flutter of a fledgling hope? 
  Or, with the headlong phrensy of a fiend,
  Front the keen arrows of Love’s sunken sun,
  For that, with nearer vision it discerns
  What in the distance like ripe roses seemed
  Crimsoning with odorous beauty the gray rocks
  Are the red lights of wreckers! 
                                Just as well
  The obstinate traveler might in pride oppose
  His puny shoulder to the icy slip
  Of the blind avalanche, and hope for life;
  Or Beauty press her forehead in the grave,
  And think to rise as from the bridal bed. 
  But let the soul resolve its course shall be
  Onward and upward, and the walls of pain
  May build themselves about it as they will,
  Yet leave it all-sufficient to itself. 
    How like the very truth a lie may seem!—­
  Led by that bright curse, Genius, some have gone
  On the broad wake of visions wonderful
  And seemed, to the dull mortals far below,
  Unraveling the web of fate, at will. 
  And leaning on their own creative power,
  As on the confident arm of buoyant Love. 
  But from the climbing of their wildering way
  Many have faltered, fallen,—­some have died,
  Still wooing from across the lapse of years
  The faded splendour of a morning dream,
  And feeding sorrow with remembered smiles. 
  Love, that pale passion-flower of the heart,
  Nursed into bloom and beauty by a breath,
  With the resplendence of its broken light,
  Even on the outposts of mortality,
  Dims the still watchfires of the waiting soul. 
    O, tender-visaged Pity, stoop from heaven,
  And from the much-loved bosom of the past
  Draw back the nestling hand of Memory,
  Though it be quivering and pale with pain;
  And with the dead dust of departed Hope
  Choke up and wither into barrenness
  The sweetest fountain of the human heart,
  And stay its channels everlastingly
  From the endeavor of the loftier soul.