Take them, O great Eternity! 
  Our little life is but a gust
That bends the branches of thy tree,
  And trails its blossoms in the dust!

HYMN

FOR MY BROTHER’S ORDINATION

Christ to the young man said:  “Yet one thing more;
  If thou wouldst perfect be,
Sell all thou hast and give it to the poor,
  And come and follow me!”

Within this temple Christ again, unseen,
  Those sacred words hath said,
And his invisible hands to-day have been
  Laid on a young man’s head.

And evermore beside him on his way
  The unseen Christ shall move,
That he may lean upon his arm and say,
  “Dost thou, dear Lord, approve?”

Beside him at the marriage feast shall be,
  To make the scene more fair;
Beside him in the dark Gethsemane
  Of pain and midnight prayer.

O holy trust!  O endless sense of rest! 
  Like the beloved John
To lay his head upon the Saviour’s breast,
  And thus to journey on!

***************

The song of Hiawatha
Notes from HIAWATHA follow

INTRODUCTION

Should you ask me, whence these stories? 
Whence these legends and traditions,
With the odors of the forest
With the dew and damp of meadows,
With the curling smoke of wigwams,
With the rushing of great rivers,
With their frequent repetitions,
And their wild reverberations
As of thunder in the mountains? 
  I should answer, I should tell you,
“From the forests and the prairies,
From the great lakes of the Northland,
From the land of the Ojibways,
From the land of the Dacotahs,
From the mountains, moors, and fen-lands
Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
Feeds among the reeds and rushes. 
I repeat them as I heard them
From the lips of Nawadaha,
The musician, the sweet singer.” 
  Should you ask where Nawadaha
Found these songs so wild and wayward,
Found these legends and traditions,
I should answer, I should tell you,
“In the bird’s-nests of the forest,
In the lodges of the beaver,
In the hoof-prints of the bison,
In the eyry of the eagle! 
  “All the wild-fowl sang them to him,
In the moorlands and the fen-lands,
In the melancholy marshes;
Chetowaik, the plover, sang them,
Mahng, the loon, the wild-goose, Wawa,
The blue heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
And the grouse, the Mushkodasa!”
  If still further you should ask me,
Saying, “Who was Nawadaha? 
Tell us of this Nawadaha,”
I should answer your inquiries
Straightway in such words as follow. 
  “In the vale of Tawasentha,
In the green and silent valley,
By the pleasant water-courses,
Dwelt the singer Nawadaha. 
Round about the Indian village
Spread the meadows and the corn-fields,