“How?”

“You see a pretty girl; you stop; you look; after you marry her, and for the rest of your life, you listen.”

The Magician

Life has such a subtle way
Of forming roses out of clay;

Of taking tears that seemed in vain
And making of them April rain;

Of getting from a heedless rafter
Echoes of dead bits of laughter;

  Of welding in a sunset sea
  Lost loveliness and imagery;

  Of making out of crawling things
  Butterflies with airy wings.

  Life has such a subtle way
  Of turning darkness into day;

  Of bringing music, ocean-old,
  To newness of a tale untold;

  And then, grown jealous of its trust,
  Of changing roses back to dust.

  —­Vivian Yeiser Laramore.

Finish each day and be done with it.  You have done what you could.  Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can.  Tomorrow is a new day, begin it well and serenely, and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.  This day is all that is good and fair.  It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.—­Emerson.

Life Is No Problem

Life is no problem to the heart
That understands itself,
That does not sit above, apart
Upon some higher shelf.

And moralize on destiny
And other things obscure,
But has no more philosophy
Than changeless love and pure.

  Life is no problem to the mind
    That knows the way to live
  The habit just of being kind,
    The joy of just to give.

  Life is no mystery at all
    To those who do not doubt
  But take this life as life befall
    And smile and live it out.

  Do not with theories concern
    Yourself as on you go;
  There is but little we can learn,
    But little we can know.

  Life is to live, to take the sweet
    The hidden fates have sent,
  To live each day the day you meet
    And try to be content.

  So do not seek to tear the veil
    And read the heart of God. 
  Enough that He is in the gale
    And in the velvet sod.

Enough that He has given you
The boon of days and years,
The world of green, the sky of blue,
And sunshine after tears.

—­Douglas Mallock.

The Match Box

Life is a Match Box, and the Matches
Ambitions, and unstruck desires;
Youth the material that catches
And kindles in the darkness fires.

And Love is like an idle fellow
Who sets the match box in a blaze,
And sees the blue flames and the yellow
Shoot up and die beneath his gaze.

  But Age is like a man returning
    Late homeward.  Creeping in his socks
  He tries to get a candle burning,
    And finds he has an empty box.