Southern standard. (McMinnville, Tenn.) 1879-current, 1884-04-05
after ALL.

What though fortune smiles on others,
But reserve for me its wrath?
Though the rains that bless my brothers
Burst in tempesis on my path?
They have wealth to hoard or scatter,
While my gains are few and small;
By and by it may not matter,
After all.
What though am slow in learning,
While my fellows onward press?
Though each wild, ambitious yearning
End in weary helplessness?
Though to some exalted station
| would climb-yet here must crawl
May there not be compensation
After all?
Had my life been to my suiting,
Brilliant intellect my dover;
Had wealth beyond computing,
Social station, fame and power;
Satellites to fawn and tlatter,
Servants waiting at my call
Am / sure it would be better,
After allG
Had such fortune been accorded
Till my heart grew hard and cold,
And my soul debased and sordid
With the cankering lust for gold;
Till the weakness luxury nurses
Wrapped my spirit like n pail
Wealth and ease had been but curses,
After all.
Grief and pain'have brought me nearer
To my suffering fellow men,
Till my view is broader, clearer,
Truer, than it would have been;
Sympathy hath countless treasures;
And her touch electrical
Wakes to life our loftiest pleasures,
After all.
And my faults-God knows hate them
Worse than poverty and pain
Yet may He not consecrate them
Even, to my final gain?
Though my upward path be longer,
"A Stumbling, weeping when | fall,
May not at last be stronger,
After all?
When | know the deepest villain
Hath no sinful tendency
But what hath been, and is still, in
My own soul, though loathed by me-
Though the sinless may abhOr him,
who know his bitter thrall,
Feel boundess pity for him,
After all.
Thus my very sins engender
Stronger sense of brotherhood,t
Till my heart is touched and tender
Toward the groveling multitude;
Even there the great Refner,
Love, may rouse and reinstall
Something higher and diviner
After all.
There are countless thousands lying
Mid the wrecks of ruined homes,
Out of rayless darkness crying
For the help mat never comes;
There are millions writhing under
Wrongs that sicKen and apall;
Is it best for them, | wonder,
After all?
What are now the cares and crosses,
Disappointment, terrors, tears,
Irremediable losses
OF our earliest infant years:
Some by patient retrospectiOn
luulsllutuN VIC lONtll
Most are lost to recollection,
After all.
Grant me only that this present
World of WEAKNESS and strife
Be the brief and evanescent
Prelude to an endless life
Then the woes of earth-eXistence
Will appear but few and small
Through thousand years of distance,
After all.
Think We Milton still is mourning
At the thought that he was blind?
Or that Dante grieves concerning
The unkindness of his kind?
Or that David's Joy is blighted
By the cruelty of Saul?
Or has every wrong been righted,
After all,
Heroes numberless have persisted
Struggling for untrammelled thought
Martyrs for the faith they cherished,
For the blessings they had brought;
From the ashes or the prison
OF the vanquished radical,
Grander light and truth have risen,
After all
Though the world, through darkling age!
Her oppressors laud and crown,
Slight, and scOrn, and mock her sages,
And her saviors trample down
Lead them to the cross or scaffold,
Feed them hemlock, NORWOOD, gall
Truth and justice are not bafied,
After all.
Problems confront immenser
Than my puny powers can scan;
Questions can only answer:
Goods must be perfect plan !"
God hath countless resurrections;
Man, through many wOful fall,
Speeds to endless new projections,
After all
j. L. McCreery, in Songs of Toll and
umph.
Getting Out Of The Ruts.
American Agriculturist.