" We cannot leam the cipher
That's writ upon the wall ;
Stars help us hy a mystery
Which we could never spelL

" If but the hero knew it,

The world would blush iu flame.
The sage, teR he but the secret.
Would hang his head in shame.
" But our brothers have not read it,
Not one has found the key ;
And henceforth we are comforted —
We are hut such as they 1"

A very poor comfort that, we would say,
which springs from the thought that we are
all in the dark, and there" is no hope for even
one to find his way out ; and this comes, above
all, with ill grace from one, to whom, - if his
own account be true, nature has made all
things clear.
" But thou, my Votary, weepest thou ?
I taught thy heart beyond the reach
Of ritual, Bible, or of speech ;



WHAT IS MAN'S DESTINY. 25

Wrote on thy mind's transparent table
As far as the incommunioable :
Taught thee each private sign to raise,
Lit by the super-solar blaze.
Past utterance and past belief,
And past the blasphemy of grief.
The mysteries of nature's heart ;
And though no muse can these impart,
Throb thine with nature's throbbing breast.
And all is clear from east to west."

We are not a little surprised how one who
has been taught so much, and to whom all
things have been made so clear, should still be
left in the " mire," in regard to the mystery
of life. We are, we confess, a little suspicious,
that that nature which taught this Votary
"beyond the reach of ritual, bible, or of
speech ! " was, no nature at all, but self.
