27. The Gain of Adversity.
A lily said to a threatening cloud
That in sternest garb arrayed him,
"You have taken my lord, the Sun, away
And I know not where you have laid him.”
It folded its leaves, and trembled sore
As the hours of darkness pressed it,
But at morn, like a bird, in beauty shone
For with pearls the dews had dressed it.
Then it felt ashamed of its fretful thought,
And fain in the dust would hide it,
For the night of weeping had jewels brought,
Which the pride of day denied it.
Mrs. L. H. Sigourney, Conn., 1791-1865.
28. Duty and Right.
Yet nerve thy spirit to the proof,
And blench not at thy chosen lot;
The timid good may stand aloof,
The sage may frown,-yet faint thou not, Nor heed the shaft too surely cast,
The foul and hissing bolt of scorn;
For with thy side shall dwell, at last,
The victory of endurance born.
Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again;
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies among her worshipers.
W. C. Bryant, Mass., 1794
There are moments, I think, when the spirit receives
Whole volumes of thought on its unwritten leaves,-
When the folds of the heart in a moment unclose,
Like the innermost leaves from the heart of a rose,
And thus when the rainbow has passed from the sky,
The thoughts it awakes are too deep to pass by;
It leaves my full soul, like the wing of a dove,
All fluttering with pleasure and fluttering with love.
I know that each moment of rapture or pain
But shortens the links in life's mystical chain;
I know that my form, like the bow from the wave,
Must pass from the earth, and lie cold in the grave;
Yet, oh! when Death's shadows my bosom encloud,
When I shrink at the thought of the coffin and shroud,
May Hope, like the rainbow, my spirit enfold
In her beautiful pinions of purple and gold.
Amelia B. Welby, Maryland, 1821-1852.
30. Earnest Workers.
The busy world shoves angrily aside.
The man who stands with arms akimbo set,
Until occasion tells him what to do;
And he who waits to have his task marked out,
Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled.
Our time is one that calls for earnest deeds:
Reason and Government, like two broad seas,
Yearn for each other with outstretched arms
Across their narrow isthmus of the throne,
And roll their white surf higher every day.
One age moves onward, and the next builds up
Cities and gorgeous palaces, where stood
The rude log huts of those who tamed the wild,
Rearing from out the forests they had felled
The goodly frame-work of a fairer state;
The builder's trowel and the settler's ax
Are seldom wielded by the self same hand;
Ours is the harder task, yet not the less
Shall we receive the blessing for our toil
From the choice spirits of the after-time.
Russell Lowell, Mass., 1819
31. The Guilty Conscience.
The mind that broods o'er guilty woes
Is like the scorpion girt by fire;
In circle narrowing as it glows,
The flames around their captive close;
Till, inly searched by thousand throes,
And maddening in her ire,
One, and a sole relief she knows;
The sting she nourished for her foes-
Whose venom never yet was vain,
Gives but one pang, and cures all pain-
She darts into her desperate brain.
So do the dark in soul expire,
Or live like scorpion girt by fire;
So writhes the mind remorse has riven,
Unfit for earth, undoomed for heaven;
Darkness above, despair beneath-
Around it flame, within it death.
Lord Byron, England, 1788-1824.
32. The Cost of Success.
Few know of life's beginning; men behold
The goal achieved;-the warrior, when his sword
Flashes red triumph in the noonday sun;
The poet,—when his lyre hangs on the palm;
The statesman, when the crowd proclaim his voice,
And mould opinion on his gifted tongue:
They count not life's first steps, and never think
Upon the many miserable hours
When hope deferred was sickness to the heart.
They reckon not the battle and the march,
The long privations of a wasted youth;
They never see the banner till unfurled.
What are to them the solitary nights
Passed pale and anxious by the sickly lamp,
Till the young poet wins the world at last
To listen to the music long his own?
The crowd attend the statesman's fiery mind
That makes their destiny; but they do not trace
Its struggle, or its long expectancy.
Hard are life's early steps; and, but that youth
Is buoyant, confident, and strong in hope,
Men would behold its threshold, and despair.
L. E. Landon, (Letitia E. Maclean,) England, 1802-1839
33. True Philosophy.
With sweet flowers opening on thy sight daily,
Sing as the birds sing, gladly and gayly.
Think not of autumn sere, winter's grim shadows;
Sing as the birds sing over the meadows.
See what the hour reveals fairly and truly,Not what the cloud conceals, but the cloud duly. Think every common day is a good granted; Hail every trial sent as a tree planted.
Paint not the tempest's hour till it close o'er thee,
Trust not to Fancy's power, have it before thee.
Seen its aurora-gleams, felt its dark terror,
Then to thy work proceed, fearless of error.
God sendeth naught in vain, gladness or sorrow:
Strength giveth of its gain, weakness must borrow.
Tempest and summer rain give the tree stature;
Each one who skulks the pain narrows his nature.
Little they think, the giddy and the vain,
Wandering at pleasure 'neath the shady trees,
While the light glossy silk or rustling train
Shines in the sun or flutters in the breeze,
How the sick weaver plies the incessant loom,
Crossing in silence the perplexing thread,
Pent in the confines of one narrow room,
Where droops complainingly his cheerless head;
Little they think with what dull, anxious eyes,
Nor by what nerveless, thin, and trembling hands,
The devious mingling of those various dyes
Were wrought to answer Luxury's commands: But the day cometh when the tired shall rest,Where weary Lazarus leans his head on Abraham's
Mrs. C. E. S. Norton, England, 1808-1877.
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