death
Save those who profit by it.
TRUTHFULNESS.
Ne'er seek, by artful guise of words, to taint
The truth with falsehood's hue. Poor, trembling Truth!
Trust in her would be boundless, if our tongues
Uttered the coin as fashioned in the heart.
And then poor Heart would have no need to send
Her champion blushes to the cheeks to tell
The world how basely she had been traduced.
LOVE'S INFLUENCE.
O love sublime!
How thy sweet influence agitates the soul,
Voicing its hidden chords, as breathing winds
Wake the rude harp to thrilling melody.
All things must pass away; but love shall live
For ever. 'Tis th' immortal soul of life.
Scathless and beauteous midst th' incongruous mass
Of desolated hearts and stricken souls,
And spirits faintful 'neath a world of woe,
And dusky millions in the mine of life;
And all the rank corruption of the earth--
Its weeds, its thorns, its sadness-breeding hate;
Its selfishness, its swallow-pinioned friends;
Its rottenness of core and lack of truth:
When all have changed, save Nature and itself,
This Heaven-sent flow'r of Eden--peerless love--
Shall blossom in Evangel purity,
And sanctify a host to people Heaven.
VALUE OF ADVERSITY.
Friction with sorrow rubs perception keen;
And dear-bought knowledge makes us prophets all.
MISGUIDING APPEARANCES.
What! Is the graveyard sod less fresh and green--
The daisies there less like the meadow flow'r--
Because pollution slumbers at their roots?
Judge not thou, then, by what appears to be,
But what exacting Conscience tells thee is.
VIRGIN PURITY.
As fair a soul as ever came from God,
And one more gentle never walkt the earth
In mortal guise. Of sweet external, too:
Fresh as the wakening morn with violet breath;
And every action, look, thought, word, and trace,
Were strung to tuneful melody. Her life
Was music's echo--stealing o'er the soul
Like dying strains, soft and retiringly.
In childish grace to womanhood she grew,
And like the virgin lily stood and smiled--
Flinging around the fragrance of herself
Unweeting of the blessings that she brought.
MAN'S DESTINY.
All human actions are ordained of God,
And for the common good: yet men see not
The strings that keep earth's puppets on the move;
But whine and whimper--wondering at the ways
By which unlook'd-for ends are brought about:
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