Works

Despise not, shrewd reckoner, the God of a good man's worship,
Neither let thy calculating folly gainsay the unity of three:
Nor scorn another's creed, although he cannot solve thy doubts;...

Equal is the government of heaven in allotting pleasures among men,
And just the everlasting law, that hath wedded happiness to virtue:
For verily on all things else broodeth disappointment with care,...

For what then was I born? ' to fill the circling year with daily toil for daily bread, with sordid pains and pleasures? '
To walk this chequered world, alternate light and darkness,...

Rashly, nor ofttimes truly, doth man pass judgment on his brother;
For he seeth not the springs of the heart, nor heareth the reasons of the mind....

I KNEW that age was enriched with the hard-earned wages of knowledge,
And I saw that hoary wisdom was bred in the school of disappointment:
I noted that the wisest of youth, though provident and cautious of evil,...

The night is folly without the moon,
trees blank space against a frontal sky
where lattice work from a bled fish reveals
skeletal markings will not administer
the red jack of hearts to a mistress sea.
...

I Heard the man of sin reproaching the goodness of Jehovah,
Wherefore, if he be Almighty Love, permitteth he misery and pain?
I saw the child of hope vexed in the labyrinth of doubt,...

Blunted unto goodness is the heart which anger never stirreth,
But that which hatred swelleth, is keen to carve out evil.
Anger is a noble infirmity, the generous failing of the just....

The sea-wort floating on the waves, or rolled up high along the shore,
Ye counted useless and vile, heaping on it names of contempt:
Yet hath it gloriously triumphed, and man been humbled in his ignorance,...

Vice is grown aweary of her gawds, and donneth russet garments.
Loving for change to walk as a nun, beneath a modest veil:
For Pride hath noted how all admire the fairness of Humility,...

Face thy foe in the field, and perchance thou wilt meet thy master,
For the sword is chained to his wrist, and his armour buckled for the battle;...

Where art thou, storehouse of the mind, gamer of facts and fancies, '
In what strange firmament are laid the beams of thine airy chambers?
Or art thou that small cavern, the centre of the rolling brain,...

Of old sat Freedom on the heights,
The thunders breaking at her feet:
Above her shook the starry lights:
She heard the torrents meet.

There in her place she did rejoice,...

"O for a lodge in some vast wilderness"
A man cried out in his distress,
For he was tired and sick of life,
And weary of this worldly strife,
And longed for to be far away...

Tune - "The Moudiewort."


Chorus.

An O, for ane-and-twenty, Tam,
An' hey, sweet ane-and-twenty, Tam,
I'll learn my kin a rattlin' sang,
An I saw ane-and-twenty, Tam.

I.
...

A WICKED man scorneth prayer, in the shallow sophistry of reason.
He derideth the silly hope that God can be moved by supplication: '
Can the unchangeable be changed, or waver in his purpose?...

Deep is the sea, and deep is hell, but Pride mineth deeper;
It is coiled as a poisonous worm about the foundations of the soul.
If thou expose it in thy motives, and track it in thy springs of thought,...

To join advantage to amusement, to gather profit with pleasure,
Is the wise man's necessary aim, when he lieth in the shade of recreation.
For he cannot fling aside his mind, nor bar up the floodgates of his wisdom;...

In the silent watches of the night, calm night that breedeth thoughts.
When the task-weary mind disporteth in the careless play-hours of sleep,
I dreamed; and behold, a valley, green and sunny and well watered....

Law hath dominion over all things, over universal mind and matter;
For there are reciprocities of right, which no creature can gainsay.
Unto each was there added by its Maker, in the perfect chain of being,...