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,...
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. ...
A pious magistrate! sound his praise throughout The wondering churches. Who shall henceforth doubt That the long-wished millennium draweth nigh? Sin in high places has become devout,...
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,...
Lord, I am waiting, weeping, watching for Thee: My youth and hope lie by me buried and dead, My wandering love hath not where to lay its head Except Thou say "Come to Me." ...
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,...
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,...
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,...
Yet once more, saith the fool, yet once, and is it not a little one? Spare me this folly yet an hour, for what is one among so many? And lie blindeth his conscience with lies, and stupifieth his heart with doubts; '...