If being near the fire I burned with it, Now that its flame is quenched and doth not show, What wonder if I waste within and glow, Dwindling away to cinders bit by bit? ...
I've gotten it, thanks to your courtesy; And I have read it twenty times or so: Thus much may your sharp snarling profit you, As food our flesh filled to satiety....
When masters bind a slave with cruel chain, And keep him hope-forlorn in bondage pent, Use tames his temper to imprisonment, And hardly would he fain be free again....
From heaven his spirit came, and robed in clay The realms of justice and of mercy trod, Then rose a living man to gaze on God, That he might make the truth as clear as day....
Far more than I was wont myself I prize: With you within my heart I rise in rate, Just as a gem engraved with delicate Devices o'er the uncut stone doth rise;...
Mid weariness and woe I find some cheer In thinking of the past, when I recall My weakness and my sins, and reckon all The vain expense of days that disappear:...
Not less elate than smitten with wild woe To see not them but Thee by death undone, Were those blest souls, when Thou above the sun Didst raise, by dying, men that lay so low:...
Choice soul, in whom, as in a glass, we see, Mirrored in thy pure form and delicate, What beauties heaven and nature can create, The paragon of all their works to be!...
Ye dwellers on this world, to the first Mind Exalt your eyes; and ye shall see how low Vile Tyranny, wearing the glorious show Of nobleness and worth, keeps you confined....
The Devil's not so ugly as they paint; He's well with all, compact of courtesy: Real heroism is real piety: Before small truth great falsehoods shrink and faint...