EXTRACTS FROM SOME UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT.
HUMILITY OPPRESSED.
Blame not the world:
But blame its law that makes it crime akin
To be of lowly birth—to lack the gold
Whereby to coat the mask to cheat the world
Of sterling merit. See yon beauteous fly
Breaking its plumage 'gainst the glassy pane,
Till spent and weary, yearning tow'rds the sun.
E'en so the lowly-born but large of soul
See not, but feel, the chilling barrier
Set up by Pride to mar their sky-ward flight
To liberty and life.
UPWARD STRIVINGS.
See, when the simple moth doth blindly rush
To reach the flame, its life oft pays the debt
Of folly. Yet 'tis nobler thus to die
Midst all the brightness of a waking life,
Than from the world ooze out through darkened ways
By beggarly instalments—none to feel
Thy life but thine own poor ignoble self:
And none to tell the moment of thy 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:
As blind imprisoned birds bruise out their lives
Against the cruel bars they cannot see.
LOVE'S INCONGRUITIES.
Experience tells the world it were as mad
To link the Present with the sluggish Past,
As wed the ways of winsome, wanton youth,
To lean and laggard age. I pitied her:
Made her the mistress of my countless wealth—
Loving with doting and uxorious love.
And the ripe graces of her radiant mind
Shone out resplendent. But my withered life
Woke to her love with sere and sickly hope;
As some departed June, won with the sighs
Of waning Winter, turns and spends a day
For very pity with the lonely eld,
Who greets her sunny visit with a glance
Of cold inanity, and strives to smile.
O had I known this little hour of time
When life was young—or knew it not at all!
Then my heart's buoyance, at such love as her's,
Had blossom'd brightly—as the merry May
Skips from the golden South with balmy breath,
Breathing upon the dark and thorn-clad fields,
Till fragrant buds peep out like love-lit eyes,
And hedges redden as she walks along.
As these—her love and mine. But now—alas!