THOUGHT.
O Lord, how great are thy works? and thy thoughts are very deep.—Psalm xcii. 5.
I hate vain thoughts; but thy law do I love.—Psalm cxix. 113.
The thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord.—Proverbs, xv. 26.
Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature.—Matthew, vi. 27.
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below;
Words without thoughts never to Heaven go.
Shakspere.
Rise, O my soul, with thy desires to heaven,
And with divinest contemplation use
Thy time, where time’s eternity is given,
And let vain thoughts no more thy thoughts abuse;
But sown in darkness let them lie;
So live the better, let the worst thoughts die!
Sir Walter Raleigh.
Think that is just; ’tis not enough to do,
Unless thy very thoughts are upright too.
Thomas Randolph.
His pure thoughts were borne
Like fumes of sacred incense o’er the clouds,
And wafted thence on angels’ wings, through ways
Of light to the bright Source of all.
Congreve.
Companion none is like
Unto the mind alone,
For many have been harmed by speech,—
Through thinking, few, or none.
Fear oftentimes restraineth words,
But makes not thoughts to cease;
And he speaks best, that hath the skill
When for to hold his peace.
Our wealth leaves us at death,
Our kinsmen at the grave,
But virtues of the mind unto
The heavens with us we have;
Wherefore, for virtue’s sake,
I can be well content,
The sweetest time of all my life
To deem in thinking spent.
Lord Vaux.
Thoughts uncontrolled and unimpressed, the births
Of pure election, arbitrary range,
Not to the limits of one world confined.
Young.
O ye, whose hours in jocund train advance,
Whose spirits to the song of gladness dance,
Who flowery fields in endless view survey,
Glittering in beams of visionary day;
O yet while Fate delays th’ impending blow,
Be roused to thought, anticipate the woe;
Lest, like the lightning’s glance, the sudden ill
Flash to confound, and penetrate to kill.
Beattie.
O reader, had you in your mind,
Such stores as silent thought can bring,
O gentle reader, you would find
A tale in everything.
Wordsworth.
Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain,
Our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain.
Awake but one, and lo! what myriads rise!
Each stamps its image as the other flies!
Each, as the various avenues of sense,
Delight or sorrow to the soul dispense,
Frightens or fades; yet all, with magic art,
Control the latent fibres of the heart.
Rogers.
God is great and right!
He crowned man’s brow with radiant orbs of light—
Light which inspires all abstracts, and prints
On each twin lens all images and tints.
To contract, brings the world beyond our span,
And makes the farthest star converse with man;
To read His works, God thus illumed the head,
But made man’s breast no window to be read.
Glory to God; though given to King and Pope,
To seal our eyes, our bosoms none can ope;
There still shall freedom one asylum find:
Go to, make creeds and laws to scourge mankind;
Enthral them, hand and foot, and sight and speech,
Thought only, thought is barred beyond your reach;
What racks can bind? or what research unveil
The soul, with flesh encompassed as a mail
Of proof, impervious, save to God alone,
Defies her labours, and resumes her own.
Whether she break communion with the tongue
And bid it mock you with the lie you wrung,
Or scorning such degenerate use of breath,
Escape with truth, and leave you dust and death.
Nicholas Thorning Moile.
Think’st thou to be concealed, thou little thought,
That in the curtained chamber of the soul
Dost wrap thyself so close, and dream to do
A secret work? Look to the hues that roll
O’er the changed brow—the moving lips behold—
Linking thee unto speech—the feet that run
Upon thy errands, and the deeds that stamp
Thy lineage plain before the noon-day sun;
Look to the pen that writes thy history down
In those tremendous books that ne’er unclose
Until the day of doom, and blush to see
How vain thy trust in darkness to repose,
Where all things tend to judgment. So beware,
O, erring human heart! what thought thou lodgest there.
Mrs. Sigourney.
Methought I heard a reverend old man speak;
Grey were his locks, his eyes were calmly bright,
The rosiness of youth was on his cheek,
And, as he spoke, a heaven of truth and light
Open’d itself upon my inner sight;
While, banish’d by his accents soft and meek,
Dissolve itself in holy harmony.
Then to the old man, doubtfully, I said,
“Yet in the world these evils are not dead!”
But, confidently, thus he gave reply—
“As in my thoughts, so in the world they lie.”—
And with these words he rais’d his drooping head.
J. Gostick.
Free from guile, and free from sin,
May the thoughts my breast within,
Gracious God, Thy favour win!
Egone.