A sparkling cup remained for me, The brimming fount of Family; This I am still drinking, Since, to my thinking, Good wine beads here, Flagons of cheer, Nor laps the soul In Lethe's bowl.
Wine of immortal power Into my chalice now doth pour; Prevailing wine, Juice of the Nine, Flavored of sods, Vintage of gods; Joyance benign This wondrous wine Ever at call;— Wine maddening none, Wine saddening none, Wine gladdening all, Makes love's cup ruddier glow, Genius and grace its overflow.
I drained the drops of every cup, Times, institutions I drank up: Still Beauty pours the enlivening wine, Fills high her glass to me and mine; Her cup of sparkling youth, Of love first found, and loyal truth: I know, again I know, Her fill of life and overflow.
When I find my friends are not of the same age as when I first knew them, I may conclude myself, not them, to be decaying and losing flavor. Still youth and innocency are the sole solvents of all doubts and infidelities; the faiths of women and children in friendship, ever fresh demonstrations of life's sufficiency and imperishableness. Families never die, since they trace their pedigree to Adam the First, who is of immortal ancestry. First suckled at our mother's breast our faiths survive all subsequent modifications; embrace the friendships we form, and color the whole of life. Our intellectual creed may change; temperament, calling, social position, fortune, sect, may phrase differently the delightful lay she sang to us—its tone still lingers in the memory of our affections, holding the heart loyal, and if trusted to the end takes us triumphantly through life. "Ever the feminine leadeth us on." Every prospect the mother gains is soon commanded by her children: our comforts and satisfactions life-long having the voice and countenance of woman.
"Heaven lies about us in our infancy."
Our notion of the perfect society embraces the family as its centre and ornament. Nor is there a paradise planted till the children appear in the foreground to animate and complete the picture. Without these, the world were a solitude, houses desolate, hearts homeless; there were neither perspectives, nor prospects; ourselves were not ourselves, nor were there a future for us:
In their good gifts we hopeful see The fairer selves we fain would be.
Socrates comprised all objects of his search in
"Whate'er of good or ill can man befall In his own house,"