“This earth is very lovely. Oh, my God,
I thank Thee that I live!”
HOUR-GLASS THOUGHTS.
The bride stands waiting at the altar; the corpse lies waiting for burial.
Love vainly implores of Death a reprieve; Despair vainly invokes his coming.
The starving wretch, who purloins a crust, trembles in the hall of Justice; liveried sin, unpunished, riots in high places.
Brothers, clad “in purple and fine linen, fare sumptuously every day;” Sisters, in linsey-woolsey, toil in garrets, and shrink, trembling, from insults that no fraternal arm avenges.
The Village Squire sows, reaps, and garners golden harvests; the Parish Clergyman sighs, as his casting vote cuts down his already meagre salary.
The unpaid sempstress begems with tears the fairy festal robe; proud beauty floats in it through the ball-room like a thing of air.
Church spires point, with tapering fingers, to the rich man’s heaven; Penitence, in rags, tearful and altarless, meekly stays its timid foot at the threshold.