For both by nature are akin;
Sorrow, the ashen fruit of sin,
And joy, the juice of life within.
Children of earth are these; and those
The spirits of divine repose—
Death radiant o’er all human woes.
O, think what then had been thy doom,
If homeless and without a tomb
They had been left to haunt the gloom!
O, think again what now they are—
Motherly love, tho’ dim and far,
Imaged in every lustrous star.
For they, in their salvation, know
No vestige of their former woe,
While thro’ them all the heavens do flow.
Thus art thou wedded to the skies,
And watched by ever-loving eyes,
And warned by yearning sympathies.
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The flower unfolds its dawning cup,
And the young sun drinks the star-dews up,
At eve it droops with the bliss of day,
And dreams in the midnight far away.
So am I in thy sole, sweet glance
Pressed with a weight of utterance;
Lovingly all my leaves unfold,
And gleam to the beams of thirsty gold.
At eve I droop, for then the swell
Of feeling falters forth farewell;—
At midnight I am dreaming deep,
Of what has been, in blissful sleep.