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!
RETRIBUTION.
O that the wretchedness entailed by sin
Might form the prelude—not the after-piece.
How few there are would brave the hurricane:
How few the crimes mankind would have to count.
LOVE'S MUTABILITY.
My heart is dark again.
My tree of life but yestermorn was flusht
With golden fruit: to-day it creaks in pain,
And wintry winds moan through its leafless boughs.
Time, some hours younger, saw me clasp the sky
Of hope with radiant brow: the plodding churl
May see me now go stumbling in the dark,
And blindly groping for the hand of Death
To lead me hence. O life! O world! O woman!
A MOTHER'S ADVICE.
Mother. Clarence, my darling boy,
The world to which thou yearn'st is grey with crime;
And glittering Vice will bask before thy face,
As serpents lie in sedgy, o'ergrown grass,
In glossy beauty, whilst Life's potent glance
Will thrall thy soul as with a spirit-spell:
But hold thy heart, a chalice for the Good
And Beautiful to crush, with pearly hands,
The mellow draught which purifies the thought,
And lights the soul. Thirst after knowledge, child.
Thy face shall shine, then, brightly as a king's,
As did the prophets' in the olden time
When holding converse with the living God.
As rain-drops falling from the sky above
Upon the mountain-peak remain not there,
But hasten down to voice the simple rill,
So knowledge, born of God, should be attained
By peasant as by peer—by king or slave.
Have faith—large faith. Some of life's mightiest great
Have peered out, like the moon from frowning hills,
Then ventured forth, and walkt their splendour'd night
In pale, cold majesty; while some have dasht
On sun-steeds through the ocean of the world,
As comets plough the shoreless sea of stars,
Blinding old Earth with wreaths of splendid foam
And sparkling sprays: others have strode the world
Like a Colossus, and the glory-light
That streamed up from the far, far end of time,
Hath smote their lofty brows, and glinted down
Upon the world they shadowed: some have lived
And cleft their times with such a whistling swoop
That plodding minds seemed reeling 'tother way—
Men who had suffering-purified their souls
To angel rarity, that they might scan,
Like old Elijah, e'en the throne of God,
And live.