Thus Habit mars with wounds and scars
The favored of our race,
Transforms the mind that God designed
Should be the dwelling place
Of noble thought with heaven fraught
Into a sterile plain,
Whose atmosphere is dank and drear—
A wild chaotic brain.
Man scarce may be entirely free
From wiles and tricks and snares,
Whose stealthy forms and subtle charms
Approach us unawares.
Our eyes are blind or not inclined
To see that powerful hand,
That silently, yet forcibly
Gives us its strong command.
LIFE'S EMERGENCIES.
How strangely dark are the vapors
That sometimes obscure the way,
Ere the light of truth advances
To the noon of a perfect day.
As the unforeseen approaches
In stealth from ambushed retreat,
The mettle of soul is summoned
Its emergencies to meet.
To shrink by its sudden coming,
To surrender our control
Without a struggle for vantage,
Betrays a weakness of soul.
The conflicts with emergencies
We meet in our daily call,
Give strength or death to moral worth
As we conquer them or fall.