Hope and Confidence.
O! What a strange thing is the human heart!
With its youth, and its joy and fear!
It doats upon creatures that day-dreams impart,—
Full sorely it grieves when their beauties depart,
And weeps bitter tears over their bier.
The veriest gleamings that dart into birth,
Reveal to its being of light:
The dimliest shadows that flit upon earth,
Allure it, with promise of pleasure and mirth
In a country, where never is night.
It leaves the sure things of its own real home,
To pursue the mere phantoms of thought!
Well knowing, that certain, there soon must come,
An end to the visions, that so gladsome,
It bewilder'd, has eagerly sought.
Chas. L. Reason (Engraved by J. C. Buttre)
It fleeth the wholesome prose of life,
With its riches all sure and told:
And scorning the beauties, that calmly in strife
Truth fashions, it longs for the things all rife
With glitter, and color, and gold.
It buildeth its home 'neath an ever calm sky,
Near streams wherein crown-jewels sleep,—
And there it reposeth: while soothingly nigh,
Some loved one, perchance, doth most wooingly sigh,
As the zephyrs all full-laden creep.