Not in material things alone
Does Progress mark its high career,
Fair science builds her regal throne,
And morals her triumphal car.
Man stands erect—his image fair
In God’s own likeness first was cast,
His high prerogatives appear,
He seeks his destiny at last.
Upward and onward is his course,
In mental and in moral life,
With higher purpose, now, perforce,
With loftier aspirations rife.
In matters both of Church and State,
A high ambition spurs him on,
With buoyancy and hope elate,
He plies his task till it be done.
[Winter.]
Written in the month of January, the ground covered with snow.
’Tis winter, drear winter, and cold the winds blow,
The ground is all cover’d with ice and with snow,
The trees are all gemm’d with a crystalline sheen,
No birdling or blossom are now to be seen.
The landscape is wearing a mantle of white,
Its verdure lies wither’d and hidden from sight,
Rude Borean blasts bleakly blow o’er the hills,
’Till the life-current, coursing, his icy-breath chills.
The rills in their ice-fetters firmly are bound
As the frost-spirit breathes o’er the face of the ground
The icicles pendant hang over the eaves,
And the wind whirls in eddies the rustling leaves.
It shrieks through the casement and in at the door—
All through the long night hear it fitfully roar,
The mitre ethereal silently flies
So keen and so cutting through storm-troubled skies.