Romance is always young.
Small leisure have the poor for grief.
And close at hand, the basket stood With nuts from brown October’s wood. And close at hand, the basket stood With nuts from brown October’s wood.
O Time and change! – with hair as gray as was my sire’s that winter day, how strange it seems, with so much gone of life and love, to still live on!
The dreariest spot in all the land to Death they set apart; with scanty grace from Nature’s hand, and none from that of Art.
Oh, for boyhood’s painless play, sleep that wakes in laughing day, health that mocks the doctor’s rules, knowledge never learned of schools.
Here Greek and Roman find themselves alive along these crowded shelves; and Shakespeare treads again his stage, and Chaucer paints anew his age.
Autumn, in his leafless bowers, is waiting for the winter’s snow.
To be saved is only this-salvation from our own selfishness.
For still the new transcends the old In signs and tokens manifold; Slaves rise up men; the olive waves, With roots deep set in battle graves!
Nothing before, nothing behind; The steps of faith Fall on the seeming void, and find The Rock beneath.
Through the open door A drowsy smell of flowers -grey heliotrope And white sweet clover, and shy mignonette Comes fairly in, and silent chorus leads To the pervading symphony of Peace.
The laws of changeless justice bind oppressor and oppressed; and, close as sin and suffering joined we march to fate abreast.
He is wisest, who only gives, True to himself, the best he can: Who drifting on the winds of praise, The inward monitor obeys. And with the boldness that confuses fear Takes in the crowded sail, and lets his conscience steer.
Drop Thy still dews of quietness, Till all our strivings cease; Take from our souls the strain and stress, And let our ordered lives confess The beauty of Thy peace.
God’s ways seem dark, but, soon or late, They touch the shining hills of day; The evil cannot brook delay, The good can well afford to wait, Give ermined knaves their hour of crime; Yet have the future grand and great, The safe appeal of Truth to Time!
I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care.
God is good and God is light In this faith I rest secure, Evil can but serve the right, Over all shall love endure.
And step by step, since time began, I see the steady gain of man.
Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time, So “Bonnie Doon” but tarry; Blot out the epic’s stately rhyme, But spare his “Highland Mary!”