The holy time is quiet as a nun Breathless with adoration.
That kill the bloom before its time, And blanch, without the owner’s crime, The most resplendent hair.
On a fair prospect some have looked, And felt, as I have heard them say, As if the moving time had been A thing as steadfast as the scene On which they gazed themselves away.
How fast has brother followed brother, From sunshine to the sunless land!
Elysian beauty, melancholy grace, Brought from a pensive though a happy place.
Sad fancies do we then affect, In luxury of disrespect To our own prodigal excess Of too familiar happiness.
But He is risen, a later star of dawn.
Tis not in battles that from youth we train The Governor who must be wise and good, And temper with the sternness of the brain Thoughts motherly, and meek as womanhood.
Stern daughter of the voice of God! O Duty! if that name thou love Who art a light to guide, a rod To check the erring and reprove.
True dignity abides with him alone Who, in the silent hour of inward thought, Can still suspect, and still revere himself, In lowliness of heart.
Pleasures newly found are sweet When they lie about our feet.
She seemed a thing that could not feel the touch of earthly years.
Milton! thou should’st be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters.
Brothers all In honour, as in one community, Scholars and gentlemen.
The monumental pomp of age Was with this goodly personage; A stature undepressed in size, Unbent, which rather seemed to rise In open victory o’er the weight Of seventy years, to loftier height.
Primroses, the Spring may love them; Summer knows but little of them.
With little here to do or see Of things that in the great world be, Sweet Daisy! oft I talk to thee For thou art worthy, Thou unassuming commonplace Of Nature, with that homely face, And yet with something of a grace Which love makes for thee!
Burn all the statutes and their shelves: They stir us up against our kind; And worse, against ourselves.
Enough, if something from our hands have power To live, and act, and serve the future hour; And if, as toward the silent tomb we go, Through love, through hope, and faith’s transcendent dower, We feel that we are greater than we know.
O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive!