Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.’
The green earth sends her incense up. From many a mountain shrine; From folded leaf and dewey cup She pours her sacred wine.
The smile of God is victory.
There is religion in everything around us, – a calm and holy religion in the unbreathing things of Nature, which man would do well to imitate.
A grateful loving heart carries with it, under every parallel of latitude, the warmth and light of the tropics. It plants its Eden in the wilderness and solitary place, and sows with flowers the gray desolation of rock and mosses.
The sooner we recognize the fact that the mercy of the Almighty extends to every creature endowed with life, the better it will be for us as men and Christians.
The child must teach the man.
What is really momentous and all-important with us is the present, by which the future is shaped and colored.
Behind the cloud the starlight lurks, Through showers the sunbeams fall; For God, who loveth all his works, Has left his Hope with all.
Heap high the farmer’s wintry hoard! Heap high the golden corn! No richer gift has Autumn poured From out her lavish horn!
Flowers spring to blossom where she walks The careful ways of duty; Our hard, stiff lines of life with her Are flowing curves of beauty.
If thou of fortune be bereft, and in thy store there be but left two loaves, sell one, and with the dole, buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.
Nature speaks in symbols and in signs.
Happy he whose inward ear Angel comfortings can hear, O’er the rabble’s laughter; And, while Hatred’s fagots burn, Glimpses through the smoke discern Of the good hereafter.
Others may sing the song. Others may right the wrong.
Beauty seen is never lost, God’s colors all are fast.
The low green tent Whose curtain never outward swings.
Beneath the winter’s snow lie germs of summer flowers.
No longer forward or behind I look in hope or fear, But grateful, take the good I find, The best of now and here.
The continuity of life is never broken; the river flows onward and is lost to our sight, but under its new horizon it carries the same waters which it gathered under ours, and its unseen valleys are made glad by the offerings which are borne down to them from the past, – flowers, perchance, the germs of which its own waves had planted on the banks of Time.
If we write at all, why not use our talents to the best advantage?