While evening pours its silent dew
And sunshine gilds the morning.
There should be no despair – though tears
May flow down like a river:
Are not the best beloved of years
Around your heart forever?
They weep – you weep – it must be so;
Winds sigh as you are sighing,
And Winter sheds his grief in snow
Where Autumn’s leaves are lying:
Yet these revive, and from their fate
Your fate cannot be parted,
Then journey on, if not elate,
Still, never broken-hearted!
How little fraught with real illOr shadowy phantoms of distress;How Spring can bring thee glory yetAnd Summer win thee to forgetDecember’s sullen time!Why dost thou hold the treasure fastOf youth’s delight, when youth is pastAnd thou art near thy prime?When those who were thy own compeers,Equal in fortunes and in years,Have seen their morning melt…
And lost and ready to despair,Thy kind voice calls me back again:Oh, my true friend! I am not lone,While thou canst speak with such a tone!So hopeless is the world without;The world within I doubly prize;Thy world, where guile, and hate, and doubt,And cold suspicion never rise;Where thou, and I, and Liberty,Have undisputed sovereignty.What matters…
And shyly did its leaves uncloseHid in their mossy robe,But sweet was the slight and spicy smellIt breathed from its heart invisible.The rose is blasted, withered, blighted,Its root has felt a worm,And like a heart beloved and slighted,Failed, faded, shrunk its form.Bud of beauty, bonnie flower,I stole thee from thy natal bower.I was the worm…
Time has turned the bloom to gray;Mold and damp the face defile.But that lock of silky hair,Still beneath the picture twined,Tells what once those features were,Paints their image on the mind.Fair the hand that traced that line,“Dearest, ever deem me true”;Swiftly flew the fingers fineWhen the pen that motto drew.
I see Heaven’s glories shine,And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear.O God within my breast.Almighty ever-present Deity!Life , that in me has rest,As I Undying Life, have power in thee!Vain are the thousand creedsThat move men’s hearts, unutterably vain;Worthless as withered weeds,Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,To waken doubt in oneHolding so fast…
But a tyrant spell has bound meAnd I cannot, cannot go.The giant trees are bendingTheir bare boughs weighed with snow.And the storm is fast descending,And yet I cannot go.Clouds beyond clouds above me,Wastes beyond wastes below;But nothing drear can move me;I will not, cannot go.
