John Lancaster Spalding

  • Nature and THE CHILD
    FOR many blessings I to God upraise
    A thankful heart; the life He gives is fair
    And sweet and good, since He is everywhere,
    Still with me even in the darkest ways.
    But most I thank Him for my earliest days,
    Passed in the fields...

  • O woman, let thy heart not cleave
      To any poet’s soul;
    For he the muse will never leave,
      But follow to life’s goal.

    Then trust him not, he is not thine,
      Whate’er he seems to be;
    Strong unseen tendrils round him twine,
      And keep him...

  • Inaudible move day and night,
      And noiseless grows the flower;
    Silent are pulsing wings of light,
      And voiceless fleets the hour.

    The moon utters no word when she
      Walks through the heavens bare;
    The stars forever silent flee,
      And...

  • The countless stars, which to our human eye
    Are fixed and steadfast, each in proper place,
    Forever bound to changeless points in space,
    Rush with our sun and planets through the sky,
    And like a flock of birds still onward fly;
    Returning never whence began...

  • What can console for a dead world?
    We tread on dust which once was life;
    To nothingness all things are hurled:
    What meaning in a hopeless strife?
            Time’s awful storm
            Breaks but the form.

    Whatever comes, whatever goes,
    Still...