Let me but do my work from day to day,
In field or forest, at the desk or loom,
In roaring market-place, or tranquil room;
Let me but find it in my heart to say,
When vagrant wishes beckon me astray—
“This is my work; my blessing, not my doom;...
Henry Van Dyke
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From The Outlook
O WHO will walk a mile with me
Along life’s merry way?
A comrade blithe and full of glee,
Who dares to laugh out loud and free,
And let his frolic fancy play,
Like a happy child, through the flowers gay
That fill the field... -
From The Atlantic Magazine
WHEN to the garden of untroubled thought
I came of late, and saw the open door,
And wished again to enter, and explore
The sweet, wild ways with stainless bloom inwrought,
And bowers of innocence with beauty fraught,... -
Four things a man must learn to do
If he would make his record true:
To think without confusion clearly;
To love his fellow-men sincerely;
To act from honest motives purely;
To trust in God and Heaven securely. -
From the misty shores of midnight, touched with splendors of the moon,
To the singing tides of heaven, and the light more clear than noon,
Passed a soul that grew to music till it was with God in tune.Brother of the greatest poets, true to nature, true to art;
... -
Deep in the heart of the forest the lily of Yorrow is growing;
Blue is its cup as the sky, and with mystical odor o’erflowing;
Faintly it falls through the shadowy glades when the south wind is blowing;Sweet are the primroses pale, and the violets after a shower;...
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Fair roslin Chapel, how divine
The art that reared thy costly shrine!
Thy carven columns must have grown
By magic, like a dream in stone.Yet not within thy storied wall
Would I in adoration fall,
So gladly as within the glen
That leads... -
The moonbeams over Arno’s vale in silver flood were pouring,
When first I heard the nightingale a long-lost love deploring.
So passionate, so full of pain, it sounded strange and eerie;
I longed to hear a simpler strain,—the wood-notes of the veery.The laverock...
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I
when tulips bloom in Union Square,
And timid breaths of vernal air
Go wandering down the dusty town,
Like children lost in Vanity Fair;When every long, unlovely row
Of westward houses stands aglow,
And leads the eyes towards sunset...