She stood at the bar of justice,
A creature wan and wild,
In form too small for a woman,
In feature too old for a child.
For a look so worn and pathetic
Was stamped on her pale young face,
It seemed long years of suffering
Must have left that silent trace.
“Your name,” said the judge, as he eyed her
With kindly...
TO touch a broken lute,
To strike a jangled string,
To strive with tones forever mute
The dear old tunes to sing—
What sadder fate could any heart befall?
Alas! dear child, never to sing at all.
To sigh for pleasures flown,
To weep for withered flowers,
To count the blessings we have known,...
The Earth goes on the earth glittering in gold,
The earth goes to the earth sooner than it wold;
The earth builds on the earth castles and towers,
The earth says to the earth—All this is ours.
I Wish I were where Helen lies;
Night and day on me she cries;
O that I were where Helen lies
On fair Kirconnell lea!
Curst be the heart that thought the thought,
And curst the hand that fired the shot,
When in my arms burd Helen dropt,
And died to succor me!
O think na but my heart was sair
When my Love dropt...
How prone we are to hide and hoard
Each little treasure time has stored,
To tell of happy hours!
We lay aside with tender care
A tattered book, a lock of hair,
A bunch of faded flowers.
When death has led with silent hand
Our darlings to the “Silent Land,”
Awhile we sit bereft;
But time goes on; anon we rise...
Anonymous Translation from the German
METHINKS it were no pain to die
On such an eve, when such a sky
O’er-canopies the west;
To gaze my fill on yon calm deep,
And, like an infant, fall asleep
On Earth, my mother’s breast.
There ’s peace and welcome in yon sea
Of endless blue tranquillity:
These clouds are...
O Hearts that never cease to yearn!
O brimming tears that ne’er are dried!
The dead, though they depart, return
As though they had not died!
The living are the only dead;
The dead live,—nevermore to die;
And often, when we mourn them fled,
They never were so nigh!
And though they lie beneath the waves,
Or...
She always stood upon the steps
Just by the cottage door,
Waiting to kiss me when I came
Each night home from the store.
Her eyes were like two glorious stars,
Dancing in heaven’s own blue—
“Papa,” she ’d call like a wee bird,
“I ’s looten out for oo!”
Alas! how sadly do our lives
Change as we onward roam!...
There is the peace that cometh after sorrow,
Of hope surrendered, not of hope fulfilled;
A peace that looketh not upon to-morrow,
But calmly on a tempest that is stilled.
A peace which lives not now in joy’s excesses,
Nor in the happy life of love secure,
But in the unerring strength the heart possesses,
Of conflicts won, while...
“Religion relates to life, and the life of religion is to do good.”—SWEDENBORG.
HE left a load of anthracite
In front of a poor woman’s door,
When the deep snow, frozen and white,
Wrapped street and square, mountain and moor.
That was his deed.
He did it well.
“What was his creed?”
I cannot tell...
