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| He only who forgets to hoard has learned to live. | 1 |
| If thou wouldst reap in love, / First sow in holy fear; / So life a winter’s morn may prove / To a bright endless year. | 2 |
| Isaac’s fond blessing may not fall on scorn, / Nor Balaam’s curse on love which God hath blest. | 3 |
| Let not my bark in calm abide, / But win her cheerless way against the chafing tide. | 4 |
| Let present rapture, comfort, ease, / As heaven shall bid them, come and go; / The secret this of rest below. | 5 |
| Let the dainty rose awhile / Her bashful fragrance hide; / Rend not her silken veil too soon, / But leave her, in her own soft noon. / To flourish and abide. | 6 |
| Life’s ebbing stream on either side / Shows at each turn some mould’ring hope or joy, / The man seems following still the funeral of the boy. | 7 |
| Light flashes in the gloomiest sky, / And music in the dullest plain. | 8 |
| Live for to-day! to-morrow’s light, / To-morrow’s cares shall bring to sight; / Go sleep, like closing flowers, at night, / And Heaven thy morn will bless. | 9 |
| Love delights to bring her best, / And where love is, that offering evermore is blest. | 10 |
| Love too late can never glow. | 11 |
| Love yet lives, and patience shall find rest. | 12 |
| Men love us, or they need our love. | 13 |
| Mysterious to all thought, / A mother’s prime of bliss, / When to her eager lips is brought / Her infant’s thrilling kiss. | 14 |
| Never yet created eye / Could see across eternity. | 15 |
| No distance breaks the tie of blood: / Brothers are brothers evermore; / Nor wrong, nor wrath of deadliest mood, / That magic may o’erpower. | 16 |
| Nor by the wayside ruins let us mourn / Who have th’ eternal towers for our appointed bourne. | 17 |
| Nor e’en the tenderest heart, and next our own, / Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh! | 18 |
| O’ercome thyself, and thou may’st share / With Christ His Father’s throne, and wear / The world’s imperial wreath. | 19 |
| Our eyes see all around in gloom or glow— / Hues of their own, fresh borrowed from the heart. | 20 |
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| Out path of glory / By many a cloud is darken’d and unblest. | 21 |
| Still to the lowly soul / He doth Himself impart, / And for His cradle and His throne / Chooseth the pure in heart. | 22 |
| Sunbeams pour alike their glorious tide / To light up worlds or wake an insect’s mirth. | 23 |
| The champion true / Loves victory more when, dim in view, / He sees her glories gild afar / The dusky edge of stubborn war, / Than if th’ untrodden bloodless field / The harvest of her laurels yield. | 24 |
| The clouds that wrap the setting sun / … Why, as we watch their floating wreath, / Seem they the breath of life to breathe? / To Fancy’s eye their motions prove / They mantle round the sun for love. | 25 |
| The course of prayer who knows? | 26 |
| The distant landscape draws not nigh / For all our gazing. | 27 |
| The heart of childhood is all mirth. | 28 |
| The trivial round, the common task, / Will furnish all we ought to ask, / Room to deny ourselves, a road / To bring us daily nearer God. | 29 |
| The watchful mother tarries nigh, / Though sleep has clos’d her infant’s eye. | 30 |
| The world’s a room of sickness, where each heart / Knows its own anguish and unrest! / The truest wisdom there, and noblest art, / Is his who skills of comfort best. | 31 |
| Then draw we nearer day by day, / Each to his brethren, all to God; / Let the world take us as she may, / We must not change our road. | 32 |
| There are in this loud stunning tide / Of human care and crime, / With whom the melodies abide / Of th’ everlasting chime; / Who carry music in their heart, / Through dusty lane and wrangling mart, / Plying their daily task with busier feet, / Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat. | 33 |
| There is a book, who runs may read, / Which heavenly truth imparts, / And all the love its scholars need, / Pure eyes and Christian hearts. / The works of God above, below, / Within us, and around, / Are pages in that book, to show / How God Himself is found. | 34 |
| There’s a sweeter flower than e’er / Blush’d on the rosy spray, / A brighter star, a richer bloom, / Than e’er did western heaven illume / At close of summer day— / ’Tis Love, the last best gift of Heaven. | 35 |
| Thou, too curious ear, that fain / Wouldst thread the maze of Harmony, / Content thee with one simple strain, / … Till thou art duly trained, and taught / The concord sweet of Love divine. | 36 |
| Time’s waters will not ebb nor stay; / Power cannot change them, but Love may; / What cannot be, Love counts it done. | 37 |
| To holy tears, / In lonely hours, Christ risen appears; / In social hours, who Christ would see / Must turn all tasks to charity. | 38 |
| Too surely, every setting day, / Some lost delight we mourn. | 39 |
| We barter life for pottage. | 40 |
| We by Fancy may assuage / The festering sore by Fancy made. | 41 |
| We cannot pass our guardian angel’s bound, / Resign’d or sullen, he will hear our sighs. | 42 |
| What are all prayers beneath / But cries of babes, that cannot know / Half the deep thought they breathe? | 43 |
| What? wearied out with half a life? / Scared with this smooth unbloody strife? / Think where thy coward hopes had flown / Had Heaven held out the martyr’s crown. | 44 |
| When brothers part for manhood’s race, / What gift may most endearing prove / To keep fond memory in her place, / And certify a brother’s love? / … No fading frail memorial give / To sooth his soul when thou art gone, / But wreathes of hope for aye to live, / And thoughts of good together done. | 45 |
| When the shore is won at last, / Who will count the billows past? | 46 |
| While men sleep, / Sad-hearted mothers heave, that wakeful lie, / To muse upon some darling child / Roaming in youth’s uncertain wild. | 47 |
| Why should we faint and fear to live alone, / Since all alone, so Heaven has willed, we die, / Nor even the tenderest heart, and next our own, / Knows half the reasons why we smile or sigh? | 48 |
| Wouldst thou the life of souls discern? / Nor human wisdom nor divine / Helps thee by aught beside to learn; / Love is life’s only sign. | 49 |
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