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Home  »  A Library of American Literature  »  Epigrams

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

Epigrams

By James Aldrich (1810–1856)

[From Poems. Collection of 1884.]

ETERNITY.
SELF-TORTURED, self-deceived, why tremblest thou

At that great sea which laves no mortal shore?

Rightly conceived, Eternity is now,

And Time, with all its troubles, is no more.

VERBAL HISTORY.
AT Geneva I asked in the public square

Who was John Huss?

And eagerly every one answered me thus:

A holy martyr was good John Huss.

At Rome I repeated the question and there

As eagerly every one answered me thus:

A heretic knave was the infamous Huss.

CHARITY.
HER feet within the poor man’s door

Have music in their tread,

And where she moves a presence seems

With golden wings outspread.