C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Montgomery

A day of such serene enjoyment spent,

Were worth an age of splendid discontent.

A mother’s love—how sweet the name!

What is a mother’s love?

—A noble, pure and tender flame,

Enkindled from above,

To bless a heart of earthly mould;

The warmest love that can grow cold;

This is a mother’s love.

Beyond this vale of tears

There is a life above,

Unmeasured by the flight of years;

And all that life is love.

Birds, the free tenants of earth, air, and ocean,

Their forms all symmetry, their motions grace,

In plumage delicate and beautiful,

Thick without burthen, close as fish’s scales,

Or loose as full blown poppies on the gale;

With wings that seem as they’d a soul within them,

They bear their owners with such sweet enchantment.

Bliss in possession will not last;

Remember’d joys are never past;

At once the fountain, stream, and sea,

They were,—they are,—they yet shall be.

Dipp’d in the hues of sunset, wreath’d in zones,

The clouds are resting on their mountain-thrones;

One peak alone exalts its glacier crest,

A golden paradise, above the rest;

Thither the day with lingering steps retires,

And in its own blue element expires.

Dutch tulips from their beds

Flaunted their stately heads.

Eagle of flowers! I see thee stand,

And on the sun’s noon-glory gaze;

With eye like his, thy lids expand,

And fringe their disk with golden rays;

Though fixed on earth, in darkness rooted there,

Light is thy element, thy dwelling air,

Thy prospect heaven.

Gashed with honourable scars,

Low in Glory’s lap they lie;

Though they fell, they fell like stars,

Streaming splendour through the sky.

Golden Bill! Golden Bill!

Lo, the peep of day;

All the air is cool and still,

From the elm-tree on the hill,

Chant away:

*****

Let thy loud and welcome lay

Pour alway

Few notes but strong.

His home, the spot of earth supremely blest,

A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest.

I travel all the irksome night,

By ways to me unknown;

I travel, like a bird of flight,

Onward, and all alone.

My equal he will be again

Down in that cold oblivious gloom,

Where all the prostrate ranks of men

Crowd without fellowship, the tomb.

Night is the time for rest;

How sweet when labours close,

To gather round an aching breast

The curtain of repose;

Stretch the tir’d limbs, and lay the head

Down on our own delightful bed.

Oh! when shall I visit the land of my birth,

The loveliest land on the face of the earth?

When shall I those scenes of affection explore,

Our forests, our fountains,

Our hamlets, our mountains,

With the pride of our mountains, the maid I adore?

Oh! when shall I dance on the daisy-white mead,

In the shade of an elm, to the sound of the reed?

Prayer is the Christian’s vital breath,

The Christian’s native air;

His watchword at the gates of death,—

He enters heaven with prayer.

Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire,

Uttered or unexpressed,

The motion of a hidden fire

That trembles in the breast.

The dead are like the stars, by day

Withdrawn from mortal eye,

But not extinct, they hold their way

In glory through the sky:

Spirits from bondage thus set free,

Vanish amidst immensity.

Where human thought, like human sight,

Fails to pursue their trackless flight.

The dew-drop in the breeze of morn,

Trembling and sparkling on the thorn,

Falls to the ground, escapes the eye,

Yet mounts on sunbeams to the sky.

The purple heath and golden broom

On moory mountains catch the gale,

O’er lawns the lily sheds perfume,

The violet in the vale.

The tall Oak, towering to the skies,

The fury of the wind defies,

From age to age, in virtue strong.

Inured to stand, and suffer wrong.

The tulip’s petals shine in dew,

All beautiful, but none alike.

The violets were past their prime,

Yet their departing breath

Was sweeter, in the blast of death,

Than all the lavish fragrance of the time.

There is a calm for those who weep,

A rest for weary pilgrims found,

They softly lie and sweetly sleep

Low in the ground.

There is a world above,

Where parting is unknown;

A whole eternity of love,

Form’d for the good alone;

And faith beholds the dying here

Translated to that happier sphere.

’Tis sunset: to the firmament serene,

The Atlantic wave reflects a gorgeous scene;

Broad in the cloudless west a belt of gold

Girds the blue hemisphere; above, unroll’d,

The keen clear air grows palpable to sight,

Imbodied in a flush of crimson light.

When God reveals His march through Nature’s night

His steps are beauty, and His presence light.

Where is the house for all the living found?

Go ask the deaf, the dumb, the dead;

All answer, without voice or sound,

Each resting in his bed;

Look down and see,

Beneath thy feet,

A place for thee;

—There all the living meet.

With eyes

Of microscopic power, that could discern

The population of a dew-drop.

Counts his sure gains, and hurries back for more.

His steps are beauty, and His presence light.

Hope against hope, and ask till ye receive.

Joys too exquisite to last, and yet more exquisite when passed.

Mystery of waters,—never slumbering sea!

Once every atom of this ground lived, breathed, and felt like me!

The flower of meekness on a stem of grace.

The soul, immortal as its sire, shall never die.

The upward glancing of an eye when none but God is near.

There are no fragments so precious as those of time, and none are so heedlessly lost by people who cannot make a moment, and yet can waste years.

’T is human actions paint the chart of time.

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