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

Mrs. Hale

  • A blessing on the printer’s art!—
  • Books are the mentors of the heart.
  • And evermore the waters worship God;—
  • And bards and prophets tune their mystic lyres
  • While listening to the music of the waves!
  • Ay, justice, who evades her?
  • Her scales reach every heart;
  • The action and the motive,
  • She weigheth each apart;
  • And none who swerve from right or truth
  • Can ’scape her penalty.
  • Hail, Holy Day! the blessing from above
  • Brightens thy presence like a smile of love,
  • Smoothing, like oil upon a stormy sea,
  • The roughest waves of human destiny—
  • Cheering the good, and to the poor oppress’d
  • Bearing the promise of their heavenly rest.
  • He fears not dying—’tis a deeper fear,—
  • The thunder-peal cries to his conscience—“Hear”!
  • The rushing winds from memory lift the veil,
  • And in each flash his sins, like spectres pale,
  • Freed, from their dark abode, his guilty breast,
  • Shriek in his startled ear—“Death is not rest”!
  • His eloquence is classic in its style,
  • Not brilliant with explosive coruscations
  • Of heterogeneous thoughts, at random caught,
  • And scatter’d like a shower of shooting stars,
  • That end in darkness: no;—his noble mind
  • Is clear, and full, and stately, and serene.
  • His earnest and undazzled eye he keeps
  • Fix’d on the sun of Truth, and breathes his words
  • As easily as eagles cleave the air;
  • And never pauses till the height is won;
  • And all who listen follow where he leads.
  • I’ve learned to judge of men by their own deeds;
  • I do not make the accident of birth
  • The standard of their merit.
  • Like a mountain lone and bleak,
  • With its sky-encompass’d peak,
  • Thunder riven,
  • Lifting its forehead bare,
  • Through the cold and blighting air,
  • Up to heaven,
  • Is the soul that feels its woe,
  • And is nerv’d to bear the blow.
  • Lone traveller through the fields of air,
  • What may thy presence here portend?
  • Art come to greet the planets fair,
  • As friend greets friend?
  • Whate’er thy purpose, thou dost teach
  • Some lessons to the humble soul;
  • Though far and dim thy pathway reach,
  • Yet still thy goal
  • Tends to the fountain of that light
  • From whence thy golden beams are won;
  • So should we turn, from earth’s dark night,
  • To God our sun.
  • O wondrous power! how little understood,—
  • Entrusted to the mother’s mind alone,
  • To fashion genius, form the soul for good,
  • Inspire a West, or train a Washington!
  • Oh! welcome to the wearied Earth
  • The Sabbath resting comes,
  • Gathering the sons of toil and care
  • Back to their peaceful homes;
  • And, like a portal to the skies,
  • Opens the House of God,
  • Where all who seek may come and learn
  • The way the Saviour trod.
  • But holier to the wanderer seems
  • The Sabbath on the deep,
  • When on, and on, in ceaseless course,
  • The toiling bark must keep,
  • And not a trace of man appears
  • Amid the wilderness
  • Of waters—then it comes like dove
  • Direct from heaven to bless.
  • Rugged strength and radiant beauty—
  • These were one in nature’s plan;
  • Humble toil and heavenward duty—
  • These will form the perfect man.
  • The burning soul, the burden’d mind,
  • In books alone companions find.
  • Though youth be past, and beauty fled,
  • The constant heart its pledge redeems,
  • Like box, that guards the flowerless bed
  • And brighter from the contrast seems.
  • We are all children in our strife to seize
  • Each petty pleasure, as it lures the sight,
  • And like the tall tree swaying in the breeze,
  • Our lofty wishes stoop their tow’ring flight,
  • Till when the prize is won it seems no more
  • Than gather’d shells from ocean’s countless store,
  • And ever those who would enjoyment gain
  • Must find it in the purpose they pursue.
  • What matter though the scorn of fools be given,
  • If the path follow’d lead us on to heaven!
  • The temple of our purest thoughts is—silence!