As the shades of evening close, Beckoning thee to long repose; As life itself becomes disease, Seek the chimney-nook of ease.
There ruminate with sober thought
On all thou'st seen, and heard, and wrought; And teach the sportive younkers round
Saws of experience, sage and sound.
Say, man's true genuine estimate, The grand criterion of his fate, Is not, art thou high or low? Did thy fortune ebb or flow? Did many talents gild thy span? Or frugal Nature grudge thee one? Tell them, and press it on their mind, As thou thyself must shortly find, The smile or frown of awful Heaven To Virtue or to Vice is given. Say, to be just, and kind, and wise, There solid self-enjoyment lies; That foolish, selfish, faithless ways Lead to be wretched, vile, and base.
Thus resign'd and quiet, creep To the bed of lasting sleep;
Sleep, whence thou shalt ne'er awake, Night, where dawn shall never break, Till future life, future no more, To light and joy the good restore, To light and joy unknown before.
ROBERT BURNS, 1759-1796.
HAPPINESS OF HUMBLE WORTH.
He is the happy man whose life e'en now Shews somewhat of that happier life to come; Who, doom'd to an obscure but humble state, Is pleased with it, and, were he free to choose, Would make his fate his choice; whom peace, the fruit Of virtue, and whom virtue, fruit of faith, Prepare for happiness; bespeak him one Content indeed to sojourn while he must Below the skies, but having there his home. The world o'erlooks him in her busy search Of objects, more illustrious in her view; And, occupied as earnestly as she,
Though more sublimely, he o'erlooks the world. She scorns his pleasures, for she knows them not; He seeks not hers, for he has proved them vain. He cannot skim the ground like summer birds Pursuing gilded flies; and such he deems Her honours, her emoluments, her joys. Therefore in Contemplation is his bliss,
Whose power is such, that whom she lifts from earth She makes familiar with a heaven unseen,
And shews him glories yet to be reveal'd.
Not slothful he, though seeming unemploy'd, And censured oft as useless. Stillest streams Oft water fairest meadows, and the bird That flutters least is longest on the wing.
Ask him, indeed, what trophies he has raised, Or what achievements of immortal fame He purposes, and he shall answer-None. His warfare is within. There, un fatigued, His fervent spirit labours. There he fights, And there obtains fresh triumphs o'er himself, And never-withering wreaths, compared with which The laurels that a Cæsar reaps are weeds. Perhaps the self-approving haughty world,
That as she sweeps him with her whistling silks Scarce deigns to notice him, or, if she see, Deems him a cipher in the works of God, Receives advantage from his noiseless hours, Of which she little dreams. Perhaps she owes Her sunshine and her rain, her blooming spring And plenteous harvest, to the prayer he makes, When, Isaac-like, the solitary saint Walks forth to meditate at eventide, And think on her who thinks not for herself.
Forgive him, then, thou bustler in concerns Of little worth, an idler in the best, If, author of no mischief and some good, He seek his proper happiness by means That may advance, but cannot hinder, thine. Nor, though he tread the secret path of life, Engage no notice, and enjoy much ease, Account him an encumbrance on the state, Receiving benefits, and rendering none.
His sphere, though humble, if that humble sphere Shine with his fair example, and though small
His influence, if that influence all be spent In soothing sorrow and in quenching strife, In aiding helpless indigence, in works From which at least a grateful few derive Some taste of comfort in a world of woe; Then let the supercilious great confess He serves his country, recompenses well The state, beneath the shadow of whose vine He sits secure, and in the scale of life Holds no ignoble, though a slighted, place.
WILLIAM COWPER, 1731-1800.
OH, who shall lightly say that Fame Is nothing but an empty name! Whilst in that sound there is a charm The nerves to brace, the heart to warm, As, thinking of the mighty dead, The young from slothful couch will start, And vow, with lifted hands outspread, Like them to act a noble part?
Oh, who shall lightly say that Fame Is nothing but an empty name!
When, but for those, our mighty dead, All ages past a blank would be, Sunk in oblivion's murky bed, A desert bare, a shipless sea? They are the distant objects seen,- The lofty marks of what hath been.
Oh, who shall lightly say that Fame Is nothing but an empty name ! When memory of the mighty dead To earth-worn pilgrim's wistful eye The brightest rays of cheering shed, That point to immortality?
THE heart it hath its own estate- The mind it hath its wealth untold; It needs not fortune to be great While there's a coin surpassing gold.
No matter which way fortune leans, Wealth makes not happiness secure ;
A little mind hath little means—
A narrow heart is always poor.
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