Most true, beyond all whispering of doubt, That he, who lifted up the reeking scourge, Dripping with gore from the slave's back, before
He struck again, had paused, and seriously Of that tribunal thought, where God himself Should look him in the face, and ask in wrath,
Why didst thou this? Man! was he not thy brother? [thine? Bone of thy bone, and flesh and blood of But ah! this truth, by heaven and reason taught,
Was never fully credited on earth. The titled, flattered, lofty men of power, Whose wealth bought verdicts of applause for deeds
Of wickedness, could ne'er believe the time Should truly come, when judgment should proceed
Impartially against them, and they too, Have no good speaker at the Judge's ear, No witnesses to bring them off for gold, No power to turn the sentence from its
And they of low estate, who saw themselves, Day after day, despised, and wronged, and
Without redress, could scarcely think the day Should e'er arrive, when they in truth should stand
On perfect level with the potentates
And princes of the earth, and have their
Examined fairly, and their rights allowed. But now this truth was felt, believed and felt,
That men were really of a common stock; That no man ever had been more than man. Robert Pollok.
288. BROTHERHOOD, Grounds of. Are we not creatures of one hand Divine, Formed in one mould, to one redemption born,
Kindred alike, where'er our skies may shine, Where'er our sight first drank the vital [twine; morn? Brothers-one bond around our souls should And woe to him by whom that bond is torn,
Who mounts by trampling broken hearts to earth,
Who bows down spirits of immortal birth!
289. BROTHERHOOD, Human. Where'er a human heart doth wear Joy's myrtle-wreath or sorrow's gyves,
Where'er a human spirit strives After a life more true and fair, There is the true man's birthplace grand, His is a world-wide fatherland! Where'er a single slave doth pine,
Where'er one man may help another,- That spot of earth is thine and mine! Thank God for such a birthright, brother,- There is the true man's birthplace grand, His is a world-wide fatherland.
290. BROTHERHOOD, Poet of. Who feels that God and Heaven's great deeps
Him to whose heart his fellow-man is nigh, Who doth not hold his soul's own freedom dearer
Than that of all his brethren, low or high; Who to the Right can feel himself the truer For being gently patient with the wrong, Who sees a brother in the evil-doer, [song— And finds in Love the heart's-blood of his This, this is he for whom the world is waiting To sing the beatings of its mighty heart; Too long hath it been patient with the grating Of scrannel-pipes, and heard it mis-named Art.
To him the smiling soul of man shall listen Laying awhile its crown of thorns aside, And once again in every eye shall glisten The glory of a nature satisfied.
James Russell Lowell. 291. BUILDING, Cautious. All are architects of Fate, Working in these walls of Time; Some with massive deeds and great, Some with ornaments of rhyme.
Nothing useless is, or low;
Each thing in its place is best; And what seems but idle show Strengthens and supports the rest,
For the structure that we raise, Time is with materials filled; Our to-days and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build. Truly shape and fashion these;
Leave no yawning gaps between; Think not, because no man sees, Such things will remain unseen.
In the elder days of Art,
Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part; For the gods see everywhere.
Let us do our work as well,
Both the unseen and the seen;
Make the house, where gods may dwell, Beautiful, entire, and clean;
Else our lives are incomplete, Standing in these walls of Time, Broken stairways, where the feet Stumble as they seek to climb.
Build to-day, then, strong and sure, With a firm and ample base; And ascending and secure Shall to-morrow find its place.
Thus alone can we attain
To those turrets, where the eye Sees the world as one vast plain, And one boundless reach of sky. H. W. Longfellow.
292. BUILDING, Gradual. By trifles, in our common ways, Our characters are slowly piled; We lose not all our yesterdays;
The man hath something of the child; Part of the Past to all the Present cleaves, As the rose-odors linger in fading leaves.
293. BUILDING, Instinctive.
The hand that rounded Peter's dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity;
Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew; The conscious stone to beauty grew. Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest
Of leaves, and feathers from her breast? Or how the fish outbuilt her shell, Painting with morn each annual cell? Or how the sacred pine-tree adds To her old leaves new myriads? Such and so grew those holy piles, Whilst love and terror laid the tiles. Earth proudly wears the Parthenon, As the best gem upon her zone; And Morning opes with haste her lids, To gaze upon the Pyramids;
O'er England's abbeys bends the sky, As on its friends, with kindred eye; For out of Thought's interior sphere, These wonders rose to upper air; And Nature gladly gave them place, Adopted them into her race, And granted them an equal date With Andes and with Ararat.
These temples grew as grows the grass; Art might obey, but not surpass; The passive Master lent his hand To the vast soul that o'er him planned. R. W. Emerson. 294. BUILDING, Neglect of. Whate'er thou purposest to do, With an unwearied zeal pursue; To-day is thine-improve to-day, Nor trust to-morrow's distant ray.
A certain man a house would build ; The place is with materials filled; And everything is ready there— Is it a difficult affair?
Yes! till you fix the corner-stone; It wont erect itself alone. Day rolls on day, and year on year, And nothing yet is done- There's always something to delay The business to another day.
And thus in silent waiting stood The piles of stone and piles of wood, Till Death, who in his vast affairs Ne'er puts things off, as men do theirs- And thus, if I the truth must tell, Does his work finally and well- Winked at our hero as he passed, "Your house is finished, sir, at last; A narrower house-a house of clay- Your palace for another day!"
Tr. from the Russian by Bowring. 295. BURDEN, Help with the. And let me feel the pressure of thy care, Child of my love, LEAN HARD I know thy burden, child: I shaped it, Poised it in my own hand, made no proportion
In its weight to thine unaided strength; For even as I laid it on I said,
I shall be near, and while she leans on me, This burden shall be mine, not her's: [arms So shall I keep my child within the circling Of "mine own love." Here lay it down, nor fear
To impose it on a shoulder which upholds The government of worlds, yet closer come; Thou art not near enough, I would embrace thy care [breast.
So I might feel my child reposing on my Thou lovest me, I know it, doubt not, then; But loving me-LEAN HARD!
296. BURDEN, Laying Down the. Lay down thy burden here; With such a weary load Thou canst not climb yon hill, Yon steep and rugged road.
'Tis rough, and wild, and high, Thickets and rocks impede; Scant resting-place between,
How canst thou upward speed?
Lay down thy burden here,
Poor weary son of time; So shall thy limbs be strong, So shalt thou upward climb. The sun is hot, no cloud
"O could thy grave at home, at Carthage, be!"
Care not for that, and lay me where I fall. Everywhere heard will be the judgment-call. But at God's altar, O, remember me!
Thus Monica, and died in Italy.
Yet fervent had her longing been, through all Her course, for home at last, and burial With her own husband, by the Lybian sea.
Had been; but at the end, to her pure soul All ties with all beside seemed vain and cheap, And union before God the only care.
Creeds pass, rites change, no altar standeth
Yet we her memory, as she prayed, will keep, Keep by this: Life in God and union, there! Matthew Arnold.
298. BURIAL, Sequence of Gather up, O carth! thy dead; Grass thy peaceful pillow spread, Add another mortal's bed
To the bed where mortals sleep: Where they sleep-but not to rise When morn's sunlight clears the skies, But to rest-while centuries
Their long-during watches keep. Centuries shall pass away; Earth shall hasten to decay; Days will bring of days the day
When the exhausted cycles end; Then, earth's every fugitive Shall appear; the grave shall give Up its dead, the dead shall live,
And the Eternal Judge descend. Day of wonders! day of woe! Day of evil's overthrow!
Day of joy! when all shall know—
Know and sce the Lord of heaven! Then, O then, may hope appear, Faith our fainting spirits cheer, Love dry up the trembling tear, Whispering sweetly, "Sins forgiven !" Sir John Bowring.
299. BURIAL, The Christian's. Cease, ye tearful mourners, Thus your hearts to rend: Death is life's beginning Rather than its end. All the grave's adornments, What do they declare, Save that the departed
Are but sleeping there?
What though now to darkness We this body give; Soon shall all its senses Re-awake and live.
Soon shall warmth revisit These poor bones again, And the blood meander Through each tingling vein; And from its corruption This same body soar, With the self-same spirit That was here of yore.
E'en as duly scattered By the sower's hand In the fading autumn O'er the fallow land, Nature's seed, decaying, First in darkness dies, Ere it can in glory Renovated rise.
Earth, to thy fond bosom We this pledge intrust; Oh! we pray, be careful Of the precious dust.
This was once the mansion Of a soul endowed With sublimest powers, By the breath of God. Here eternal Wisdom
Lately made His home; And again will claim it In the days to come; When thou must this body, Bore for bone, restore,- Every single feature Perfect as before.
O divinest period! Speed upon thy way; O eternal Justice! Make no more delay. When shall love in glory
Its fruitio su?
When shall hope be lost in Immortality?
Prudentius Clemens, tr. by E. Caswall. 300. BURIAL, The Sinner's.
Wrapt in a Christless shroud, He sleeps the Christless sleep; Above him, the eternal cloud, Beneath, the fiery deep.
Laid in a Christless tomb,
There, bound with felon-chain, He waits the terrors of his doom, The judgment and the pain.
O Christless shroud, how cold, How dark, O Christless tomb! O grief that never can grow old, Ö endless, hopeless doom!
O Christless sleep, how sad!
What waking shalt thou know? For thee no star, no dawning glad, Only the lasting woe!
To rocks and hills in vain
Shall be the sinner's call;
O day of wrath, and death, and pain, The lost soul's funeral !
O Christless soul, awake
Ere thy last sleep begin!
O Christ, the sleeper's slumbers break, Burst Thou the bands of sin! Horatius Bonar. 301. BURIAL-GROUND, Sacredness of the. I like that ancient Saxon phrase which calls The burial-ground God's-Acre! It is just; It consecrates each grave within it's walls, And breathes a benison o'er the sleeping dust.
God's-Acre! Yes, that blessed name imparts Comfort to those who in the grave have [hearts, The seed that they had garnered in their Their bread of life, alas! no more their
Into its furrows shall we all be cast,
In the sure faith that we shall rise again At the great harvest, when the archangel's [grain. Shall winnow, like a fan, the chaff and Then shall the good stand in immortal bloom, In the fair gardens of that second birth! And each bright blossom mingle its perfume With that of flowers which never bloomed on earth.
With thy rude ploughshare, Death, turn up the sod,
And spread the furrow for the seed we sow; This is the field and Acre of our God,
This is the place where human harvests grow! H. W. Longfellow.
And hold free converse with his wife, for [hope To ill are shrewd instructors: through the Of sordid lucre, one corrupts his wife; One, who hath fallen from virtue, like herself Wishes to make her vile; and many urge, Through wanton forwardness, their pleas to ill.
Hence, the pure fountain of domestic bliss The husband finds polluted; these against, Let him guard well his gates with locks and bolts,
For nothing good these female visitants Work by their converse, but abundant ill. Tr. from Euripides.
304. CALAMITY, Expecting.
Foretells his own calamity, and makes Know, he that Endure the pains of evil destiny. Events before they come, twice over doth But we must trust to virtue, not to fate; That may protect, whom cruel stars will hate.
But, melting like a wreath of snow, it hangs In folds of wavy silver round, and clothes The orb with richer beauties than her own; Then, passing, leaves her in her light serene. Robert Southey.
306. CALVARY, Fountain of. Come to Calvary's holy mountain, Sinners ruined by the fall; Here a pure and healing fountain Flows to you, to me, to all, In a full, perpetual tide, Opened when our Saviour died. Come in poverty and meanness,
Come defiled, without, within; From infection and uncleanness, From the leprosy of sin,
Wash your robes, and make them white: Ye shall walk with God in light. Come, in sorrow and contrition,
Wounded, impotent, and blind; Here the guilty, free remission,
Here the troubled, peace may find; Health this fountain will restore, He that drinks shall thirst no more. He that drinks shall live forever; 'Tis a soul-renewing flood: God is faithful,-God will never Break His covenant in blood; Signed when our Redeemer died, Sealed when He was glorified.
James Montgomery.
307. CALVARY, Lovely. When on Sinai's top I see God descend in majesty, To proclaim His holy law, All my spirit sinks with awe. When, in ecstasy sublime, Tabor's glorious steep I climb, At the too transporting light Darkness rushes o'er my sight. When on Calvary I rest, God in flesh made manifest Shines in my Redeemer's face, Full of beauty, truth, and grace. Here I would forever stay, Weep and gaze my soul away; Thou art heaven on earth to me, Lovely, mournful Calvary.
308. CALVARY, View of.
In weariness and pain, By griefs and sins opprest,
I turn me to my Rest again, My soul's eternal Rest,
The Lamb that died for me, And still my load doth bear: To Jesus' streaming wounds I flee, And find my quiet there. Jesus, was ever grief, Was ever love, like Thine? Thy sorrow, Lord, is my relief; Thy life hath ransomed mine The Crucified appears! I see the dying God! Oh, might I pour my ceaseless tears, And mix them with Thy blood! My sorrows I forget In view of Calvary:
I fall, and kiss thy bleeding feet, And pant to share with thee. Oh, were I offered up Upon Thy sacrifice!
Who would not drink the sacred cup, And die when Jesus dies? Thou seest my heart's desire: I would thy cross partake;
I long to be baptized with fire, And die for Thy dear sake; I long to rise with Thee, And soar to things above, And spend a blest eternity In praise of dying love.
Far, far away her exiled children roam, And never will they sound, on other plains, The holy music of their native home. Jerusalem! all ruined as thou art, Thy temples by profaning footsteps trod, Still art thou fondly cherished in each heart, Land of our sires, our childhood, and our God!
And, while we wander from thy sheltering wing,
To lay on distant shores the weary head, Like houseless doves-alas! how can we sing?
Our harps are tuneless, and our souls are sad! T. K. Hervey.
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