Often the generous heart, lit by unhallowed fire, Counted a brand among the burning, and left uncared-for, in his sin: Is as a golden censer, ready for the aloes and cassia : While thou, hard-visaged man, unlovely in thy strictness, How art thou shamed by him! his heart is a spring of love, While the dry well of thine affections is choked with secret mammon. Sometimes at a glance thou judgest well: years could add little to thy knowledge: When charity gloweth on the cheek, or malice is lowering in the eye, Or barely recovered of the wounds, that fleshed him in his fray with passion. A silver thread of goodness in the black sergecloth of crime. There is to whom all things are easy: his mind, as a master-key, Yet are not the sons of men cast as in moulds by the lot? Such a shape hath such a soul, so that a deep discerner Accident may modify, circumstance may bevil, externals seem to change it, But still the primitive crystal is latent in its many variations: For the map of the face, and the picture of the eye, are traced by the pen of passion; And the mind fashioneth a tabernacle suitable for itself. A mean spirit boweth down the back, and the bowing fostereth meanness; A resolute purpose knitteth the knees, and the firm tread nourisheth decision; Love looketh softly from the eye, and kindleth love by looking; There be deeper things than these, lying in the twilight of truth; Couldst read the history of character, the chequered story of a life, them ; If thou couldst compass all these, and the consequents flowing from them, OF HATRED AND ANGER. BLUNTED unto goodness is the heart which anger never stirreth, Anger is a noble infirmity, the generous failing of the just, The one degree that riseth above zeal, asserting the prerogatives of virtue : But hatred is a slow continuing crime, a fire in the bad man's breast, A dull and hungry flame, for ever craving insatiate. Hatred would harm another; anger would indulge itself: Hatred is a simmering poison; anger, the opening of a valve: Hatred destroyeth as the upas-tree; anger smiteth as a staff: Is there not a righteous wrath, an anger just and holy, When goodness is sitting in the dust, and wickedness enthroned on Babel? Appealing to the line and to the plummet, incognizant of moral sense? Beware of the angry in his passion; but fear not to approach him afterward; For if thou acknowledge thine error, he himself will be sorry for his wrath: The one lieth secret, as a serpent; the other chaseth, as a leopard. Passion is as palsy to his arm, while it yelleth on the coursers to their speed: Patience keepeth counsel, and standeth in solid self-possession, But the weakness of sudden passion layeth bare the secrets of the soul. The sentiment of anger is not ill, when thou lookest on the impudence of vice, Or savourest the breath of calumny, or hast earned the hard wages of in justice, But see thou that thou curb it in expression, rendering the mildness of rebuke, So shalt thou stand without reproach, mailed in all the dignity of virtue. OF GOOD IN THINGS EVIL. I HEARD the man of sin reproaching the goodness of Jehovah, Wherefore, O holy One and just, is the horn of thy foul foe so high exalted? And, alas! for this our groaning world, for that grief and guilt are here; Alas! for that Earth is the battle-field, where good must combat with evil : Angels look on and hold their breath, burning to mingle in the conflict, But the troops of the Captain of Salvation may be none but the soldiers of the cross: And that slender band must fight alone, and yet shall triumph gloriously, Enough shall they be for conquest, and the motto of their standard is ENOUGH. Thou art sad, O denizen of earth, for pains and diseases and death, But remember, thy hand hath earned them; grudge not at the wages of thy doings: Thy guilt, and thy fathers' guilt, must bring many sorrows in their company, Therefore lay thy hand upon thy mouth, O man much to be forgiven, Yet hear, for my speech shall comfort thee; reverently, but with boldness, The weapons of evil are turned against itself, fighting under better banners: The leech delighteth in stinging, and the wicked loveth to do harm, An enemy, humbled by his sorrows, cannot be far from thy forgiveness, And for thyself, is it a small thing, so to learn thy frailty, That from an aching bone thou savest the whole body? The furnace of affliction may be fierce, but if it refineth thy soul, The good of one meek thought shall outweigh years of torment. Nevertheless, wretched man, if thy bad heart be hardened in the flame, Judge not the hand that smiteth, as if thou wert visited in wrath; Cease, fond caviller at wisdom, to be satisfied that every thing is wrong: Hath winter's frost no welcome, contrasting sturdily with summer? means? What were power without an enemy? or mercy without an object? debt? The characters of God were but idle, if all things around him were perfection, And virtues might slumber on like death, if they lacked the opportunities of evil. There is one all-perfect, and but one; man dare not reason of His Essence. But there must be deficiencies in heaven, to leave room for progression in bliss: A realm of unqualified BEST were a stagnant pool of being, And the circle of absolute perfection, the abstract cipher of indolence. Sin is the traitor that hath dragged the majesty of mercy into action; |