OF CHEERFULNESS. TAKE courage, prisoner of time, for there be many comforts, It may be well to look for change, but to trust in a continuance is better Thou hast need of fortitude and faith, for the adversaries come on thickly. Fight them, and the cravens flee; thy boldness is their panic; Fear them, and thy treacherous heart hath lent the ranks a legion : Among their shouts of victory resoundeth the wail of Heraclitus, While Democrite, confident and cheerful, hath plucked up the standard of their camp. (2) NOT few nor light are the burdens of life; then load it not with heaviness of spirit; Sickness, and penury, and travail,-there be real ills enow: We are wandering benighted, with a waning moon; plunge not rashly into jungles, Where cold and poisonous damps will quench the torch of hope: The tide is strong against us; good oarsmen, pull or perish,— A wise traveller goeth on cheerily, through fair weather or foul; He knoweth that his journey must be sped, so he carrieth his sunshine with him. Calamities come not as a curse,—nor prosperity for other than a trial; Struggle, thou art better for the strife, and the very energy shall hearten thee. Good is taught in a Spartan school,-hard lessons and a rough discipline, THERE be three chief rivers of despondency; sin, sorrow, fear; Hope can pierce with quickening ray, and all those depths are lightened. Verily, consider this for courage; that the fearful and the unbelieving MOREOVER, in thy day of Grief,—for friends, or fame, or fortune, Let nature weep; leave her alone; the freshet of her sorrow must run off; For regrets are an enervating folly, and the season for energy is come, AGAIN, for empty fears, the harassings of possible calamity; Yield to the phantasy,—thou sinnest; resist it, He will aid thee: Feeble is the comfort of the faithless, a man without a God; To drive the trembler into safety, if haply he may turn and flee : dreads, So, with infirmities of mind, is fear the pallid harbinger of failure. It were wise to talk undaunted even in an accidental chaos, For the brave man is at peace and free to get the mastery of circum stance. The stoutest armour of defence is that which is worn within the bosom, And the weapon that no enemy can parry, is a bold and cheerful spirit: Catapults in old war worked like Titans, crushing foes with rocks, I WENT heavily for cares, and fell into the trance of sorrow: The sun upon its summit, and storms midway, and deep ravines at foot, And, as I looked, a dense black cloud, suddenly dropping from the thunder, Filled, like a cataract with yeasty foam, a narrow smiling valley: Close and hard that vaporous mass seemed to press the ground, And lamentable sounds came up, as of some that were smothering beneath. Then, as I walked upon the mountain, clear in summer's noon, And tripping lightly by his side, a sweet-eyed helpmate with him, And a babe was cradled in her bosom, a laughing little prattler, The child of Cheerfulness and Courage,―could his name be other than Success? So, from his happy wife, when they both stood beside me on the mountain, The fond father took that babe, and set him on his shoulder in the sunshine. AGAIN I peered into the valley, for I heard a gasping moan, A desolate weak cry, as muffled in the vapours. So down that crystal shaft into the poisonous mine I sped for charity to seek and save,--and those I sought fled from me. At length, I spied far distant, a trembling withered dwarf, Who crouched beneath the cloak of a tall and spectral mourner; Then I knew Cowardice and Gloom, and followed them on in darkness, And lo, their whitening bones were shaping out an epitaph of Failure. So I saw that despondency was death, and flung my burdens from me, OF YESTERDAY. SPEAK, poor almsman of to-day, whom none can assure of a to-morrow, That melted into limpid air, before it topped the larches? Is it but a vision, unstable and unreal, which wise men soon forget? Alas! deluded soul, that hopeth thus of Yesterday. FOR, behold, those temples of Ellora, the Brahmin's rock-built shrine, Such, O man, are vanity and dreams, transient as a rainbow on the cloud, COME, let me show thee an ensample, where Nature shall instruct us; Luxuriantly the arguments for truth spring native in her gardens. Seek we yonder woodman of the plain; he is measuring his axe to the elm, And anon the sturdy strokes ring upon the wintry air: Eagerly the village schoolboys cluster on the tightened rope, |