If Heaven more generous gifts deny,
I shall not miss them much, Too grateful for the blessing lent
Of simple tastes and mind content!
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
DIRECTED TO MY DEAR FATHER, AND MOST WORTHY
FRIEND, MR. ISAAK WALTON.
HEAVEN, what an age is this! what race
Of giants are sprung up, that dare
Thus fly in the Almighty's face,
And with his providence make war!
I can go nowhere but I meet
With malcontents and mutineers, As if in life was nothing sweet,
And we must blessings reap in tears.
O senseless man! that murmurs still For happiness, and does not know, Even though he might enjoy his will, What he would have to make him so.
Is it true happiness to be
By undiscerning Fortune placed In the most eminent degree,
Where few arrive, and none stand fast?
Titles and wealth are Fortune's toils,
Wherewith the vain themselves insnare : The great are proud of borrowed spoils, The miser's plenty breeds his care.
The one supinely yawns at rest,
The other eternally doth toil; Each of them equally a beast,
A pampered horse, a laboring moil :
The titulado's oft disgraced
By public hate or private frown,
And he whose hand the creature raised
Has yet a foot to kick him down.
The drudge who would all get, all save,
Like a brute beast, both feeds and lies;
Prone to the earth, he digs his grave,
And in the very labor dies.
Excess of ill-got, ill-kept pelf
Does only death and danger breed; Whilst one rich worldling starves himself With what would thousand others feed.
By which we see that wealth and power, Although they make men rich and great, The sweets of life do often sour,
And gull ambition with a cheat.
Nor is he happier than these,
Who, in a moderate estate, Where he might safely live at ease, Has lusts that are immoderate.
For he, by those desires misled,
Quits his own vine's securing shade,
To expose his naked, empty head
To all the storms man's peace invade.
Nor is he happy who is trim,
Tricked up in favors of the fair, Mirrors, with every breath made dim,
Birds, caught in every wanton snare. Woman, man's greatest woe or bliss,
Does oftener far than serve, enslave, And with the magic of a kiss
Destroys whom she was made to save.
O fruitful grief, the world's disease!
And vainer man, to make it so,
Who gives his miseries increase
By cultivating his own woe!
There are no ills but what we make
By giving shapes and names to things, — Which is the dangerous mistake
That causes all our sufferings.
We call that sickness which is health,
That persecution which is grace,
That poverty which is true wealth,
And that dishonor which is praise.
Alas! our time is here so short
That in what state soe'er 't is spent,
Of joy or woe, does not import,
Provided it be innocent.
ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS
"Animula, vagula, blandula."
LIFE! I know not what thou art,
But know that thou and I must part;
And when, or how, or where we met
I own to me 's a secret yet.
But this I know, when thou art fled,
Where'er they lay these limbs, this head,
No clod so valueless shall be,
As all that then remains of me.
O, whither, whither dost thou fly,
Where bend unseen thy trackless course,
And in this strange divorce,
Ah, tell where I must seek this compound, I?
To the vast ocean of empyreal flame,
From whence thy essence came,
Dost thou thy flight pursue, when freed
From matter's base encumbering weed?
Or dost thou, hid from sight,
Wait, like some spell-bound knight,
Through blank, oblivious years the appointed hour
To break thy trance and reassume thy power?
Yet canst thou without thought or feeling be?
O, say what art thou, when no more thou 'rt thee?
Life! we've been long together
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
"T is hard to part when friends are dear,
Perhaps 't will cost a sigh, a tear;
Then steal away, give little warning,
Choose thine own time;
FROM "THE WINTER WALK AT NOON:"
"THE TASK," BOOK VI.
HE is the happy man whose life even now
Shows somewhat of that happier life to come;
Who, doomed to an obscure but tranquil state,
Is pleased with it, and, were he free to choose,
Would make his fate his choice; whom
peace,
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 honors, 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 shows him glories yet to be revealed.
Not slothful he, though seeming unemployed,
And censured oft as useless. Stillest streams
Oft water fairest meadows, and the bird
Say not Good Night, but in some brighter That flutters least is longest on the wing.
CYRIACK, this three years' day, these eyes, though
To outward view, of blemish or of spot,
Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot:
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,
Or man or woman, yet I argue not
Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?
The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied
In Liberty's defence, my noble task,
Of which all Europe rings from side to side.
This thought might lead me through the world's
Content, though blind, had I no better guide.
I LIKE a church; I like a cowl;
I love a prophet of the soul;
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles ;
Yet not for all his faith can see
Would I that cowlèd churchman be.
Why should the vest on him allure,
Which I could not on me endure?
Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought;
Never from lips of cunning fell
The thrilling Delphic oracle:
Out from the heart of nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old;
The litanies of nations came,
Like the volcano's tongue of flame,
Up from the burning core below,
The canticles of love and woe.
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 wood bird'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 these 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.
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Art might obey, but not surpass.
The passive Master lent his hand
To the vast Soul that o'er him planned;
And the same power that reared the shrine
Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.
Ever the fiery Pentecost
Girds with one flame the countless host,
Trances the heart through chanting choirs,
And through the priest the mind inspires.
The word unto the prophet spoken
Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
The word by seers or sibyls told,
In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.
One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world hath never lost.
I know what say the fathers wise,
The Book itself before me lies,
Old Chrysostom, best Augustine,
And he who blent both in his line,
The younger Golden Lips or mines,
Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines.
His words are music in my ear,
I see his cowled portrait dear;
And yet, for all his faith could see,
I would not the good bishop be.
FROM "AN ESSAY ON MAN," EPISTLE IV.
O HAPPINESS! our being's end and aim ! Good, Pleasure, Ease, Content! whate'er thy
That something still which prompts the eternal sigh,
For which we bear to live or dare to die,
Which still so near us, yet beyond us lies,
O'erlooked, seen double, by the fool, and wise.
Plant of celestial seed! if dropped below,
Say, in what mortal soil thou deign'st to grow?
Fair opening to some court's propitious shine,
Or deep with diamonds in the flaming mine?
Twined with the wreaths Parnassian laurels yield,
Or reaped in iron harvests of the field?
Where grows? where grows it not? If vain
our toil,
We ought to blame the culture, not the soil :
Fixed to no spot is happiness sincere ;
"T is nowhere to be found, or everywhere:
'T is never to be bought, but always free,
And, fled from monarchs, St. John! dwells with
thee.
Ask of the learned the way? The learned are
This bids to serve, and that to shun, mankind;
Some place the bliss in action, some in ease,
Those call it pleasure, and contentment these;
Some, sunk to beasts, find pleasure end in pain;
Some, swelled to gods, confess even virtue vain ;
Or, indolent, to each extreme they fall,-
To trust in everything, or doubt of all.
Who thus define it, say they more or less
Than this, that happiness is happiness?
Take Nature's path, and mad Opinion's leave; All states can reach it, and all heads conceive; Obvious her goods, in no extreme they dwell; There needs but thinking right, and meaning well;
And, mourn our various portions as we please, Equal is common sense and common ease.
THE CHARACTER OF A HAPPY LIFE.
How happy is he born and taught
That serveth not another's will; Whose armor is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill!
Whose passions not his masters are ;
Whose soul is still prepared for death,
Not tied unto the world with care
Of public fame or private breath;
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