Push me, with soft and inoffensive pace, Or do the portals of another life Even now, while I am glorying in my strength, Impend around me? Oh! beyond that bourne, In the vast cycle of being which begins At that broad threshold, with what fairer forms Gently, and without grief, the old shall glide W. C. BRYANT. Voyage of the Soul. THE high-born soul Disdains to rest her heaven-aspiring wing Beneath its native quarry. Tired of earth And this diurnal scene, she springs aloft, Through fields of air: pursues the flying storm; Rides on the volleyed lightning through the heavens ; Or, yoked with whirlwinds and the northern blast, Sweeps the long tract of day. Then high she soars, The blue profound, and hovering round the sun, Beholds him pouring the redundant stream Of light; beholds his unrelenting sway The fated rounds of Time. Thence far effused Of Nature, and looks back on all the stars, up In that immense of being. There her hopes Power's purple robes, nor Pleasure's flowery lap, Through all the ascent of things enlarge her view, Till every bound at length should disappear, And infinite perfection close the scene. AKENSIDE. What in Thy Love Possess I Not? My spring of life when parch'd with drought, Ah love! thy influence withdrawn, Nor know I peace 'till Thou return: From all eternity with love Unchangeable Thou hast me view'd; Ever with me may they abide, JOHN WESLEY. We are Spirits clad in Veils. THOUGHT is deeper than all speech; Feeling deeper than all thought: Souls to souls can never teach What unto themselves was taught. We are spirits clad in veils : To remove the shadowy screen. Heart to heart was never known: What is social company But a babbling summer-stream ? What our wise philosophy But the glancing of a dream? Only when the sun of love Melts the scatter'd stars of thought, Only when we live above What the dim-eyed world hath taught, Only when our souls are fed By the Fount which gave them birth, And by inspiration led Which they never drew from earth; We, like parted drops of rain, Swelling till they meet and run, Shall be all absorb'd again, Melting, flowing into one. C. P. CRANCH. We are as Barks afloat upon the Sea. OUR thoughts are boundless, though our frames are frail, Our souls immortal, though our limbs decay; Though darken'd in this poor life by a veil Of suffering, dying matter, we shall play In truth's eternal sunbeams; on the way To heaven's high capitol our cars shall roll; The temple of the Power whom all obey, That is the mark we tend to, for the soul Can take no lower flight, and seek no meaner goal. I feel it-though the flesh is weak, I feel The spirit has its energies untamed By all its fatal wanderings; time may heal. The wounds which it has suffer'd; folly claim'd Too large a portion of its youth; ashamed Of those low pleasures, it would leap and fly, And soar on wings of lightning, like the famed Elijah, when the chariot, rushing by, Bore him with steeds of fire triumphant to the sky. We are as barks afloat upon the sea, Helmless and oarless, when the light has fled, The spirit, whose strong influence can free The drowsy soul, that slumbers in the dead. Cold night of mortal darkness; from the bed Of sloth he rouses at her sacred call, And, kindling in the blaze around him shed, Rends with strong effort sin's debasing thrall, And gives to GOD his strength, his heart, his mind, his all. |