I mark, as April days serenely smile, Clouds heaped on clouds in mountain-like array, While radiant sunbeams with their summits play, Gilding with gorgeous tints the mighty pile; And earth partakes of every hue the while! Oft have I felt on such a day as this, The sudden shower down-pouring on my head, Though in the distance all is loveliness. Thither, in vain, with rapid step I've sped. I liken this to Hope: although with sorrow The heart is overcast, and dim the eye; Delusive Hope--not present, ever nigh, Presages gladness on a coming morrow, And lures us onward, till our latest sigh.
The day approaches, when a mystic power, Shall summon mute Antiquity, to tell The buried glories of the long lost hour; And she will answer the enchanter's spell-- Then shall we hear what wondrous things befell When the young world existed in its prime. The truths revealed will turn the wisest pale, That ignorance so long abused their time. Vainly may Error blessed Truth assail With specious argument, and looking wise Exult, as millions worship at her shrine; Yet, in the time ordained, shall Truth arise And walk in beauty over earth and skies, While man in reverence bows before her power divine!
I don't believe in night-caps. That is, I don't believe in stopping the ears, in shutting the eyes, in sealing up the senses, nor in going to sleep in the midst of God's everyday wonders. We are put here to look about us. We are apprentices to Him whose workshop is the universe. And if we mean to be useful, or happy, or to make others happy, which, after all, is the only way of being happy ourselves, we must do nothing blindfold. Our eyes and our ears must be always open. We must be always up and doing, or, in the language of the day, _wide awake_. We must have our wits about us. We must learn to use, not our eyes and our ears only, but our understandings--our _thinkers_.
There is a diviner alchemy wanted, and there is room for a bolder and a more patient spirit of investigation, amid the drudgery and bustle of common life, than was ever yet employed, or ever needed, in ransacking the earth for gems and gold, or the deep sea for pearls. Would you shovel diamonds and rubies, or turn up "as it were fire," you have but to dig into and sift the rubbish that lies heaped up in your very streets--or to drive the ploughshare through the busiest places ever trodden by the multitude. You need not blast the mountains, nor turn up the foundations of the sea, nor smelt the constellations. You have but to open your eyes, and to look about you with a thankful heart; and you will find no such thing as worthless ore--no baseness unallied with something precious; with hidden virtue, or with unchangeable splendor.