The Wheat-sheaf; Or, Gleanings for the Wayside and Fireside ...

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W.P. Hazard, 1853 - 416 pages

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Page 276 - For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue.
Page 157 - O men with Sisters dear ! O men with Mothers and Wives! It is not linen you're wearing out, But human creatures' lives! Stitch - stitch - stitch, In poverty, hunger, and dirt, Sewing at once with a double thread, A Shroud as well as a Shirt.
Page 158 - Oh but to breathe the breath Of the cowslip and primrose sweet, — With the sky above my head, And the grass beneath my feet! For only one short hour To feel as I used to feel, Before I knew the woes of want And the walk that costs a meal!
Page 196 - To him who in the love of nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware.
Page 172 - Arve and Arveiron at thy base Rave ceaselessly ; but thou, most awful form ! Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines, How silently ! Around thee and above, Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black, An ebon mass : methinks thou piercest it, As with a wedge ! But when I look again, It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, Thy habitation from eternity ! 0 dread and silent mount ! I gazed upon thee, Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, Didst vanish from my thought : entranced in...
Page 372 - THE snow had begun in the gloaming, And busily all the night Had been heaping field and highway With a silence deep and white. Every pine and fir and hemlock Wore ermine too dear for an earl, And the poorest twig on the elm-tree Was ridged inch deep with pearl.
Page 277 - Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth...
Page 197 - The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, Are shining on the sad abodes of death, Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread The globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom — Take the wings Of morning — and the Barcan desert pierce, Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound, Save his own dashings...
Page 198 - So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan that moves To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
Page 158 - With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread : Stitch! stitch! stitch! In poverty, hunger, and dirt, And still with a voice of dolorous pitch, Would that its tone could reach the rich ! She sang this

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