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vestals who of yore?Believed no duty higher?Than tending night and day the flame?Of the celestial fire,?So let the broad world's denizens?Foster this heart-fire bright,?Which can their pilgrimage on earth?Illume with glorious light.
Domestic bliss, how beautiful!?No idol is so fair.?Set in the royalty of love,?What can with it compare??Models of virtue are the homes?Where this blest power holds sway,?Where parents' words suffice to move?Their offspring to obey.
I know of such a happy home,?Where love-signs rarely cease,?And 'tis in very truth a throne?Of harmony and peace.?Nature's grand law of order there,?Reigns with exactness sure?The wheels of time glide smoothly through?An atmosphere so pure.
A group of healthy children six?Their happy parents meet,?For breakfast where food, simple, pure,?Their hungry senses greet.?Those budding blossoms of the home?With joy-lit life appear,?A daily morning glory they,?So neat, clean, trim and dear.
No wonder if the father's soul,?Worships his darling bride,?No wonder if his manly heart,?Swells with delighted pride:?For does she not make home a shrine,?Where love and duty vie?To honour, through her peerless love,?Their holy marriage tie?
He daily leaves his happy home,?Next heaven the holiest place,?Strengthened by her sweet words and kiss,?For action in life's race.?And she through all her daily rounds,?Thinks foremost of the one,?Who no less now than years ago,?Her steadfast love has won.
God bless them in their happy home!?God bless their children nine!?And may they through a peaceful life,?Ever in love combine,?To aid and cheer each other here,?And when this life is past,?Be reunited in that life?Which will for ever last.
Such homes of cheerful industry,?Of order, thrift and care,?Sweetly reflect on those whose minds,?Their thrice blest precincts share.?And since 'tis in the reach of most?To make a home like this.?What pity that e'en one refuse?To win such priceless bliss.
People there are who ceaseless moan,?Their hard and cruel fate,?Yet never see their course is wrong,?Until alas! too late;?To such the axiom I'd repeat,?That 'tis God's righteous will,?To help all those who help themselves,?Life's duties to fulfil.
'Tis written upon every life?With which we mingle here,?And throughout nature's wide domain?It also doth appear,?That all unchanging are God's laws,?Their consequences sure;?That as we choose to sow we reap,?Fruit holy or impure.
Trace the effects of idleness,?Extravagance and play,?Of self-indulgence, vice and pride,?And then reflecting say,?It was not stern Nemesis' part,?To punish each, as cause?Of retribution to himself?For breaking nature's laws.
Let all, then, bravely conquer self,?And use the means which heaven?Has placed within the reach of each,?Life's sorriest state to leaven.?Industry, perseverance, thrift,?Love, honesty and skill,?Will aid the weakest in their work,?Life's duties to fulfil.
All-conquering, grand, unselfish love!?Nought can withstand the power?Of thy divine, o'ermastering force,?To man heaven's richest dower.?All know who own thy sovereign sway,?No wealth can equal thine,?Inspiring and constraining each,?To sacrifice sublime!

TO THE EMPRESS EUGENIE ON THE DEATH OF HER SON.
If sympathy can soften a mourner's poignant woe,?And stay the bitter tear drops that from her sad eyes flow, Then take it, honoured Empress, from the land of thy retreat, Where hearts in bitter anguish with thine now sorrowing beat.
Alas, we cannot fathom the mysteries of doom,?Which set its mark upon a life brilliant in youthful bloom, Full of undaunted ardour, and eager for that strife?That robbed the sorrowing mother of his most precious life.
Ah, who can help recalling, and who the fervour tell,?Of his bright words on parting in that sad but brave farewell, With bounding heart hope-laden and holy ardour fraught,?Scorning all fear and danger, as by thy wisdom taught.
Think, mourner, of thy darling as safe within heaven's fold, Crowned with a victor's chaplet within the gates of gold,?His young, bright, earnest spirit happy on yonder shore,?Where you will be in God's own time united evermore.
A crown of earthly splendour might have enwreathed his brow, But could that weigh 'gainst glory with which 'tis radiant now? Would'st thou exchange the latter for all earth's gaud and glare? No, sad one, thou would'st rather in God's time join him there.
Far from all warring tumult, in peaceful joy above,?Safe in the tender keeping of everlasting love;?Think of him thus for ever in the dear Father's care,?And say would'st thou recall him, earth's proudest throne to share?
Only a few swift time-strokes to make up life's brief day,?Only some few more pulse-beats till we, too, pass away;?There in the bright hereafter with great exceeding joy,?There, never to be parted, thou wilt rejoin thy boy.

SCIENCE.
Science! thou mirror of celestial type?Wherein e'en mortals may discerning see,?If they with steady perseverance seek,?The will and purpose of Deity.
By the effulgence of Thy affluent light?Men learn the hidden mysteries of earth,?Unlock the secrets of the starry heavens?And solve the problem of each dewdrop's birth.
Thou art the magic key that opens wide?Sources of knowledge, beauty, wealth and grace,?Which teach man how to help his brother man,?And benefit and elevate the race.
Beneath thy guidance men have found the stone?Philosophers long sought but rarely found,?Whose lesson is that