Poems of Sentiment | Page 7

dear lips and eyes,
There, there for me the
joy of Heaven lies.
Outside, lo! chaos, terrors' wild alarms,
And all
the desolation fierce and fell
Of void and aching nothingness, makes
Hell.
LOVE'S SUPREMACY
As yon great Sun in his supreme condition
Absorbs small worlds and makes them all his own,
So does my love
absorb each vain ambition,
Each outside purpose which my life has known.
Stars cannot shine so
near that vast orb'd splendour;
They are content to feed his flames of fire:
And so my heart is
satisfied to render
Its strength, its all, to meet thy strong desire.
As in a forest when dead leaves are falling
From all save some perennial green tree,
So one by one I find all

pleasures palling
That are not linked with or enjoyed by thee.
And all the homage that
the world may proffer,
I take as perfumed oils or incense sweet,
And think of it as one thing
more to offer,
And sacrifice to Love, at thy dear feet.
I love myself because thou art my lover,
My name seems dear since uttered by thy voice;
Yet, argus-eyed, I
watch and would discover
Each blemish in the object of thy choice.
I coldly sit in judgment on
each error,
To my soul's gaze I hold each fault of me,
Until my pride is lost in
abject terror,
Lest I become inadequate to thee.
Like some swift-rushing and sea-seeking river,
Which gathers force the farther on it goes,
So does the current of my
love forever
Find added strength and beauty as it flows.
The more I give, the more
remains for giving,
The more receive, the more remains to win.
Ah! only in eternities of
living
Will life be long enough to love thee in.
THE ETERNAL WILL

There is no thing we cannot overcome
Say not thy evil instinct is inherited,
Or that some trait inborn makes
thy whole life forlorn,
And calls down punishment that is not merited.
Back of thy parents and grandparents lies
The Great Eternal Will. That, too, is thine
Inheritance; strong,
beautiful, divine,
Sure lever of success for one who tries.
Pry up thy faults with this great lever, Will.
However deeply bedded in propensity,
However firmly set, I tell thee
firmer yet
Is that vast power that comes from Truth's immensity.
Thou art a part of that strange world, I say.
Its forces lie within thee, stronger far
Than all thy mortal sins and
frailties are,
Believe thyself divine, and watch, and pray.
There is no noble height thou canst not climb.
All triumphs may be thine in Time's futurity,
If whatso'er thy fault,
thou dost not faint or halt,
But lean upon the staff of God's security.
Earth has no claim the soul can not contest.
Know thyself part of that Eternal Source,
And naught can stand
before thy spirit's force.
The soul's divine inheritance is best.
INSIGHT

On the river of life, as I float along,
I see with the spirit's sight
That many a nauseous weed of wrong
Has root in a seed of right.
For evil is good that has gone astray,
And sorrow is only blindness,
And the world is always under the
sway
Of a changeless law of kindness.
The commonest error a truth can make
Is shouting its sweet voice hoarse,
And sin is only the soul's mistake
In misdirecting its force.
And love, the fairest of all fair things
That ever to man descended,
Grows rank with nettles and poisonous
things
Unless it is watched and tended.
There could not be anything better than this
Old world in the way it began;
And though some matters have gone
amiss
From the great original plan,
And however dark the skies may appear,
And however souls may blunder,
I tell you it all will work out clear,
For good lies over and under.
A WOMAN'S LOVE
So vast the tide of love within me surging,
It overflows like some stupendous sea,
The confines of the Present

and To-be;
And 'gainst the Past's high wall I feel it urging,
As it would cry, "Thou, too, shalt yield to me!"
All other loves my supreme love embodies;
I would be she on whose soft bosom nursed
Thy clinging infant lips
to quench their thirst;
She who trod close to hidden worlds where
God is,
That she might have, and hold, and see thee first.
I would be she who stirred the vague, fond fancies
Of thy still childish heart; who through bright days
Went sporting
with thee in the old-time plays,
And caught the sunlight of thy boyish
glances
In half-forgotten and long-buried Mays.
Forth to the end, and back to the beginning,
My love would send its inundating tide,
Wherein all landmarks of thy
past should hide.
If thy life's lesson MUST be learned through
sinning,
My grieving virtue would become thy guide.
For I would share the burden of thy errors,
So when the sun of our brief life had set,
If thou didst walk in
darkness and regret,
E'en in that