O Mary, go and call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
Across the sands o' Dee!
The cruel crawling foam.
Men must work, and women must weep.
And there's little to earn and many to keep,
And the harbor bar is moaning.
Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long:
And so make life, death, and that vast forever
One grand sweet song.
The world goes up and the world goes down,
And the sunshine follows the rain;
And yesterday's sneer and yesterday's frown
Can never come over again.
Toil is the true knight's pastime.
Oh that we two were Maying.
Would that we two were lying
Beneath the churchyard sod,
With our limbs at rest in the green earth's breast,
And our souls at home with God.
Fools! who fancy Christ mistaken;
Man a tool to buy and sell;
Earth a failure, God-forsaken,
Ante-room of Hell.
Pain is no evil,
Unless it conquer us.
Are gods more ruthless than mortals?
Have they no mercy for youth? no love for the souls who have loved them?
Sad, sad to think that the year is all but done.
In the light of fuller day,
Of purer science, holier laws.
When all the world is old, lad,
And all the trees are brown;
And all the sport is stale, lad,
And all the wheels run down;
Creep home, and take your place there,
The spent and maimed among:--
God grant you find one face there
You loved when all was young!
To be discontented with the divine discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble shame, is the very germ of the first upgrowth of all virtue.
Our wanton accidents take root, and grow To vaunt themselves God's laws.
Grandeur . . . consists in form, and not in size: and to the eye of the philosopher, the curve drawn on a paper two inches long, is just as magnificent, just as symbolic of divine mysteries and melodies, as when embodied in the span of some cathedral roof.
Young blood must have its course, lad, and every dog its day.
One good man, one man who does not put on his religion once a week with his Sunday coat, but wears it for his working dress, and lets the thought of God grow into him, and through and through him, till everything he says and does becomes religious, that man is worth a thousand sermonsâhe is a living Gospelâhe comes in the spirit and power of Eliasâhe is the image of God. And men see his good works, and admire them in spite of themselves, and see that they are God-like, and that God's grace is no dream, but that the Holy Spirit is still among men, and that all nobleness and manliness is His gift, His stamp, His picture: and so they get a glimpse of God again in His saints and heroes, and glorify their Father who is in heaven.
He was one of those men who possess almost every gift, except the gift of the power to use them.
We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
And we shall be made truly wise if we be content; content, too, not only with what we can understand, but content with what we do not understand--the habit of mind which theologians call--and rightly--faith in God.
Three fishers went sailing away to the west, Away to the west as the sun went down; Each thought on the woman who loved him the best, And the children stood watching them out of the town.
Still the race of hero spirits pass the lamp from hand to hand.