Life and Literature Part 62

859

The All-Seeing Eye, whom the sun, moon and stars obey, and under whose watchful care even comets perform their stupendous revolutions--pervades the inmost recesses of the human heart, and will reward us according to our merits.

860

There's many a good bit o' work done with a sad heart.

861

To meet, to know, to love--and then to part, Is the sad tale of many a human heart.

--_Coleridge._

862

The heart is a small thing, but desireth great matters. It is not sufficient for a kite's (bird of the hawk kind) dinner, yet the whole world is not sufficient for it.

--_Quarles._

863

MY HEART.

The heart resembles the ocean! has storm, and ebb and flow; And many a beautiful pearl lies hid in its depths below.

--_Heine._

864

The turnpike-road to people's hearts, I find, Lies through their mouths; or I mistake mankind.

--_Dr. Warton._

865

The merry heart goes all the day, While a sad one tires in a mile-a.

--_Shakespeare._

866

DISSENSION BETWEEN HEARTS.

Alas! how slight a cause may move Dissension between hearts that love-- Hearts that the world in vain had tried, And sorrow but more closely tied; That stood the storm when waves were rough, Yet in a sunny hour fell off, Like s.h.i.+ps that have gone down at sea, When the ocean was all tranquility!

A something light as air--a look-- A word unkind or wrongly taken; Oh, love that tempests never shook, A breath--a touch like this hath shaken.

--_Thomas Moore._

867

Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings; indeed nine times in ten it is so.

868

HEAVEN.

If G.o.d hath made this world so fair, Where sin and death abound, How beautiful, beyond compare, Will Paradise be found!

--_Montgomery._

868a

Let others seek earth's honors; be it mine One law to cherish, and to track one line-- Straight on towards heaven to press with single bent, To know and love my G.o.d, and then to die content.

--_Newman._

869

Many a man who prides himself on doing a cash business, regards his debts to Heaven with indifference.

870

THE DELIGHTS OF HEAVEN.

"Of the positive joys of heaven we can form no conception; but its negative delights form a sufficiently attractive picture,--no pain; no thirst; no hunger; no horror of the past; no fear of the future; no failure of mental capacity; no intellectual deficiency; no morbid imaginations; no follies; no stupidities; but above all, no insulted feelings; no wounded affections; no despised love or unrequited regard; no hate, envy, jealousy, or indignation of or at others; no falsehood, dishonesty, dissimulation, hypocrisy, grief or remorse. In a word," said Professor Wilson, "to end where I began, no sin and no suffering."

871

BELIEVE AND LIVE.

O how unlike the complex works of man, Heaven's easy, artless, unenc.u.mbered plan!

No cl.u.s.tering ornaments to clog the pile; From ostentation, as from weakness free, It stands majestic in its own simplicity.

Inscribed above the portal, from afar, Conspicuous as the brightness of a star, Legible only by the light they give, Stand the soul-quickening words--Believe and Live.

Too many, shocked at what should charm them most, Despise the plain direction, and are lost.

Heaven on such terms! (they cry with proud disdain,) Incredible impossible, and vain!