University of Virginia Library

LIFE'S BLESSINGS.

What are Life's Blessing's?—what its best?
Oh! not the sunshine of the breast!
Not hollow pleasures—vain delights,
But sufferings, sorrows, scorns, and slights!—
Life's trials all—its pangs and pains,
Its crosses, chastisements, and chains,
These are its best of Blessings still—
These, that beat down the struggling will!
That teach the haughty soul to be
Girt round with sweet Humility!
And Sorrows deep, and cankering Cares,
That turn our thoughtless words to prayers—
Frustrated aims and foundered hopes,
The mind that grieves—the heart that droops—
And disappointments—wrongs—and woes.
When these bid the awful chasm to close,
That yawns Destruction darkly round
To those that tread Temptation's ground,
Just tottering o'er the abyss profound!—
The Chasm of ruin and despair,
Which wide awaits the Wanderer there,
(If rightly met and meekly borne
Those trials—of their terrors shorn!)
Better these Evils thus should fill
The dark abyss of ruin still,
Than that our Selves—our Souls should lie
Within its dread Profundity!
These sorrows and these pains—even these
May Heaven's stern wrath avert—appease.
Wiser we may, and better grow,
Beneath the infliction and the woe!—
A mighty Master—Grief! thou art,
And thou canst cleanse the blackened heart,
And purify the mind, and win
The Soul from its own darling sin.
A mighty Master—Grief! thou art,
And vast thy School—the Human Heart—
And if thou canst do thus, indeed—
And if through thee the Soul is freed
From falsehood and from foolishness,
And worldly Vanity's excess,
Surely then—surely, thou must be
(Oh! grant us this deep truth to see)
Life's best of blessings—though at first
Thou seemst its deadliest doom and worst!
By thee, to Death we are reconciled,
For, oh! if Life for ever smiled
Around us, lovely and serene,
How could we bear to leave its scene?
How would the Heart impassioned cling
To every earthly, worldly thing!
Oh! what fierce pangs should rack that Heart,
When from its treasures doomed to part!
But, Grief! by thee we are early sought—
Thy lessons are the first we are taught;
Even the twelvemonths' child, whose brow
Is smooth as white unprinted snow,
Knows something of thy painful touch,
Though gently dost thou deal with such!
And as we wend upon our way,
We bow yet more unto thy sway,
Stronger and stronger grows thy grasp,
More dark each tear—more deep each gasp,
Until we sink by thy dim shrine,
And all our Soul's great powers are thine!
Then do we turn our saddened eyes
From this cold World unto the Skies,
And cease to fix our foolish trust
On Earth—and Earth's frail things of dust,
To Heaven with chastened hearts we turn—
With nobler, purer zeal we burn,
And leave the paths of Folly's choice,
Called by a still—but mighty voice.