 | Miscellaneous Poems |  |
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Domestic Love
How lovely is domestic harmony,Where mind on mind and heart on heart repose
Undoubting; and the friends, whom Providence
Has cast together, sharing each with each
Their hopes, their joys, their cares, appear to live
One common life, and breathe one common will!
This fallen world brings forth no other flower
So beautiful as this; and where the love
Of God is added to this love of man,
Somewhat of heaven itself to earth descends.
For what is heaven, but one immortal home,
Where all are brother, Parent, child, or friend,
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And what is hell, but the abode of hate
And envy, where discordant elements
Mingle, and hiss, and jar eternally?
Bright comes the morn and soft descends the night
On the fair dwelling-place of love and peace;
And from the buffetings of this rude world
Its happy inmates, like the wandering dove
Home to her ark, for refuge there can fly.
Prayer meets no hindrance there; and praise from thence,
Of hearts and lips in unison, ascends
More acceptable to the God of love.
The idol Self is from his throne cast down,
And God set up instead; and where He reigns
There must be happiness, there must be heaven.
| Miscellaneous Poems | |