Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

DIDACTIC.

Health's temple is the body fair,
High miracle of art,
A perfect God-built palace, where
Strength, Beauty, each, full part
From Life may drink, that floweth there,
The fountain of the heart.
Keep pure and sweet, is Heaven's command,
This temple, thus divinely planned.

Within this temple is a light,
And deep a holy well,
Kindled and nourished from the height
Whence all beginnings swell.
Virtues and powers have they, so bright
Their splendors none can tell.
If free the intellect and soul,
Man is a generous, joyous whole.

Let in its might the mind awake,
It speaks the eternal law;
Like sun-struck mists, Time's trammels break,
Pale falsehoods faint with awe;
While round them, Love, Truth, Beauty, shake
The light from God they draw,
That lights to boundless liberty.
To earn this freedom, what do we?

We blast our bodies with the ills
Of vice and ignorance born;
Our minds we dwarf, we lame our wills,
Till e'en ourselves we scorn;
Each one his breast with self o'erfills,
Making each one forlorn;
And then, when woes thick on us burst,
We moan,—“By fate and Heaven we 're curst.”

High intellect is lowly used
To glut unrighteous needs,
Its keenest edges roughly bruised
Upon hard, selfish deeds;
The soul's warm wants are cold refused,
Stinted with meagre creeds;
And then, by endless strifes outworn,
We wail,—“Poor man was made to mourn.”

Disorder, by brute force strong bound,
Order and law we call,
And 'bout the reeking earthy mound
Religion 's made a wall;
Thin theologic paps are ground,
To sweeten man-mixed gall;
And heavenly earth thus made a hell,
We 'd save us by the old church-bell!