Write on your doors the saying wise and old. 'Be bold!' and everywhere - 'Be bold; Be not too bold!' Yet better the excess Than the defect; better the more than less sustaineth him and the steadiness of his mind beareth him out.

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Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing;
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence.

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There is nothing holier in this life of ours that the first consciousness of love - the first fluttering of its silken wings - the first rising sound and breath of that wind which is soon to sweep through the soul, to purify or destroy.

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Good-night! good-night! as we so oft have said,
Beneath this roof at midnight, in the days
That are no more, and shall no more return.
Thou hast but taken up thy lamp and gone to bed;
I stay a little longer, as one stays
To cover up the embers that still burn.

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Our ingress into the world
Was naked and bare;
Our progress through the world
Is trouble and care;
Our egress from the world
Will be nobody knows where;
But if we do well here
We shall do well there;
And I could tell you no more,
Should I preach a whole year!

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The heights by great men reached and kept,
Were not obtained by sudden flight
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.

Standing on what too long we bore
With shoulders bent and downcast eyes,
We may discern - unseen before,
A path to higher destinies.

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Saint Augustine! well has thou said,
That of our vices we can frame
A ladder, if we will but tread
Beneath our feet each deed of shame! ...

The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.

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The everyday cares and duties, which men call drudgery, are the weights and counterpoises of the clock of time, giving its pendulum a true vibration and its hands a regular motion; and when they cease to hang upon its wheels, the pendulum no longer swings, the hands no longer move the clock stands still.

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Under the spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands...

He earns whate'er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man. ...

Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose.

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