Look not mournfully into the Past.
It comes not back again.
Wisely improve the Present. It is thine.
Go forth to meet the shadowy Future,
Without fear, and with a manly heart.

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Be still, sad heart and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

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If spring came but once in a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change!

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Alas! it is not till time, with reckless hand, has torn out half the leaves from the Book of Human Life to light the fires of passion with from day to day, that man begins to see that the leaves which remain are few in number.

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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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