So disasters come not singly; But as if they watched and waited, Scanning one another's motions, When the first descends, the others Follow, follow, gathering flock-wiseRound their victim, sick and wounded, First a shadow, then a sorrow, Till the air is dark with anguish.
The foods that prolong life and increase purity, vigour, health, cheerfulness, and happiness are those that are delicious, soothing, substantial and agreeable... Foods that are bitter, sour, salt, over-hot, pungent, dry and burning produce unhappiness, repentance and disease.
How absolute and omnipotent is the silence of night! And yet the stillness seems almost audible! From all the measureless depths of air around us comes a half-sound, a half-whisper, as if we could hear the crumbling and falling away of earth and all created things, in the great miracle of nature, decay and reproduction, ever beginning, never ending,--the gradual lapse and running of the sand in the great hour-glass of Time.
The things that have been and shall be no more, The things that are, and that hereafter shall be, The things that might have been, and yet were not, The fading twilight of joys departed.
Stay, stay at home, my heart and rest; Home-keeping hearts are the happiest, For those that wander they know not where Are full of trouble and full of care; To stay at home is best.
Thus thought I, as by night I read Of the great army of the dead, The trenches cold and damp, The starved and frozen camp,-- The wounded from the battle-plain, In dreary hospitals of pain, The cheerless corridors, The cold and stony floors. Lo! in that house of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom And flit from room to room. And slow, as in a dream of bliss, The speechless sufferer turns to kiss Her shadow, as it falls Upon the darkening walls.
Bell, thou soundest merrily, When the bridal party To the church doth hie! Bell, thou soundest solemnly, When, on Sabbath morning, Fields deserted lie!