The Laws of Nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Nature -were Man as unerring in his judgments as Nature.
O ye dead Poets, who are living still Immortal in your verse, though life be fled, And ye, O living Poets, who are dead Though ye are living, if neglect can kill, Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill, With drops of anguish falling fast and red From the sharp crown of thorns upon your head, Ye were not glad your errand to fulfill?
Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning - an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies.
Kind messages, that pass from land to land; Kind letters, that betray the heart's deep history, In which we feel the pressure of a hand,-- One touch of fire,--and all the rest is mystery!