Patience; accomplish thy labor; accomplish thy work of affection!
Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike.
Therefore accomplish thy labor of love, till the heart is made godlike,
Purified, strengthened, perfected, and rendered more worthy of heaven.
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.
Oh, what a glory doth this world put on, for him who with a fervent heart goes forth under the bright and glorious sky, and looks on duties well performed, and days well spent.
How can I tell the signals and the signs
By which one heart another heart divines?
How can I tell the many thousand ways
By which it keeps the secret it betrays?
Look at this vigorous plant that lifts its head from the meadow, See how its leaves are turned to the north, as true as the magnet; This is the compass-flower, that the finger of God has planted Here in the houseless wild, to direct the traveller's journey. Over the sea-like, pathless, limitless waste of the desert, Such in the soul of man is faith.
The history of the past is a mere puppet-show. A little man comes out and blows a little trumpet, and goes in again. You look for something new, and lo! another little man comes out, and blows another little trumpet, and goes in again. And it is all over.