Onward, onward will we press Through the path of duty; Virtue is true happiness, Minds are of supernal birth, Let us make a heaven of earth. Close and closer then we knit Hearts and hands together, Where our fire-side comforts sit In the wildest weather; Oh! they wander wide, who roam, For the joys of life, from home. Nearer, dearer bands of love To our Father's house above, A HERMITAGE. WHOSE is this humble dwelling-place, Well, he has peace within and rest, Though nought of all the world beside; Yet, stranger, deem not him unblest, Who knows not avarice, lust, or pride. Nothing he asks, nothing he cares No need of light, though all be gloom, To cheer his eye, that eye is blind; No need of fire in this small room, He recks not tempest, rain, or wind. No gay companion here; no wife To gladden home with true-love smiles; No children, from the woes of life, To win him with their artless smiles. Nor joy, nor sorrow, enter here, Nor throbbing heart, nor aching limb; No sun, no moon, no stars appear, And man and brute are nought to him. This dwelling is a hermit's cave, THE FALLING LEAF. WERE I a trembling leaf, I should be loth to fall Beside the common way, Weltering in mire, and spurn'd by all, Till trodden down to clay. Nor would I choose to die All on a bed of grass, Where thousands of my kindred lie, And idly rot in mass. Nor would I like to spread In hortus siccus, pale and dead, No, on the wings of air Might I be left to fly, I know not and I heed not where ; A waif of earth and sky! Or flung upon the stream, Curl'd like a fairy-boat, As through the changes of a dream, To the world's end to float! Who that hath ever been, Could bear to be no more? Yet who would tread again the scene, He trod through life before? M |