Caroline B. Le Row

“ As sunshine’s self, this blossom is;
Its starry chandeliers burn bright
All day; and have you noted this—
A perfect sun in every flower,—
Ten thousand thousand fairy suns,
Raying from new disks hour by hour,
As up the stalk the life-flash runs?
Because its myriad glimmering plumes
Like a great army’s stir and wave,
Because its gold in billows blooms,
The poor man’s barren walks to lave;
Because its sun-shaped blossoms show
How souls receive the light of God,
And unto earth give back that glow—
I thank Him for the golden-rod. Indian Summer. John G. Whittier. ”

“ The carelessness of literary fame which Whittier has shown may be referred to the sincerity of his devotion to that which literature affects, and he has written and sung out of a heart very much in earnest to offer some help, or out of the pleasure of his work. The careful student of his writings will always value most the integrity of his life.—Horace E. Scudder.
Whittier’s genius is Hebrew—more so than that of any other poet now using the English language. He is a flower of the moral sentiment in its masculine rigor, climbing like a forest pine. ”

“ With lessons none to learn, and naught but play?
Go, get thee to thy task! Conquer or die!
It must be learned; learn it, then, patiently.
Knowledge has in our time triumphed, and is still triumphing, over prejudice and over bigotry. The civilized and Christian world is fast learning the great lesson that difference of nation does not imply necessary hostility, and that all contact need not be war. The whole world is becoming a common field for intellect to act in. Energy of mind, genius, power, wheresoever it exists, may speak out in any tongue, and the world will hear it.—Daniel Webster. ”

“ Grateful, not proud, because Heaven made them fair.
O vaunting man, go ponder on these things!
Think—what is glory in thy Makers view?
Who wins the passing praise the cold world sings
Not always earns the praise of Heaven too.
Thou mayst through life thy name with gods enroll,
Yet bear rebuke of angels in thy soul.
Oh, to be simple in the lives we lead!
To know that what we hold is not our own!
The lily is as modest as the weed,
The mountain humble as the broken stone.
Since man is proud, how wise it is, how just,
That death should come to teach us we are dust! ”

“ Thou art vain of thy fame, for thou art famous for thy humility. Thou art proud of thy wisdom, also, Diogenes, and vain of thy learning. Thou thinkest that thou art wiser than Plato, else thou wouldst become his disciple; and richer than Alexander, else thou wouldst not scorn his gifts. ’Tis Diogenes who is the aristocrat. He thinks himself better than others, and is therefore above his fellows.
D. Hold thee there, Plato. Thou surely doest me wrong. Do I not live like a peasant, and scorn only [240] the rich and they that are in high places; and is that pride? ”

“ Bury all that the year hath known, and let thy brilliant stars, that never shine as they do in thy frostiest nights, behold the work! But know, O month of destruction, that in thy constellation is set that Star whose rising is the sign, for evermore, that there is life in death! Thou art the month of resurrection. In thee the Christ came. Every star that looks down upon thy labor and toil of burial knows that all things shall come forth again. Storms shall sob themselves to sleep. ”

“ I am the echo of nothing—I am the cry of the whole, Robespierre.
Marat. Ah, you are young, you! How old art thou, Danton? Four-and-thirty. How many are your years, Robespierre? Thirty-three. Well, I—I have lived always. I am the old human suffering—I have lived six thousand years.
Danton. That is true. For six thousand years Cain has been preserved in hatred like the toad in a rock; the rock breaks, Cain springs out among men, and is called Marat.
Marat. Danton!
Danton. Marat talks very loud about the dictatorship and unity, but he has only one ability—that of breaking to pieces. ”

“ The day opens, but the night shuts the earth with its frost-lock; but day steadily gains upon the night.
March. The conflict is more turbulent, but the victory is gained. The world awakes. There come voices from long-hidden birds. The smell of the soil is in the air. The sullen ice, retreating from open field and all sunny places, has slunk to the north of every fence and rock. The knolls and banks that face the east or south sigh for release, and begin to lift up a thousand tiny palms. ”

“ To be proud is to esteem one’s self, while the vain man is anxious about the praise of the mob. Pride is self-reliant, confident, courageous. Vanity is fawning, anxious, and cowardly. And thou, too, art proud, Diogenes. Thy contempt for what thou callest my pride is the offspring of thy greater pride. Thou believest in the wisdom of Diogenes more than in that of Plato. ”

“ G. Hanging and racing a stone shortens the grinder’s life; fills his lungs with grit. Is the workman to give Life and Labor for a forenoon, and is Capital to contribute nothing? Is that your view of Life, Labor, and Capital, young man?
Mr. L. That is smart; but a rule of trade is a rule till it is altered by consent of the parties that made it. Now, right or wrong, it is the rule of trade here that the small grinders find their own stones and pay for power. Cheetham is smarting under your rules, and you can’t expect him to go against any rule that saves him a shilling. ”

“ The literature of the world is in a very deep sense the direct and most beautiful outcome of its life. Men have had but a partial success in shaping their external life, but their ideals, their aspirations, their highest thoughts of themselves are to be found in books. It is only as we unite the actual which we find in its history with the ideal which we find in its literature, that we are able to get any true understanding of an age. The value and vitality of great books lie not so much in their art as in the fidelity and completeness with which they represent human life. ”

“ There’s no such thing as judging a man by the way he appears.
Yes, you may well say “failed;” there’s more than the term implies,
When all there is of a man in a hopeless ruin lies.
To come after twenty years of a stubborn up-hill strife,
It isn’t a business smash so much as a failure in life.
Gold was always his god—he’d nothing else in his soul;
Money, for money’s sake, was ever his ultimate goal.
A “self-made man” they styled him, for low and poor he began;
But now his money has vanished, and what is left of the man?
He had no eye for beauty, for literature no taste ”

“ While love, like perfume from the flower upwelling
Grateful remembrance keeps. Flowers for the Brave. Celia Thaxter.
Here bring your purple and gold,
Glory of color and scent!
Scarlet of tulips bold,
Buds blue as the firmament. [176]
Hushed is the sound of the fife
And the bugle piping clear:
The vivid and delicate life
In the soul of the youthful year.
We bring to the quiet dead,
With a gentle and tempered grief;
O’er the mounds so mute we shed
The beauty of blossoms and leaf.
The flashing swords that were drawn
No rust shall their fame destroy! ”

“ Thanksgiving Ode. John G. Whittier.
Once more the liberal year laughs out
O’er richer stores than gems or gold;
Once more with harvest-song and shout
Is nature’s bloodless triumph told.
Our common mother rests and sings,
Like Ruth, among her garnered sheaves;
Her lap is full of goodly things,
Her brow is bright with autumn leaves.
O favors every year made new!
O gifts with rain and sunshine sent!
The bounty overruns our due;
The fullness shames our discontent.
We shut our eyes, and flowers bloom on;
We murmur, but the corn-ears fill ”

“ The grace and gayety, the pathos and melody, the wit, the earnestness and shrewd sense of his writings, have given Holmes a place, and a sunny place, in the popular heart. On his happy birthday it was not Boston that sat at table, but the whole country. It was not a town meeting, but a national congress. The Autocrat is not a mayor, but an emperor, and the toast of the day was the toast of appreciative hearts and generous souls far beyond the sound of the Atlantic. “The Autocrat of the Breakfast-table; O king, live forever!”—Geo. ”

“ To some field of labor, mental or manual, every idler should fasten, as a chosen and coveted theater of improvement. But so he is not impelled to do, under the teachings of our imperfect civilization. On the contrary, he sits down, folds his hands, and blesses himself in his idleness. This way of thinking is the heritage of the absurd and unjust feudal system under which serfs labored, and gentlemen spent their lives in fighting and feasting. It is time that this opprobrium of toil were done away. Ashamed to toil, art thou? ”

“ O sunny joys of sunny June, how soon will you be scorched by the eager months coming burning from the equator!
July. Rouse up! The temperate heats that filled the air are raging forward to glow and overfill the earth. There are deep and unreached places for whose sake the probing sun pierces down its glowing hands. The earth shall drink of the heat before she knows her nature or [102] her strength. Then shall she bring forth to the uttermost the treasures of her bosom. For there are things hidden far down, and the deep things of life are not known till the fire reveals them. ”

“ Any time you stand in need of rational reading, come to me.
Diogenes and Plato on Pride. T. A. Bland.
Diogenes. Fie on thy philosophy, Plato! In spite of all, thou art the veriest of aristocrats, while philosophy teacheth humility.
Plato. Thou hast spoken truly, Diogenes, but not in wisdom; thy speech is wise, ’tis true, but thy thought is foolish. That I am proud, I own, and that I am a democrat, I do most sincerely maintain. ”

“ Care, not of self, but of the common weal,
Had robbed their eyes of youth, and left instead
A look of patient power and iron will.
A Glance behind the Curtain.
Dear, common flower, that grow’st beside the way
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May.
To the Dandelion.
Each man is some man’s servant; every soul
Is by some other’s presence quite discrowned;
Each owes the next through all the imperfect round. ”

“ The tasks that wait their patient, steady labor
After the long, bright, summer holiday?
Not now, O children, in the sunny meadows
Ye cull the flowers or by the brooklets stray,
But in the fields of knowledge, thick with blossoms,
To gather sweets for a far future day.
Here, too, you roam a land of fairest promise,
Watered by many a stream of limpid hue,
Where weary travelers find a sweet refreshment
And garner richest stores of old and new. ”

“ And, whether bright thy face,
Or dim with clouds we cannot comprehend,
We’ll hold our patient hands, each in his place,
And trust thee to the end,
Knowing thou leadest onwards to those spheres
Where there are neither days nor months nor years. A New Year. Margaret E. Sangster.
Why do we greet thee, O blithe New Year!
What are thy pledges of mirth and cheer?
Comest, knight-errant, the wrong to right?
Comest to scatter our gloom with light?
Wherefore the thrill, the sparkle and shine,
In heart and eyes at a word of thine? ”

“ Concert. There’s a good time coming, boys,
A good time coming.
Solo. War in all men’s eyes shall be
A monster of iniquity
In the good time coming;
Nations shall not quarrel then,
To prove which is the stronger;
Nor slaughter men for glory’s sake—
Wait a little longer.
Concert. There’s a good time coming, boys,
A good time coming.
Solo. Hateful rivalries of creed
Shall not make their martyrs bleed [89]
In the good time coming.
Religion shall be shorn of pride,
And flourish all the stronger ”

“ It cannot be said that as a people we are so positively sad or morose as that we are vacant of that sportiveness of animal spirits that characterized our ancestors, and that springs from full and harmonious life,—a sound heart in accord with a sound body. A man must invest himself near at hand, and in common things, and be content with a steady and moderate return, if he would know the blessedness of a cheerful heart, and the sweetness of a walk over the round earth. This is a lesson the American has yet to learn,—capability of amusement on a low key.—John Burroughs. ”

“ Search out the cold and resentful nooks that refused the sun, casting back its rays from disdainful ice, and plant flowers even there. There is goodness in the worst. There is warmth in the coldest. The silent, hopeful, unbreathing sun, that will not fret or despond, but carries a placid brow through the unwrinkled heavens, at length conquers the very rocks, and lichens grow and inconspicuously blossom. What shall not Time do, that carries in its bosom Love? ”

“ The unborn infant-buds which thou art tending are more than all the living leaves. Thy robes are luxuriant, but worn with softened pride. More dear, less beautiful than June, thou art the heart’s month. Not till the heats of summer are gone, while all its growths remain, do we know the fullness of life. ”

“ June. Rest! This is the year’s bower. Sit down within it. The winds bring perfume, the forests sing to thee, the earth shows thee all her treasures. The air is all sweetness. The storms are but as flocks of mighty birds that spread their wings and sing in the high heaven. The earth cries to the heavens, “God is here!” The heavens cry to the earth, “God is here!” ”

“ Emerson’s faith in America is justified whether we trust in the capacities of the individual soul, or whether our expectation grows from the promises of a new civilization. America brings together the races of the world as no nation or time ever did before, and Emerson’s hope for America may yet be justified by a literature in harmony with the new time.—George Willis Cooke. ”