'T is heaven alone that is given away;
'T is only God may be had for the asking.
And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays.
Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it;
We are happy now because God wills it.
Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how.
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,--
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me.
A reading-machine, always wound up and going,
He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.
There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one,
Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on;
Whose prose is grand verse while his verse the Lord knows
Is some of it pr-- No, 't is not even prose!
Nature fits all her children with something to do.
Ez fer war, I call it murder,--
There you hev it plain an' flat;
I don't want to go no furder
Than my Testyment fer that.
.......
An' you've gut to git up airly
Ef you want to take in God.
Laborin' man an' laborin' woman
Hev one glory an' one shame;
Ev'y thin' thet's done inhuman
Injers all on 'em the same.
This goin' ware glory waits ye haint one agreeable feetur.
Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man;
He's ben on all sides thet give places or pelf;
But consistency still wuz a part of his plan,--
He's ben true to one party, an' thet is himself.
We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage.
But John P.
Robinson, he
Sez they did n't know everythin' down in Judee.
A marciful Providence fashioned us holler
O' purpose that we might our principles swaller.
It ain't by princerples nor men
My preudent course is steadied;
I scent which pays the best, an' then
Go into it baldheaded.
I don't believe in princerple,
But oh I du in interest.
Of my merit
On thet pint you yourself may jedge;
All is, I never drink no sperit,
Nor I haint never signed no pledge.
Ez to my princerples, I glory
In hevin' nothin' o' the sort.
God makes sech nights, all white and still,
Fur'z you can look or listen.
Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown
An' peeked in thru' the winder,
An there sot Huldy all alone,
'ith no one nigh to hender.
The very room, coz she was in,
Seemed warm from floor to ceilin'.
'T was kin' o' kingdom-come to look
On sech a blessed cretur.
She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing
Ez hisn in the choir;
My! when he made Ole Hunderd ring
She knowed the Lord was nigher.
His heart kep' goin' pity-pat,
But hern went pity-Zekle.