We say, and we say, and we say,
We promise, engage, and declare,
Till a year from to-morrow is yesterday
And yesterday is--where?
--James Whitcomb Riley.
To be sincere. To look life in the eyes
With calm, undrooping gaze. Always to mean
The high and truthful thing. Never to screen
Behind the unmeant word the sharp surprise
Of cunning; never tell the little lies
Of look or thought. Always to choose between
The true and small, the true and large, serene
And high above Life's cheap dishonesties.
The soul that steers by this unfading star
Needs never other compass. All the far,
Wide waste shall blaze with guiding light, though rocks
And sirens meet and mock its straining gaze.
Secure from storms and all Life's battle-shocks
It shall not veer from any righteous ways.
--Maurice Smiley.
The lily's lips are pure and white without a touch of fire;
The rose's heart is warm and red and sweetened with desire.
In earth's broad fields of deathless bloom the gladdest lives are those
Whose thoughts are as the lily and whose love is like the rose.
--Nixon Waterman.
We shape ourselves the joy or fear
Of which the coming life is made,
And fill our future's atmosphere
With sunshine or with shade.
The tissue of the life to be
We weave with colors all our own,
And in the field of destiny
We reap as we have sown.
--John Greenleaf Whittier.