The lark is beauteous in its skiey home,
Amid the confluence of heaven's brightest rays
Singing for heaven and earth undying hymns
Of beauty, and deep-hearted tenderness;
But more, when sinking on its own sweet song,
It flutter, jubilant, to its soft nest
Couched in the lowly bosom of the earth.
And so it is with life. Man may build up
A pillar of misanthropy and self,
Raising him, statue-like, above his kind,
And emulate the monumental stone
In coldness and stern-browed indifference,
But in the paths of love, and sympathy,
And lowly charity, true glory lies,
The substance of all joy and happiness.
Let not thy spirit spurn man's fellowship,
And force the stream of kindness up life's steep,
Till, 'mid the rocky peaks of Thought it flow
Unmargined by the verdant bloom of Act.
Shun Self! 'tis like the worm a rosy bud
Folds in its young embraces till it gnaw
The heart out. Nature's is no volume writ
For his interpreting who measures still
Her wisdom by the inverted standard rule
Of his own barrenness and blind conceit.
There's not a flower but with its own sweet breath
Cries out on selfishness, the while it gives
Its fragrant treasures to the summer air;
And not a bird within the greenwood shade,
The burden of whose gentle minstrelsie
Is not of love and open-hearted joy.
The blest of earth are they whose sympathies
Are free to all as streams by the wayside,
Cheering, sustaining by their limpid tide,
The weary and the footsore of the earth.
O summer sunshine! floating round all things,
Meadow and hill and leafy coverture,
Steeping all Nature in most sweet delight,
Till upward from the bosom of the earth,
Before so cold and blank and unadorned,
Spring fairest flowers to gladden and adore--
That fillest the blue vault of heaven with smiles
As of a mother smiling on her child,
Pure, holy, without guile or artifice,
Melting the spirit of each fleeting cloud
From darkness unto beauty and soft grace--
Thou art the emblem of that perfect love
That sheddeth joy around it evermore,
And from whose sweetness rise all gentle thoughts
As scent from vernal flowers; that in the heart
Waketh all goodness by a magic spell,
As the fine touch of blindness makes a page
Start into instant light and eloquence.
Cherish thou kindness ever, for this life
Would be most blissful if its sunshine came
To strengthen on Endeavour to its aim.