Think on your last dark hour, when a gaunt form, Spectral and shadowy, shall stoop and set A mystic seal upon you; when the storm Of conscience rages, till its spray has wet Your brow; when, like the doom in Venice met, The walls of your lone chamber seem to close Upon you, crushed and bleeding, dying, yet Never to die—from torments such as those, Would you be free? Withhold—break not the dead’s repose.
A stalwart blind man trudging through the mud, O’ertook a cripple; side by side they stood. “Cripple, you’re stall’d,” cried Blinky, “in this clay.” Cripple replied, “Can Blinky see his way?” “Not a d—d inch,” the poor blind man replies, “But mount my shoulders, boy, lend me your eyes; Keep them wide open, let their light be mine, Cling to my shoulders, and my legs are thine. And with clear eyes, strong shanks and shoulders good We need no more to travel through this mud.”
A sigh steals down the smiling valley—a gentle sigh of breezes, wafting happiness over the face of nature, and at the sound from out their beds of earth, myriads of things of beauty wake into existence;—meadow and plain and hill-side glisten in fairest verdure—flowers fling their fragrance on the gale—stately trees wave their foliage to the passing wind—while streams beneath dance onward to the ocean—and the dream-like hum that fills the air and swells in chorus to the arch of heaven, tells of the blooming Spring—of the transcendent pleasures of Life.
What a glorious earth has man for a habitation! what scenes surround him to ennoble the soul—what examples to elevate and incite the mind to strive for the goal of Happiness. That goal, alas! how distant and hard to reach; thorns hedge the road the aspiring one would tread, and weeds spring rank and choking in the pathway, or often, when the seeming height is won, the eminence fades to a common level, and Happiness is as distant as ever! But the soul must toil, though success is but a vision—the mind must work, although its labors be fruitless; for there is a Higher power controlling the actions of man—guiding his impulses and passions, and girding him for the conflict around him and within him—the struggle that is ceaselessly waging—the Battle of Life!