Poetry Archives

Life is a journey, and its fairest flowers
  Lie in our path beneath pride’s trampling feet;
Oh, let us stoop to virtue’s humble bowers,
  And gather those, which, faded, still are sweet.

These way-side blossoms amulets are of price;
  They lead to pleasure, yet from dangers warn;—
Turn toil to bliss, this earth to Paradise,
  And sunset death to heaven’s eternal morn.

A good deed done hath memory’s blest perfume,—
  A day of self-forgetfulness, all given
To holy charity, hath perennial bloom
  That goes, undrooping, up from earth to heaven.

Forgiveness, too, will flourish in the skies—
  Justice, transplanted thither, yields fair fruit;
And if repentance, borne to heaven, dies,
  ’Tis that no tears are there to wet its root.