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.