  O! What a strange thing is the human heart! With its youth, and its joy and fear! It doats upon creatures that day-dreams impart,— Full sorely it grieves when their beauties depart, And weeps bitter tears over their bier. The veriest gleamings that dart into birth, Reveal to its being of light: The dimliest shadows that flit upon earth, Allure it, with promise of pleasure and mirth In a country, where never is night. It leaves the sure things of its own real home, To pursue the mere phantoms of thought! Well knowing, that certain, there soon must come, An end to the visions, that so gladsome, It bewilder'd, has eagerly sought. Chas. L. Reason (Engraved by J. C. Buttre) Chas. L. Reason (Engraved by J. C. Buttre) It fleeth the wholesome prose of life, With its riches all sure and told: And scorning the beauties, that calmly in strife Truth fashions, it longs for the things all rife With glitter, and color, and gold. It buildeth its home 'neath an ever calm sky, Near streams wherein crown-jewels sleep,— And there it reposeth: while soothingly nigh, Some loved one, perchance, doth most wooingly sigh, As the zephyrs all full-laden creep. Thus it musingly wasteth its strength, in dreams Of bliss, that can never prove true: And ever it revels amid what seems, A paradise smiling with Hope's warm beams, And flowers all spangled with dew. But, even as flowers are broken and fade, And yield up their perfumes—their souls,— So vanish the colors of which dreams are made,— So perish the structures on which Hope is staid, And the treasures to which the heart holds. In vain does it follow the wandering forms That promise, yet always recede:— Too briefly the sunshine is darken'd by storms: Hope minstrels it onward, yet never informs Of the dangers unseen, that impede. The Heart trusts the outward: "Of man 'tis the whole." Thus Confidence clings to decay! It feels the sweet homage that riches control,— And laughs in contempt at the wealth of the soul: And behold! now, friends wait for their prey. It trusteth in glory, and beauty, and youth,— In love-vows that ne'er are to die: But soon the Death-king, in whose heart is no ruth, Enfolds it,—and mounting aloft, of Truth Thus sings, as turns glassy the eye. "There's nothing so lovely and bright below, As the shapes of the purified mind! Nought surer to which the weak heart can grow, On which it can rest, as it onward doth go, Than that Truth which its own tendrils bind. "Yes! Truth opes within a pure sun-tide of bliss, And shows in its ever calm flood, A transcript of regions, where no darkness is, Where Hope its conceptions may realize, And Confidence sleep in 'The Good.'" (signature) Chas. L. Reason. (signature) Chas. L. Reason. |
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