Via Cursis, Via Lucis It goes in and it comes out, now it fades, now is bright, And it guides by its darkness as well as its light. So a word fitly spoken is potent to teach, But silence sometimes talketh better than speech. Force winneth the battle,…
Oh, mother! cease to break my heart!
I vow it now, I vowed it then,
The kiss he left upon my lips
His lips shall one day taste again!
Ah, well I mind the summer's eve!
A low scud swept the waning moon;
And o'er the ripened clover-lea
Floated…
"This page, if thou wilt be a pater (parent-father) that reads it, thou wilt apardone me; if nocht, suspend thy censure till thou be a father, as said the grave Lacemaemonian Agesilaus." -Autobiography of James Melville. One time—my soul was pierced…
[At a recent slave sale, in one of the Southern states, the auctioneer, in a drunken humor, guaranteed the Christianity of the negro upon the block, and offered to sell him by the pound.] He can mow and how, and shovel and dig,
And team, and lower,…
Hush! I cannot bear to see thee
Stretch thy hands in vain;
I have got no bread to give thee—
Nothing, child, to ease thy pain.
When God sent thee first to bless me,
Proud and thankful too was I;
Now, my darling, I thy mother,
Almost long to…
"Died, at Rochester, Tuesday, March 13, 1860, Annie, youngest daughter of Frederick and Anna Douglass, aged 10 years, 11 months, and 21 days. Smitten with grief at the absence of her father, she pined away and died, her mind having become impressed…
See them go forth like the floods to the ocean.
Gathering might from each tide mountains and glen.
Wilder and deeper the tide of devotion
Rolls up to God from the bosom of men.
Here the great multitude, mingling in chorus.
Groan as they gaze…
It must be sweet in childhood to give back The spirit to its Maker, ere the heart Has grown familiar with the paths of sin, And sown, to garner up its bitter fruits. I knew a boy whose infant feet had trod Upon the blossoms of some seven springs, And…
There's a whisper round my soul, father,
And it tells me I must go,
While my heart throbs back the answer,
In beating so faint and low.
I am sorry to leave you, father,
I know you will miss me so,
And the world, for you, will gather
Such a…
Slowly o'er his darkened features,
Stole the warning shades of death;
And we knew the shadowing angel
Waited for his parting breath.
He had started for his freedom,
And his heart beat firm and high—
But before he won the guerdon,
Came the…
