• Whittier: First-Day Thoughts

  

  This is where I will be spending Easter Morning

  FIRST-DAY THOUGHTS

  In calm and cool and silence, once again
  I find my old accustomed place among
  My brethren, here, perchance, no human tongue
  Shall utter words; where never hymn is sung,
  Nor deep-toned organ blown, nor censer swung

  Nor dim light falling through the pictured pane!
  There, syllabled by silence, let me hear
  The still small voice which reached the prophets ear;
  Read in my heart a still diviner law
  Than Israel’s leader on his tables saw!
  here let me strive with each besetting sin,
  Recall my wandering fancies, and restrain
  the sore disquiet of a restless brain;
  And, as the path of duty is made plain,
  May grace be given that I may walk therein,
  Not like the hireling, for his selfish gain,
  With backward glanced and reluctant tread,
  Making a merit of his coward dread,
  But, Cheerful, in the light around me thrown,
  Walking as one to pleasant service led;
  Doing God’s will as if it were my own,
  Yet trusting not in mine, but in His strength alone!

  tags: poetry, inspiration, Quaker, First, Day, silent, meeting, whittier

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A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING.

by John Donne

AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
“Now his breath goes,” and some say, “No.”

So let us melt, and make no noise,                                       5
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
‘Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;                              10
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers’ love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, ’cause it doth remove                                     15
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.                           20

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so                                          25
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix’d foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th’ other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,                                30
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,                                    35
And makes me end where I begun.

• John Donne: A Valediction Forbidding Mourning.

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