Poems About the Soul

What Have I Done for My Soul? by Clara Miehm
The Mystic by Anonymous
The Soul's Storm by Emily Dickinson
Choice by Emily Dickinson
Exclusion by Emily Dickinson
The soul should always stand ajar by Emily Dickinson
The soul unto itself by Emily Dickinson
Death And Life by Anonymous
Weather of the Soul by Bliss Carman
Sea-Birds by Elizabeth Akers
The Soul's Farewell by Hannah Flagg Gould
My Soul by Richard Lynott O'Malley
Wings by Mathilde Blind
A Clear Midnight by Walt Whitman
A Noiseless Patient Spider by Walt Whitman
When Nerves Are Dead by Anonymous
Distances by William Stanley Braithwaite
Confluents by Christina Rossetti
Harmony and Heaven by Kate Louise Wheeler
The Golden Sunset by Samuel Longfellow
The Mill Stream by Susan Francis Preston Clapp
Soul Yearning by Ruby Archer
Discontent by Jean Blewett
Peace by Henry Van Dyke
Transformation by Henry Van Dyke
Seeking and Striving by Kate Louise Wheeler
The River's Lesson by William Osborn Stoddard
Come Ye Thankful People Come by Henry Alford
Encouragement by ENS
Elevation by Georgia Douglas Johnson
Great Truths are portions of the soul by James Russell Lowell
No Coward Soul Is Mine by Emily Brontë
The Cow-Bells by John Trowbridge
Longing by Sara Teasdale
Longing by Evander A. Crewson

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A Psalm of Life

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What Have I Done for My Soul?

by Clara Miehm

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What have I done for my soul today?
Have I given a helping hand?
Have I cheered my comrade on his way?
No—I did not understand
The wistful look in his eager eye.
I nodded at him and passed him by.

What have I done for my soul today?
When I drove thru the crowded square,
I saw a woman in ragged array,
Her face grim, and toilworn with care
She was my friend in the long ago;
I turned away—the world needn't know.

What have I done for my soul today?
When a lad asked a bit of advice,
I yelled at him in a surly way,
But now I am paying the price.
My errant soul has returned to ask,
Is kindness such a stupendous task?

What do I do for my soul each day?
Do I try to understand
The common need of the common clay,
That is shaped by the master hand?
Do I dwarf my soul by a heedless deed,
Or is loyal service and love my creed?
Death is a dialogue between

by Emily Dickinson

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Death is a dialogue between
The spirit and the dust.
"Dissolve," says Death. The Spirit, "Sir,
I have another trust."

Death doubts it, argues from the ground.
The Spirit turns away,
Just laying off, for evidence,
An overcoat of clay.
The Mystic

by Anonymous

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His soul is like a shell, an empty shell.
Within whose listening hollows evermore
Home-hungry dreams of distant oceans dwell,
The memories and murmurs of the shore.
The Soul's Storm

by Emily Dickinson

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It struck me every day
The lightning was as new
As if the cloud that instant slit
And let the fire through.

It burned me in the night,
It blistered in my dream;
It sickened fresh upon my sight
With every morning's beam.

I thought that storm was brief, —
The maddest, quickest by;
But Nature lost the date of this,
And left it in the sky.
Choice

by Emily Dickinson

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Of all the souls that stand create
I have elected one.
When sense from spirit files away,
And subterfuge is done;

When that which is and that which was
Apart, intrinsic, stand,
And this brief tragedy of flesh
Is shifted like a sand;

When figures show their royal front
And mists are carved away, —
Behold the atom I preferred
To all the lists of clay!
Exclusion

by Emily Dickinson

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The soul selects her own society,
Then shuts the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.

Unmoved, she notes the chariot's pausing
At her low gate;
Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
Upon her mat.

I've known her from an ample nation
Choose one;
Then close the valves of her attention
Like stone.
The soul should always stand ajar

by Emily Dickinson

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The soul should always stand ajar,
That if the heaven inquire,
He will not be obliged to wait,
Or shy of troubling her.

Depart, before the host has slid
The bolt upon the door,
To seek for the accomplished guest, —
Her visitor no more.
The soul unto itself

by Emily Dickinson

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The soul unto itself
Is an imperial friend, —
Or the most agonizing spy
An enemy could send.

Secure against its own,
No treason it can fear;
Itself its sovereign, of itself
The soul should stand in awe.
Death And Life

by Amos Russel Wells

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Still the heart and stay the breath—
There's a deeper death than death!
This is death, when living soul
Yields to deadly sin's control;
When, beneath the devil's arts,
Love, the light of life, departs;
When the body, moving still,
Bears about a lifeless will,
And the spirit, formed to rise
Ever-growing in the skies,
Is a dead and empty seed:
This, ah, this is death indeed!

Rich the years, with fruitage rife—
There's a higher life than life!
This is life, when spirits press
Into every nobleness;
When on failure and defeat
Power sets his lordly seat;
When, although the body fail,
Spirit energies prevail,
And the world beholds a man
After the Creator's plan,
Soul from all its bondage freed;
This, ah, this is life indeed!

Hear the resurrection cry:
Dying, yet you shall not die!
Christ is He that conquereth
All this deeper death than death;
Christ, from out of mortal strife,
Won this higher life than life—
Wins it through eternity,
Just for you and just for me.
Weather of the Soul

by Bliss Carman

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There is a world of being
We range from pole to pole,
Through seasons of the spirit
And weather of the soul.

It has its new-born Aprils,
With gladness in the air,
Its golden Junes of rapture,
Its winters of despair.

And in its tranquil autumns
We halt to re-enforce
Our tattered scarlet pennons
With valor and resource.

From undiscovered regions
Only the angels know,
Great winds of aspiration
Perpetually blow,

To free the sap of impulse
From torpor of distrust,
And into flowers of joyance
Quicken the sentient dust.

From nowhere of a sudden
Loom sudden clouds of fault,
With thunders of oppression
And lightnings of revolt.

With hush of apprehension
And quaking of the heart,
There breed the storms of anger,
And floods of sorrow start.

And there shall fall,—how gently!—
To make them fertile yet,
The rain of absolution
On acres of regret.

Till snows of mercy cover
The dream that shall come true,
When time makes all things wondrous,
And life makes all things new.
Sea-Birds

by Elizabeth Akers

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O lonesome sea-gull, floating far
Over the ocean's icy waste,
Aimless and wide thy wanderings are,
Forever vainly seeking rest:—
Where is thy mate, and where thy nest?

'Twixt wintry sea and wintry sky,
Cleaving the keen air with thy breast,
Thou sailest slowly, solemnly;
No fetter on thy wing is pressed:—
Where is thy mate, and where thy nest?

O restless, homeless human soul,
Following for aye thy nameless quest,
The gulls float, and the billows roll;
Thou watchest still, and questionest:—
Where is thy mate, and where thy nest?
The Soul's Farewell

by Hannah Flagg Gould

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It must be so, poor, fading, mortal thing!
And now we part, thou pallid form of clay;
Thy hold is broke—I can unfurl my wing;
And from the dust the spirit must away!

As thou at night, hast thrown thy vesture by,
Tired with the day, to seek thy wonted rest,
Fatigued with time's vain round,'t is thus that I
Of thee, frail covering, myself divest.

Thou know'st, while journeying in this thorny road,
How oft we're sighed and struggled to be twain;
How I have longed to drop my earthly load,
And thou, to rest thee from thy toil and pain.

Then he, who severs our mysterious tie,
Is a kind angel, granting each release;
He'll seal thy quivering lip and sunken eye
And stamp thy brow with everlasting peace.

When thou hast lost the beauty that I gave,
And life's gay scenes no more will give thee place,
Thou may'st retire within the secret grave,
Where none shall look upon thine altered face.

But I am summoned to the eternal throne,
To meet the presence of the King most high;
I go to stand, unshrouded and alone,
Full in the light of God's all-searching eye.

There must the deeds, which we together wrought,
Be all remembered—each a witness made;
The outward action and the secret thought
Before the silent soul must there be weighed.

Lo! I behold the seraph throng descend
To waft me up where love and mercy dwell!
Away, vain fears! the Judge will be my friend;
It is my Father calls—pale clay, farewell!
Excerpt from "Thoughts"

by Hannah Flagg Gould

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If such be the end of each perishing part,
Immortal, invisible, tell what thou art;
Thy business, and what thou dost hope to inherit,
Thou restless, aspiring, unsatisfied Spirit!

"What my nature may be, there is none that can know,
But the Being above to whose presence I go.
But I've dwelt on this earth, and its joys have embraced,
'Till I've found myself wounded, deceived and disgraced.
Its flowers, when I touched them, would wither and fall;
I tasted its cup, but 't was mingled with gall.
Allured to its landscape, the serpent or snare
I found was concealed, and awaited me there;
That the rainbow hung o'er it, so bright to my eyes,
At best, was but vapor, or tears in disguise.
I have leant on this world, 'till with anguish I feel
It is harder, and colder, and keener than steel.
Only constant to change, and to falsehood but true,
It stabs while it kisses, and smiles to undo.
But for me the deceit of its visions are o'er;
They shall wound and enslave and ensnare me no more:
For faint, torn and bleeding, I turn from the earth,
And look up in faith to the realm of my birth:
I know there's a sun with a glorious light,
With beams full of healing, to burst on my sight,
Dispelling the shadows of sorrow and care;
I know that a balm, a Physician is there.
That country, that home, the unsatisfied spirit
Here sighs to recover, and hopes to inherit."
Distances

by Bliss Carman

Just where that star above
Shines with a cold, dispassionate smile —
If in the flesh I'd travel there,
How many, many a mile!

If this, my soul, should be
Unprisoned from its earthly bond,
Time could not count its markless flight
Beyond that star, beyond!
The Soul-Conflict

by Paul Hamilton Hayne

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Defeated! but never disheartened!
Repulsed! but unconquered in will,
Upon dreary discomfitures building
Her virtue's strong battlements still,
The soul, through the siege of temptations,
Yields not unto fraud, nor to might,
Unquelled by the rush of the passions,
Serene 'mid the tumults of fight.

She sees a grand prize in the distance,
She hears a glad sound of acclaims,
The crown wrought of blooms amaranthine
The music far sweeter than Fame's
And so, 'gainst the rush of the passions
She lifts the broad buckler of right,
And so, through the glooms of temptation,
She walks in a splendor of light.
The Sound of the Sea

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
I heard the first wave of the rising tide
Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
A voice out of the silence of the deep,
A sound mysteriously multiplied
As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
So comes to us at times, from the unknown
And inaccessible solitudes of being,
The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And inspirations, that we deem our own,
Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
Of things beyond our reason or control.
In Cloudy Weather

by Ruby Archer

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Where is my halcyon blue?
The grudging sky is overcast.
Where is my dowering sun?
A glory past.

Nay, soul, thy daily sky
Unfading spirit light must win,
Dark days thy sunshine glow
Ah bright within!
Resolution

by Ruby Archer

The waves oppose the cliffs with daily force,
And fall resisted back along their course.
My soul opposes fate with daily will,
And falls resisted back, defeated still,
With gathered strength returning, like the waves,
To wrest complete dominion that it craves.
The cliffs are stone, and stone will wear away.
Spirit shall rule, and fate itself obey.
Resolution

by Ruby Archer

As the sunshine feeds the flower
And smiles it into beauty,
So did childhood's fire empower
My soul with love and duty.

As the mountain oak is marred,
All knotted by the storm,
So my soul by sin is scarred
And twisted out of form.

Here, in an hour of contemplation sweet,
The soul can sing with unmolested ease,
Of future joys, where all may find release
From this vain world, transform'd to joys complete.

– Eliza Wolcott
On Evening

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When the heart's with anguish riven,
Hope 's our anchor,—faith's our guide,
Which directs our souls to heaven,
Where we from the storm may hide.

– Eliza Wolcott
To Sorrow

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On Evening

by Eliza and Sarah Wolcott

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A stillness now pervades the busy world,
As night approaches with her mantle gray,
The cricket now begins her evening lay,
And all to peace, and quiet sleep, are lull'd.

This is the hour, if bliss is felt below,
For sweet reflection now to make complete,—
Her quiet solitude her calm retreat,—
More of herself, and less of earth to know.

The hour to contemplate the soul's true worth,
When noise and busy care are lull'd away;
The moon comes forth behind her sable gray,
And all the stars begin to sparkle forth.

Now sweet composure calms the mind to rest,
And all is still, save where the distant bell
Dies on the ear, the watch-men cry "all's well,"
Then quiet peace responsive fills the breast.

Here, in an hour of contemplation sweet,
The soul can sing with unmolested ease,
Of future joys, where all may find release
From this vain world, transform'd to joys complete.

This world's a scene of varied light and shade,
Where grief and tears successive cross our way;
But there's a rest where darkness turns to day—
Where sorrow never shall the soul invade.
The Approach Of June, Or The Month Of Roses

Put off thy wintry robe my soul,
Born to rejoice and sing,
Let gratitude thy lips control
In praises to your king.

– Eliza Wolcott
The Approach Of June, Or The Month Of Roses

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by Eliza and Sarah Wolcott

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'Tis blushing on through brier and thorn,
The wintry winds are still;
Now softer zephyrs waft along,
The month of June to fill.

Soft dews descend upon the flowers
And kindly rest awhile;
'Tis sweet to wait upon these hours,
To see the roses smile.

How beautiful the charming scene,
'Tis far surpassing art,
Like purity in heavenly mien,
Reviving to the heart.

Sweet exhalations fill the air,
While music in the grove,
Invites my pensive soul to share
In all the songs of love.

Put off thy wintry robe my soul,
Born to rejoice and sing,
Let gratitude thy lips control
In praises to your king.

The soul with innocence possess'd,
Her incense safe may bear
To Christ, whose righteousness hath bless'd
The humblest form of prayer.

Thus while the roses greet our eyes,
In all their rich perfume,
Should our prayers like incense rise,
Our summer to illume.

When time is done with us below,
Our souls can never die,
But will partake of joy or woe,
Beyond the human eye.

– Eliza Wolcott
The Time Is Short

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The Petrified Fern

by Mary L. Bolles Branch

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In a valley, centuries ago,
Grew a little fern leaf, green and slender,
Veining delicate and fibers tender,
Waving when the wind crept down so low;
Rushes tall, and moss, and grass grew round it;
Playful sunbeams darted in and found it;
Drops of dew stole down by night and crowned it;
But no foot of man e'er came that way;
Earth was young and keeping holiday.

Monster fishes swam the silent main;
Stately forests waved their giant branches;
Mountains hurled their snowy avalanches;
Mammoth creatures stalked across the plain,
Nature reveled in grand mysteries.
But the little fern was not like these,
Did not number with the hills and trees,
Only grew and waved its sweet, wild way;
No one came to note it day by day.

Earth, one time, put on a frolic mood,
Heaved the rocks and changed the mighty motion
Of the strong, dread currents of the ocean;
Moved the hills and shook the haughty wood;
Crushed the little fern in soft, moist clay,
Covered it, and hid it safe away.
Oh, the long, long centuries since that day;
Oh, the changes! Oh, life's bitter cost,
Since the little useless fern was lost!

Useless? Lost? There came a thoughtful man
Searching Nature's secrets far and deep;
From a fissure in a rocky steep
He withdrew a stone, o'er which there ran
Fairy pencilings, a quaint design,
Leafage, veining, fibers, clear and fine,
And the fern's life lay in every line.
So, I think, God hides some souls away,
Sweetly to surprise us the Last Day.
Wings

by Mathilde Blind

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Ascend, oh my Soul, with the wings of the lark ascend!
Soaring away and away far into the blue.
Or with the shrill seagull to the breakers bend,
Or with the bee, where the grasses and field-flowers blend,
Drink out of golden cups of the honey-dew.

Ascend, oh my Soul, on the wings of the wind as it blows,
Striking wild organ-blasts from the forest trees,
Or on the zephyr bear love of the rose to the rose,
Or with the hurricane sower cast seed as he goes
Limitless ploughing the leagues of the sibilant seas.

Ascend, oh my Soul, on the wings of the choral strain,
Invisible tier above tier upbuilding sublime;
Note as it scales after note in a rhythmical chain
Reaching from chaos and welter of struggle and pain,
Far into vistas empyreal receding from time.

Ascend! take wing on the thoughts of the Dead, my Soul,
Breathing in colour and stone, flashing through epic and song:
Thoughts that like avalanche snows gather force as they roll,
Mighty to fashion and knead the phenomenal throng
Of generations of men as they thunder along.
A Clear Midnight

by Walt Whitman

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.
A Noiseless Patient Spider

by Walt Whitman

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A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
When Nerves Are Dead

by Anonymous

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When the nerve is alive, and the dentist cuts and grinds,
There are fully fifty pains he invariably finds
There are pains that are hot, there are pains that are cold,
There are big and swelling pains that the mouth can hardly hold,
There are pains like a needle, there are pains like a saw,
There are pains that explode and other pains that gnaw—
When the nerve of the tooth is alive.

When the nerve is dead, let the dentist grind away,
You can sit and smile, quite at ease and even gay;
He can do his worst, and he doesn't hurt a bit,
He can chisel and bore and you hardly think of it.
But the tooth, alas! needs the nerve to keep it well
And it soon decays and becomes a brittle shell
When the nerve of the tooth is dead.

When the nerve of the soul is alive to sin and woe,
How we groan at wrongs, and we will not have them so,
How we sigh and weep at the weary lot of man,
How we tug and pull just to help the best we can,
How we heal the sick, how we bolster up the weak,
How we range afar as the wretched lost we seek,
When the nerve of the soul is alive.

When the nerve of the soul is dead we live at ease,
Sin, woe, and want,—let them ravage as they please.
Let the wicked rule, let the weary faint and fall,
We are deaf and blind to the sorrow of it all.
But alas! for the soul as it slowly shrinks away, As it rots and fades in an ugly, swift decay,
When the nerve of the soul is dead.
Distances

by William Stanley Braithwaite

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Just where that star above
Shines with a cold, dispassionate smile—
If in the flesh I'd travel there,
How many, many a mile!

If this, my soul, should be
Unprisoned from its earthly bond,
Time could not count its markless flight
Beyond that star, beyond!
Confluents

by Christina Rossetti

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As rivers seek the sea,
Much more deep than they,
So my soul seeks thee
Far away:
As running rivers moan
On their course alone
So I moan
Left alone.

As the delicate rose
To the sun's sweet strength
Doth herself unclose,
Breadth and length:
So spreads my heart to thee
Unveiled utterly,
I to thee
Utterly.

As morning dew exhales
Sunwards pure and free,
So my spirit fails
After thee:
As dew leaves not a trace
On the green earth's face;
I, no trace
On thy face.

Its goal the river knows,
Dewdrops find a way,
Sunlight cheers the rose
In her day:
Shall I, lone sorrow past,
Find thee at the last?
Sorrow past,
Thee at last?
Harmony and Heaven

by Kate Louise Wheeler

Our souls are made of harmony
To sing and live forever;
For Harmony and Heaven are one
Where discord soundeth never.
The Golden Sunset

by Samuel Longfellow

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The golden sea its mirror spreads
Beneath the golden skies,
And but a narrow strip between
Of earth and shadow lies.

The cloud-like cliffs, the cliff-like clouds,
Dissolved in glory, float,
And midway of the radiant floods
Hangs silently the boat.

The sea is but another sky,
The sky a sea as well,
And which is earth and which the heavens
The eye can scarcely tell.

So when for me life's latest hour
Soft passes to its end,
May glory, born of earth and heaven,
The earth and heaven blend.

Flooded with light the spirits float,
With silent rapture glow,
Till where earth ends and heaven begins
The soul shall scarcely know.
The Mill Stream

by Susan Francis Preston Clapp

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The mill stream flows o'er common ground,
Yet wandering there, I stand spell-bound;
And dreamy thoughts will o'er me steal
While listening to the water-wheel.

As round it rolls, I hear a chant
Whose music grows significant,
Till my whole being is possessed
With something of the wheel's unrest.

Mine ear hath caught an undertone
To which my soul makes answering moan;
Two plaintive voices seem to meet,
In murmuring eddies, at my feet.

Vague longings, when answered here,
Foreshadowings of another sphere,
Now join the water's plaintive flow,
As onward, onward still they go.

Forever striving to be free,
My soul is in strange sympathy
With the waters basely bound
To turn the mill-wheel round and round.

Within man's limitation set,
The troubled waters foam and fret,
But left unfettered in their course,
Glide on serenely to their source.
The Mill Stream

by Susan Francis Preston Clapp

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The mill stream flows o'er common ground,
Yet wandering there, I stand spell-bound;
And dreamy thoughts will o'er me steal
While listening to the water-wheel.

As round it rolls, I hear a chant
Whose music grows significant,
Till my whole being is possessed
With something of the wheel's unrest.

Mine ear hath caught an undertone
To which my soul makes answering moan;
Two plaintive voices seem to meet,
In murmuring eddies, at my feet.

Vague longings, when answered here,
Foreshadowings of another sphere,
Now join the water's plaintive flow,
As onward, onward still they go.

Forever striving to be free,
My soul is in strange sympathy
With the waters basely bound
To turn the mill-wheel round and round.

Within man's limitation set,
The troubled waters foam and fret,
But left unfettered in their course,
Glide on serenely to their source.
Soul Yearning

by Ruby Archer

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That yearning, yearning for what cometh not
Chide never, soul, for gleaming through thy lot,
It is thy spark of all divinity,
And burns thee that it may not be forgot.
Be not impatient. Here no foot may stray
Beyond the shut horizon of to-day.
Fare on, my soul, through what is given thee.—
Eternity awaits thy foot one day.
That sky-line gain thy mortal eyes may see
From day to day unrolling. To be free
Obey! A narrow path leads on
To spirit way that knows no boundary.
Discontent

by Jean Blewett

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My soul spoke low to Discontent:
Long hast thou lodged with me,
Now, ere the strength of me is spent,
I would be quit of thee.

Thy presence means revolt, unrest,
Means labor, longing, pain;
Go, leave me, thou unwelcome guest,
Nor trouble me again.

I longed for peace—for peace I cried;
You would not let her in;
No room was there for aught beside
The turmoil and the din.

I longed for rest, prayed life might yield
Soft joy and dear delight;
You urged me to the battlefield,
And flung me in the fight.

We two part company to-day.
Now, ere my strength be spent,
I open wide my doors and say:
"Begone, thou Discontent!"

Then something strong and sweet and fair
Rose up and made reply:
Who gave you the desire to dare
And do the right? 'Twas I.

The coward soul craves pleasant things,
Soft joys and dear delights—
I scourged you till you spread your wings
And soared to nobler heights.

You know me but imperfectly—
My surname is Divine;
God's own right hand did prison me
Within this soul of thine,

Lest thou, forgetting work and strife,
By human longings prest,
Shouldst miss the grandest things of life,
Its battles and unrest.
Discontent

by Jean Blewett

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My soul spoke low to Discontent:
Long hast thou lodged with me,
Now, ere the strength of me is spent,
I would be quit of thee.

Thy presence means revolt, unrest,
Means labor, longing, pain;
Go, leave me, thou unwelcome guest,
Nor trouble me again.

I longed for peace—for peace I cried;
You would not let her in;
No room was there for aught beside
The turmoil and the din.

I longed for rest, prayed life might yield
Soft joy and dear delight;
You urged me to the battlefield,
And flung me in the fight.

We two part company to-day.
Now, ere my strength be spent,
I open wide my doors and say:
"Begone, thou Discontent!"

Then something strong and sweet and fair
Rose up and made reply:
Who gave you the desire to dare
And do the right? 'Twas I.

The coward soul craves pleasant things,
Soft joys and dear delights—
I scourged you till you spread your wings
And soared to nobler heights.

You know me but imperfectly—
My surname is Divine;
God's own right hand did prison me
Within this soul of thine,

Lest thou, forgetting work and strife,
By human longings prest,
Shouldst miss the grandest things of life,
Its battles and unrest.
Peace

by Henry Van Dyke

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With eager heart and will on fire,
I fought to win my great desire
"Peace shall be mine," I said; but life
Grew bitter in the weary strife.

My soul was tired, and my pride
Was wounded deep: to Heaven I cried,
"God grant me peace or I must die;"
The dumb stars glittered no reply.

Broken at last, I bowed my head,
Forgetting all myself, and said,
"Whatever comes, His will be done;"
And in that moment peace was won.
Transformation

by Henry Van Dyke

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Only a little shrivelled seed,
It might be flower, or grass, or weed;
Only a box of earth on the edge
Of a narrow, dusty window-ledge;
Only a few scant summer showers;
Only a few clear shining hours;
That was all. Yet God could make
Out of these, for a sick child's sake,
A blossom-wonder, as fair and sweet
As ever broke at an angel's feet.

Only a life of barren pain,
Wet with sorrowful tears for rain,
Warmed sometimes by a wandering gleam
Of joy, that seemed but a happy dream;
A life as common and brown and bare
As the box of earth in the window there;
Yet it bore, at last, the precious bloom
Of a perfect soul in that narrow room;
Pure as the snowy leaves that fold
Over the flower's heart of gold.
Seeking and Striving

by Kate Louise Wheeler

The soul that seeks for Heavenly things,
And mounts above on tireless wings,
Shall find them by and by;
The soul that strives to conquer wrong,
And sings a happy trustful song,
Shall live and never die.

³¹And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.

– Acts 16:31
KJV

“
The River's Lesson

by William Osborn Stoddard

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Under the canopied bank we lie,
And the muddy river is rushing by,
Yellow and foul from its eddying stray
Through a thousand miles of wandering way,
Gross and turbid;—and yet, I know
That this same troubled and mingled flow
Shall one day clear as the crystal be,
After it dies in the deep, far sea.

I have watched it long, with an aching brow,
Bending above it, and wonder now
If the river, so full of grime and strife,
May not be an emblem of human life,
And if many a soul that has wandered and toiled,
All corrupted and gross and soiled,
At the end may not calmly glide
Into that last great swallowing tide,
And clear and pure as the crystal be,
After it dies in that deep, far sea.
Come Ye Thankful People Come

by Henry Alford

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Come ye thankful people come,
Raise the song of harvest home!
All is safely gathered in,
Ere the winter storms begin;
God our Maker, doth provide
For our wants to be supplied:
Come to God's own temple, come,
Raise the song of harvest home.

All the world is God's own field
Fruit unto his praise to yield;
Wheat and tares together sown
Unto joy or sorrow grown;
First the blade, and then the ear,
Then the full corn shall appear;
Lord of the harvest! grant that we
Wholesome grain and pure may be.

For the Lord our God shall come,
And shall take his harvest home;
From his field shall in that day
All offenses purge away,
Give his angels charge at last
In the fire the tares to cast;
But the fruitful ears to store
In his garner evermore.

Even so, Lord, quickly come,
Bring thy final harvest home;
Gather thou thy people in,
Free from sorrow, free from sin,
There, forever purified,
in thy presence to abide;
Come, with all thine angels, come,
Raise the glorious harvest home.
Encouragement

by ENS

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My fainting soul had well nigh droop'd
When sorrow's heavy hand was near;
But to the throne of grace I look'd,
And mercy soon dispel'd my fear.

"I'll never leave thee, nor forsake,"
Came sweetly to my tremb'ling heart;
His word I know He will not break,
He cannot from His oath depart.

Now cheerfully I onward speed,
His promises forbid my fear;
He will supply my every need,
And in distress be ever near.

I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.

– Psalm 27:13
KJV

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Elevation

by Georgia Douglas Johnson

There are highways in the soul,
Heights like pyramids that rise
Far beyond earth-veiled eyes,
Sweeping through the barless skies
O'er the line where daylight dies—
There are highways in the soul!
Great Truths are portions of the soul

by James Russell Lowell

Great Truths are portions of the soul of man;
Great souls are portions of Eternity;
Each drop of blood that e'er through true heart ran
With lofty message, ran for thee and me;
For God's law, since the starry song began,
Hath been, and still for evermore must be,
That every deed which shall out last Time's span
Must goad the soul to be erect and free;
Slave is no word of deathless line age sprung,—
Too many noble souls have thought and died,
Too many mighty poets lived and sung,
And our good Saxon, from lips purified
With martyr-fire, throughout the world hath rung
Too long to have God's holy cause denied.
No Coward Soul Is Mine

by Emily Brontë

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No coward soul is mine
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere
I see Heaven's glories shine
And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear

O God within my breast
Almighty ever-present Deity
Life, that in me hast rest,
As I Undying Life, have power in Thee

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts, unutterably vain,
Worthless as withered weeds
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main

To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by thy infinity,
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of Immortality.

With wide-embracing love
Thy spirit animates eternal years
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears

Though earth and moon were gone
And suns and universes ceased to be
And Thou wert left alone
Every Existence would exist in thee

There is not room for Death
Nor atom that his might could render void
Since thou art Being and Breath
And what thou art may never be destroyed.
The Cow-Bells

by John Trowbridge

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One—in the distance, when the star came out
Over the dark green woods upon the hill-
One bell's low tinkle, and the farmer's shout,
While in the pauses sang the whip-poor-will.

Two, three, and more. She's coming now; but wait!
She stops. There's clover in yon tufts of fern.
Lightfoot! Coo-coo! Come down; the milking's late.
Robert, run up beyond the lane's quick turn.

Two little arms stretch out to clasp a cup
Of gentle Lightfoot's milk. "Come down, Coo-coo!
The farmer, tired with haying, wants to sup."
Hark! on the silent air the bell peals out anew.

There's silence now. She's at the hillside spring,
Drinking with liquid, vacant eyes, her fill;
While upward flits on dreamy, bat-like wing
The somber, brooding, plaintive whip-poor-will.

Coo-coo! she's coming; hear her lulling bell!
Or does the farmer strike his empty glass
With pewter spoon. Perhaps in yonder dell
The bell is drowned amid the meadow's grass.

She's in her yard at last; the bell is still,
And she has done her peaceful work. Ah! me,
What if some higher spirits wait to fill
Their earthly longings from humanity!
Longing

by Sara Teasdale

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I am not sorry for my soul
That it must go unsatisfied,
For it can live a thousand times,
Eternity is deep and wide.

I am not sorry for my soul,
But oh, my body that must go
Back to a little drift of dust
Without the joy it longed to know.
Longing

by Evander A. Crewson

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Store the mind from books and creeds,
And yet the soul still intercedes;
A longing, unfulfilled desire
For something grander, something higher,
Tho' earthly hopes may reach their goal;
Still unsatisfied the soul;
A longing, longing undefined,
A glimmer in the human mind
That this is not finality;
A hope of immortality.

An educated love will cling
To many joys our wealth may bring;
But false the hope; nay, call it blest,
That seems to lull the soul to rest.
The living soul, still anxious, reaches
For more than book or reason teaches;
And though at times I darkly grope,
Still I love this living hope:
A gleam of immortality
That's not an ideality.

Sometimes, almost like a dream,
I faintly catch a golden gleam
That seems to satisfy the soul,
Though 'cross it quick the shadows roll;
But it's enough, with faith entwining,
To show me that the sun is shining.
O, let me in this world of strife
Live in that sunshine all my life;
More than hope of immortality;
A blessed live reality.

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