5. This love of truth binds the soul to all true spirits, whether on earth or in heaven, and to God himself, the Truth, perfect and eternal. Compare emulations of argument, pungencies of sarcasm, dazzlings of fancy vain of its glitter, pride of logic, and pomp of declamation, with the simple thoughts which the love of truth suggests, and they are but as the sound of an automaton to the voice of a man. - HENRY GILES. XXVII. AN ORDER FOR A PICTURE I. O good painter, tell me true, Has your hand the cunning to draw 2. Woods and cornfields a little brown The picture must not be overbright, Lying between them, not quite sere, And not in the full, thick, leafy bloom, Biting shorter the short green grass, These, and the house where I was born, Low and little, and black and old, 3. Listen closer. When you have done With woods and cornfields and grazing herds, A lady, the loveliest ever the sun Looked down upon, you must paint for me; The clear blue eyes, the tender smile, I need not speak these foolish words; That all the rest may be thrown away. 4. Two little urchins at her knee The other with a clearer brow, God knoweth if he be living now He sailed in the good ship Commodore; To bring us news, and she never came back. Ah, 'tis twenty long years and more With my great-hearted brother on her deck; The time we stood at our mother's knee; 5. Out in the fields one summer night We were together, half afraid Of the corn leaves' rustling, and of the shade Of the high hills, stretching so still and far; Loitering till after the low little light Of the candle shone through the open door, And over the haystack's pointed top, All of a tremble, and ready to drop, The first half hour, the great yellow star Propped and held in its place in the skies Which close in the edge of our flax field grew, Not so big as a straw of wheat; The berries we gave her she wouldn't eat, 6. At last we stood at our mother's knee. You can paint the look of a lie ? Of the urchin that is likest me: I think 'twas solely mine, indeed : The eyes of our mother (take good heed) Nor the fluttering bird, held so fast by the legs, I felt my heart bleed where that glance went, as though Things that are fairest, things most sweet, — Woods and cornfields and mulberry tree, The mother, the lads, with their bird, at her knee: High as the heavens your name I'll shout, If you paint me the picture, and leave that out. - ALICE CARY. "The crown and glory of life is character. It is the noblest possession of a man, constituting a rank in itself, and an estate in the general good-will; dignifying every station, and exalting every position in society." |