Ye country comets, that portend
No war nor princes' funeral
Shining unto no other end
Than to presage the grass's fall.
Here's a health to the glow-worm, Death's sober lamplighter.
When evening closes Nature's eye,
The glow-worm lights her little spark
To captivate her favorite fly
And tempt the rover through the dark.
The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire.
Like a glowworm golden, in a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden its aerial blue
Among the flowers and grass which screen it from
the view.
Among the crooked lanes, on every hedge,
The glow-worm lights his gem; and through the dark,
A moving radiance twinkles.
GNAT
A work of skill, surpassing sense,
A labor of Omnipotence;
Though frail as dust it meet thine eye,
He form'd this gnat who built the sky.
GOD
Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.
Nearer, my God, to Thee—
Nearer to Thee—
E'en though it be a cross
That raiseth me;
Still all my song shall be
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee!
Homo cogitat, Deus indicat.
Man thinks, God directs.
At Athens, wise men propose, and fools dispose.
Ordina l'uomo, e dio dispone.
Man proposes, and God disposes.
Man says—"So, so."
Heaven says—"No, no."
God's Wisdom and God's Goodness!—Ah, but fools
Mis-define thee, till God knows them no more.
Wisdom and goodness they are God!—what schools
Have yet so much as heard this simpler lore.
This no Saint preaches, and this no Church rules:
'Tis in the desert, now and heretofore.
Deus scitur melius nesciendo.
God is best known in not knowing him.
They that deny a God destroy man's nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and, if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.
From thee all human actions take their springs,
The rise of empires, and the fall of kings.
O Rock of Israel, Rock of Salvation, Rock struck and cleft for me, let those two streams of blood and water which once gushed out of thy
side . . . bring down with them salvation and holiness into my soul.
He made little, too little of sacraments and priests, because God was so intensely real to him. What should he do with lenses who stood thus
full in the torrent of the sunshine.
It never frightened a Puritan when you bade him stand still and listen to the speech of God. His closet and his church were full of the reverberations of the awful, gracious, beautiful voice for which he listened.
That we devote ourselves to God is seen
In living just as though no God there were.
God is the perfect poet,
Who in his person acts his own creations.
God's in His Heaven—
All's right with the world!
