The key she guards, with wary eye,
Where knowledge hides her store,
To conscience gives the unfading die,
Which glows when life is o'er.
The wise, the virtuous love to wait
Within her silent bower,
The thoughtless shun, the fickle hate,
The guilty dread her power.
When death's dark curtain veils the eyes,
Resplendent glows her ray,
And when the unrobed spirit flies
She shares its unknown way.
Through the drear valley hung with gloom,
She bears her guarded scroll,
And spreads it at the bar of doom
While justice weighs the soul.
Dauntless she treads the troubled sphere
Of undefined despair,
And they who stain'd her record here
Must feel her vengeance there.
If Mercy to a glorious land
The pardon'd soul invite,
She hovers round that perfect band
Who dwell in cloudless light.
And oft her tablet's varied trace
Of mortal care and pain,
From angel harps to God shall raise
The loudest, sweetest strain.
Page:Poems Sigourney 1827.pdf/65
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POEMS.
65
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