OUR DAILY PATHS by FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS

THERE'S beauty all around our paths, if but our watchful eyes
Can trace it midst familiar things, and through their lowly guise;
We may find it where a hedgerow showers its blossoms o'er our way,
Or a cottage window sparkles forth in the last red light of day.

We may find it where a spring shines clear beneath an aged tree,
With the foxglove o'er the water's glass, borne downwards by the bee;
Or where a swift and sunny gleam on the birchen stems is thrown,
As a soft wind playing parts the leaves, in copses green and lone.

We may find it in the winter boughs, as they cross the cold blue sky,
While soft on icy pool and stream their pencilled shadows lie,
When we look upon their tracery, by the fairy frost-work bound,
Whence the flitting redbreast shakes a shower of crystals to the ground.

Yes! beauty dwells in all our paths -- but sorrow too is there:
How oft some cloud within us dims the bright, still summer air!
When we carry our sick hearts abroad amidst the joyous things,
That through the leafy places glance on many-colored wings.

With shadows from the past we fill the happy woodland shades,
And a mournful memory of the dead is with us in the glades;
And our dream-like fancies lend the wind an echo's plaintive tone
Of voices, and of melodies, and of silvery laughter gone.

But are we free to do even thus -- to wander as we will,
Bearing sad visions through the grove, and o'er the breezy hill?
No! in our daily paths lie cares, that ofttimes bind us fast,
While from their narrow round we see the golden day fleet past.

They hold us from the woodlark's haunts, and violet dingles, back,
And from all the lovely sounds and gleams in the shining river's track;
They bar us from our heritage of spring-time, hope, and mirth,
And weigh our burdened spirits down with the cumbering dust of earth.

Yet should this be? Too much, too soon, despondingly we yield!
A better lesson we are taught by the lilies of the field!
A sweeter by the birds of heaven -- which tells us, in their flight,
Of One that through the desert air forever guides them right.

Shall not this knowledge calm our hearts, and bid vain conflicts cease?
Ay, when they commune with themselves in holy hours of peace
And feel that by the lights and clouds through which our pathway lies,
By the beauty and the grief alike, we are training for the skies!

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