GERALD MASSEY

There's no dearth of kindness In the world of ours; Only in our blindness We gather thorns for flowers.

Not by appointment do we meet delight Or joy; they heed not our expectancy; But round some corner of the streets of life they of a sudden greet us with a smile.

And thou hast stolen a jewel, Death! Shall light thy dark up like a Star. A Beacon kindling from afar Our light of love and fainting faith.

The heart is like an instrument whose strings Steal nobler music from Life's many frets: The golden threads are spun thro' Suffering's fire, Wherewith the marriage-robes for heaven are woven: And all the rarest hues of human life Take radiance, and are rainbow'd out in tears.

They must find it hard to take Truth for authority who have so long mistaken Authority for Truth.

Still all the day the iron wheels go onward, Grinding life down from its mark.

This world is full of beauty, as other worlds above, and if we did our duty, it might be as full of love.

I know no better way of waging the battle for Truth than arraying the facts face to face on either side and letting them fight it out.

Upon Love's bosom Earth floats like an Ark Safely through all the Deluge of the dark.

A sweet new blossom of humanity, fresh fallen from God's own home, to flower on earth

The Future, like a fruitfuller Summer, sits Ripening her Eden silently.

In the wounds our sufferings plough immortal love sows sovereign seed.

I was a dweller amid shadows grim: Till FREEDOM touched my yearning eyes, and lo! Life in a shining circle, rounding rose, As heaven on heaven goes up the jewell'd night. New floods of passionate life swirl'd at my heart, Like Ocean-surges rolling round the world: And FREEDOM was my glittering Bride.

O Youth! flame earnest, still aspire, With energies immortal! To many a heaven of Desire, Our yearning opes a portal! And tho' Age wearies by the way, And hearts break in the furrow, We'll sow the golden grain Today-- The Harvest comes tomorrow.

The deepest dark reveals the starriest hope.

When man to man shall be friend and brother.

All the rarest hues of human life take radiance and are rainbowed out in tears.

The mass of people who are Bible-taught never get free from the erroneous impressions stamped on their minds in their infancy, so that their manhood or womanhood can have no intellectual fulfillment, and millions of them only attain mentally to a sort of second childhood

Love rays us round as glory swathes a star, And, from the mystic touch of lips and palms, Streams rosy warmth!

The plough of Time breaks up our Eden-land, And tramples down its fruitful flowery prime. Yet thro' the dust of ages living shoots O' the old immortal seed start in the furrows; And, where Love looked on with glorious eye, These quicken'd germs of everlastingness Flower lusty, as of old in Paradise!

The heart is like an instrument whose strings Steal magic music from Life's mystic frets.

Cling closer, closer, life to life, Cling closer, heart to heart; The time will come, my own wed Wife, When you and I must part! Let nothing break our band but Death, For in the world above 'Tis the breaker Death that soldereth Our ring of Wedded Love.