THE HEART’S CONFESSION.

———

BY HENRY MORFORD.

———

Little that moves the pulse of youth and joy

My wayward heart bends downward to confess;

Little of virtue, without some alloy

To make my good deeds vain and valueless;

Though the world pass me, trusting and deceived,

Though sunny smiles glitter where frowns have been,

There is a spirit in my bosom grieved,

Before whose eyes I may not draw the screen;

And here, when I am sad, she folds her wings

To warble of lost hopes and past desires,

My heart-strings loosen as the spirit sings,

And cooling tears drop on my wasting fires.

And then I know that I have turned away

From the proud picture that my fancy drew,

That I am passing further every day

From my own standard of the good and true;

We go not to the grave as we arise

From childhood’s slumbers, in the outward face,

And the soul, looking out from human eyes,

Becomes corrupt and bitter in the race.

I deemed that I should pass into my age

As I began, warm, generous and kind,

And pausing here upon life’s second stage,

I turn and look upon a cankered mind!

I have o’erstepped my bound—I have passed by

The goal that none may pass and yet be pure,

The pole star has grown glimmering to my eye,

And meteors have become my spirit’s lure—

So from one failing step we come to tread

Paths that in early youth we swore to shun,

So, from the blue sky shining overhead,

The whispering angels leave us, one by one.

I have past by the goal; ’tis hard to pause,

And, but for pride, I should shake hands with Vice.

Trample on Virtue’s desecrated laws,

And with my own dishonor pay the price.

Wo to us, when our pride becomes our truth

And hollow-hearted selfishness our trust,

With age’s avarice creeping over youth,

And clothing all things in corroding rust!

Pride is frail hold on virtue, yet ’tis all

That binds me to one deed of human hope;

Let me forget my pride and I shall fall

So low contempt will lose me in its scope!

How long shall this frail pride support my name?

How long ere malice o’er my head shall creep.

And touch me with the fangs of his dark shame,

And lure me, with his serpent eyes, to sleep?

I know not that I shall forget my kind,

Nor shame the form I owe to human birth;

I know not but the foaming of my mind

May leave a legacy of good to earth;

But I am saddened when I think that all

Of the world’s plaudit flows from my deceit,

And that the eyes that love me would recall

Their pleasant looks, could they but trace my feet!

The heart’s confession bears the curse of years,

To be without a pure thought at my side,

And if I fall lament me not with tears,

But think that time has shorn away my pride!

Painted by C. L. Eastlake R. A. Engraved by W. E. Tucker CHRIST WEEPING OVER JERUSALEM.