Waiting for Thee to make them 'white as snow';
I cannot look upon them for the shame
That surgeth up within my grieving heart,
Dyeing my cheek as crimson as my sins.
O patient, pitying Christ!,

Let Thy humanity cry out for me

Unto the Father whom Thou lovest so,

That I may be forgiven.

Dear Lord, this bondage has been very hard—
Evil has worn such radiant, spotless robes,
And in my heart's guest-chamber hath lain down
Wrapp'd in so fair a guise that I have thought
I entertain'd an angel guest from Thee.

And yet,

Not always was it thus.-Again I feel

The crimson flush of shame upon my cheek-
For many times have I said, 'Enter thou,'
When she hath come clad in her own dark robes,
And I have laid my hand in hers, and smiled.
Remembering not that Thou didst die for me,
I have made merry when I should have wept.
O Lamb of God! who takest guilt away,
Behold, I am so weary of my sins;

I bring the crimson things and lay them down
At Thy dear feet. Speak gently unto me
From out the multitude of Thy most sweet
And tender mercies; let me hear Thee say,
"O thou afflicted, and not comforted,
Thou restless, tossing one, behold I lay
Thy stones with fairest colours, and I make
Of sapphires thy foundations; from henceforth
The beauty of the Lord thy God be thine!'
So shall the mystery

Of Thy glad peace reveal itself to me,
And 'white as snow' my heart's guest-chamber be
For Christ, its Kingly Guest !—Neil Macgregor.

3106. SKULL. The

REMOVE yon skull from out the scatter'd heaps; Is that a temple where a God may dwell?

SLANDER meets no regard from noble minds; Only the base believe, what the base only utter. Beller.

3109. SLANDER. Methods of

THE hint malevolent, the look oblique,
The obvious satire, or implied dislike,
The sneer equivocal, the harsh reply,
And all the cruel language of the eye;
The artful injury, whose venom'd dart
Scarce wounds the hearing, while it stabs the heart;
The guarded phrase whose meaning kills, yet, told,
The list'ner wonders how you thought it cold;
These, and a thousand griefs minute as these,
Corrode our comfort, and destroy our ease.

Hannah More.

Look on its broken arch, its ruin'd wall,
Its chambers desolate, and portals foul:

Yes, this was once ambition's airy hall,

The dome of thought, the palace of the soul: Behold through each lack-lustre, eyeless hole The gay recess of wisdom and of wit,

And passion's port, that never brook'd control: Can all saint, sage, or sophist ever writ, People this lonely tower, this tenement refit?

3107. SLANDER: deadly.

Byron.

'Tis slander,

Whose edge is sharper than the sword; whose tongue Out-venoms all the worms of Nile.—Shakespeare.

There are whose joy is night and day
To talk a character away :
Eager from rout to rout they haste,
To blast the generous and the chaste,
And hunting reputation down,
Proclaim their triumphs through the town.

Pope.

There is a lust in man no charm can tame,
Of loudly publishing his neighbour's shame;
On eagle's wings immortal scandals fly;
While virtuous actions are but born and die.
Harvey.

3112. SLANDER. Shamefulness of

O THOU, from whose rank breath nor sex can save,
Nor sacred virtue, nor the powerless grave,
Felon unwhipp'd! than whom in yonder cells
Full many a groaning wretch less guilty dwells,—
Blush, if of honest blood a drop remains,
To steal its lonely way along thy veins;
Blush, if the bronze long harden'd on thy cheek
Has left one spot where that poor drop can speak ;
Blush to be branded with the Slanderer's name,
And, though thou dread'st not sin, at least dread
shame.-Sprague.

3113. SLANDER. Sinfulness of

THOSE Who murder fame Kill more than life destroyers.-Savage.

3114. SLANDER. Treatment of

IF I'm traduced by tongues which neither know
My faculties nor person, yet will be
The chronicles of my doing, let me say
'Tis but the fate of place, and the rough brake
That virtue must go through.--Shakespeare.

Whence proceeds this weight we lay
On what detracting people say?
Their utmost malice cannot make
Your head, or tooth, or finger ache,
Nor spoil your shape, distort your face,
Or put one feature out of place.-Swift.

If a liar accuseth thee of evil, be not swift to answer:
Yea, rather give him license for a while; it shall be

thine honour afterward:

Never yet was calumny engendered, but good men speedily discerned it,

And innocence hath burst from its injustice as the green world rolling out of chaos.

What if the ignorant still hold out, obstinate in unkind judgment—

Ignorance and calumny are paired; we affirm by two negations;

Let them stand round about, pushing at the columa

in a circle,

For all their toil and wasted strength, the foolish do but prop it.

And note thou this; in the secret of their hearts, they feel the taunt is false,

And cannot help but reverence the courage that walketh amid calumnies unanswering: He standeth as a gallant chief, unheeding shot or shell;

He trusteth in God, his Judge; neither arrows nor the pestilence shall harm him.-Tupper.

3115. SLANDERERS.

THEY are the moths and scarabs of the state,
The bane of empires, and the dregs of courts,
Who, to endear themselves to an employment,
Care not whose fame they blast, whose life they en-
danger;

And, under a disguised and cobweb mask
Of love unto their sovereign, vomit forth
Their own prodigious malice; a pretending
To be the props and columns of their safety,
The guards unto his person and his peace,
Disturb it most, with their false, lapwing cries.
Ben Jonson.

Soft buzzing slander; silky moths, that eat
An honest name.-Thomson.

3116. SLAVERY. British

'SLAVES cannot breathe in England'-a proud boast!
And yet a mockery! if from coast to coast,
Though fetter'd slave be none, her floors and soil
Groan underneath a weight of slavish toil,
For the poor many, measured out by rules
Fetch'd with cupidity from heartless schools,
That to an Idol, falsely called 'the wealth
Of Nations,' sacrifice a People's health,
Body, and mind, and soul, a thirst so keen
Is ever urging on the vast machine

Of sleepless Labour, 'mid whose dizzy wheels
The power least prized is that which thinks and feels.
Wordsworth.

3117. SLAVERY. Complicity in

Which shook the waves and rent the sky?

Weeps pale despair, and writhing anguish roars;

E'en now, in Afric's groves, with hideous yell,
Fierce Slavery stalks, and slips the dogs of hell;
From vale to vale the gathering cries rebound,
And sable nations tremble at the sound!
Ye bands of senators! whose suffrage sways
Britannia's realms, whom either Ind obeys;
Who right the injured, and reward the brave,
Stretch your strong arm, for ye have power to save!
Throned in the vaulted heart, his dread resort,
Inexorable Conscience holds his court;
With still small voice the plots of guilt alarms,
Bares his mask'd brow, his lifted hand disarms;
But wrapt in night, with terrors all his own,
He speaks in thunder when the deed is done.
Hear him, ye senates! hear this truth sublime,
He who permits oppression, shares the crime!

3118. SLAVERY: debases.

Darwin.

THE conquer'd also, and enslaved by war,
Shall, with their freedom lost, their virtue lose.
Milton.

Ill-fated race! the softening arts of peace ;
Whate'er the humanizing muses teach;
The godlike wisdom of the temper'd breast,
Progressive truth, the patient force of thought;
Investigation calm, whose silent powers
Command the world; the light that leads to heaven;
Kind, equal rule, the government of laws,
And all-protecting freedom, which alone
Sustain the name and dignity of man:
These are not theirs.-Thomson.

3119. SLAVERY. Excuses for

CANST thou, and honour'd with a Christian name,
Buy what is woman-born, and feel no shame ?
Trade in the blood of innocence, and plead
Expedience as a warrant for the deed?

So may the wolf, whom famine has made bold
To quit the forest and invade the fold;
So may the ruffian, who with ghostly glide,
Dagger in hand, steals close to your bed-side;
Not he, but his emergence forced the door;
He found it inconvenient to be poor.-Cowper.

3120. SLAVERY. Inhumanity of

OH for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,
Might never reach me more. My ear is pain'd,
My soul is sick, with every day's report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is fill'd.

There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart,
It does not feel for man; the natural bond
Of brotherhood is sever'd as the flax
That falls asunder at the touch of fire.
He finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not colour'd like his own; and having power
To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
Lands intersected by a narrow frith
Abhor each other. Mountains interposed
Make enemies of nations, who had else
Like kindred drops been mingled into one.
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
And, worse than all, and most to be deplored,
As human nature's broadest, foulest blot,
Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
With stripes, that Mercy, with a bleeding heart,
Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast.
Then what is man? And what man, seeing this, |
And having human feelings, does not blush,
And hang his head, to think himself a man?
I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews, bought and sold, have ever earn'd.
No dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
Just estimation prized above all price,
I would much rather be myself the slave,
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.
Cowper.

3121. SLAVERY. Misery of

WE and our fathers, from our childhood bred
To watch the cruel victor's eye, to dread
The arbitrary lash, to bend, to grieve,
(Outcast of mortal race!) can we conceive
Image of aught delightful, soft, or gay?
Alas! when we have toil'd the longsome day,
The fullest bliss our hearts aspire to know
Is but some interval from active woe,
In broken rest and startling sleep to mourn,
Till morn, the tyrant, and the scourge, return.
Prior.

War, famine, pest, volcano, storm, and fire,
Intestine broils, Oppression, with her heart
Wrapt up in triple brass, besiege mankind.
God's image disinherited of day,

Here, plunged in mines, forgets a sun was made:
There, beings deathless as their haughty lord,
Are hammer'd to the galling oar for life;
And plough the winter's wave, and reap despair.

3122. SLAVES.

THEY are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,

Young.

Rather than in silence shrink

From the truth they needs must think; They are slaves who dare not be

In the right with two or three.

3123. SLEEP. Benefits of

SLEEP that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care, The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast.-Shakespeare.

O sacred rest!

O peace of mind! repairer of decay,
Whose balms renew the limbs to labours of the day.
Dryden.

Man's rich restorative; his balmy bath,
That supples, lubricates, and keeps in play
The various movements of this nice machine,
Which asks such frequent periods of repair.
When tired with vain rotations of the day,
Sleep winds us up for the succeeding dawn :
Fresh we spin on, till sickness clogs our wheels,
Or death quite breaks the spring, and motion ends.
Young.

3124. SLEEP: cannot be commanded.

King Henry. O SLEEP! O gentle Sleep!
Nature's soft nurse, , how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down,
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
Why rather, Sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,

And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,
Than in the perfumed chambers of the great,

Under the canopies of costly state,

And lull'd with sounds of sweetest melody?
O thou dull god! why liest thou with the vile,
In loathsome beds, and leav'st the kingly couch,
A watch-case, or a common 'larum-bell?
Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge,
And in the visitation of the winds,
Who take the ruffian billows by the top,
Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them,
With deafening clamours, in the slippery clouds,
That, with the hurly, death itself awakes?
Canst thou, O partial Sleep! give thy repose

3128. SLEEP: impartial.

MAN o'erlabour'd with his being's strife, Shrinks to that sweet forgetfulness of life : There lie love's feverish hope, and cunning's guile, Hate's working brain, and lull'd ambition's wile; O'er each vain eye oblivion's pinions wave, And quench'd existence crouches in a grave. What better name may slumber's bed become? Night's sepulchre, the universal home,

Where weakness, strength, vice, virtue, sunk supine,
Alike in naked helplessness recline.—Byron.

Come sleep, O sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe;
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
Th' indifferent judge between the high and low.
Sir P. Sidney.

3129. SLEEP. Meditation before

THE night is come: like to the day,
Depart not Thou, great God, away.
Let not my sin, black as the night,
Eclipse the lustre of Thy light.
Keep still in my horizon to me
The sun makes not the day, but Thee.
Thou, whose nature cannot sleep,
On my temples sentry keep;
Guard me 'gainst those watchful foes
Whose eyes are open while mine close:
Let no dreams my head infest,
But such as Jacob's temples blest.
While I do rest, my soul advance:
Make my sleep a holy trance,
That I may, my rest being wrought,
Awake unto some holy thought,
And with as active vigour run
My course, as doth the nimble sun.
Sleep is a death: oh, make me try,
By sleeping, what it is to die!