My day or night myself I make Whene'er I sleep or play; And could I ever keep awake With me 't were always day. With heavy sighs I often hear You mourn my hapless woe; But sure with patience I can bear A loss I ne'er can know. Then let not what I cannot have My cheer of mind destroy : Whilst thus I sing, I am a king, Although a poor blind boy. COLLEY CIBBER. THE RAINY DAY. THE day is cold, and dark, and dreary; My life is cold, and dark, and dreary; Be still, sad heart! and cease repining; HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. Good night! I'd say the griefs, the joys, At forty-five played o'er again. I'd say we suffer and we strive Not less nor more as men than boys, With grizzled beards at forty-five, As erst at twelve in corduroys; And if, in time of sacred youth, We learned at home to love and pray, Pray Heaven that early love and truth May never wholly pass away. And in the world, as in the school, I'd say how fate may change and shift, The prize be sometimes with the fool, The race not always to the swift: The kind cast pitilessly down. Who knows the inscrutable design? Blessed be He who took and gave! Why should your mother, Charles, not mine, Be weeping at her darling's grave? We bow to Heaven that willed it so, That darkly rules the fate of all, That sends the respite or the blow, That's free to give or to recall. This crowns his feast with wine and wit, Or hunger hopeless at the gate. So each shall mourn, in life's advance, Pray God the heart may kindly glow, And whitened with the winter snow. Come wealth or want, come good or ill, Let young and old accept their part, And bow before the awful will, And bear it with an honest heart. |