ON

It is pleasant to think, just under the snow,
That stretches so bleak and blank and cold,
Are beauty and warmth that we cannot know,
Green fields and leaves and blossoms of gold.

Under the green hedges after the snow,
There do the dear little violets grow,
Hiding their modest and beautiful heads
Under the hawthorn in soft, mossy beds.
Sweet as the roses, and blue as the sky,
Down there do the dear little violets lie;
Hiding their heads where they scarce may be seen,
By the leaves you may know where the violets have been.
--MOULTRIE

The linnet is singing the wild wood through;
The fawn's bounding footsteps skim over the dew.
The butterfly flits round the blossoming tree,
And the cowslip and bluebell are bent by the bee;
All the creatures that dwell in the forest are gay,
And why should not I be as merry as they?
--MITFORD

Do the duty which lies nearest thee!
Thy second duty will already have become clearer.
--CARLYLE

Live truly, and thy life shall be
A great and noble creed.

I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty;
I woke, and found that life was Duty.
--HOOPER

Great is the art of beginning, but greater the
art is of ending.--LONGFELLOW

Opinions shape ideals, and it is ideals that
inspire conduct.--JOHN MORLEY

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you
must hammer and forge yourself into
one.--FROUDE

Not once or twice in our fair island story
The path of duty was the way to glory.
--TENNYSON

Know thy work and do it, and work at it like a
Hercules. One monster there is in the world--an
idle man.--CARLYLE

Every evil to which we do not succumb is a
benefactor. We gain the strength of the
temptation we resist.--EMERSON

In every common hour of life,
In every flame that glows,
In every breath of being rife
With aspiration or of strife
Man feels more than he knows.