n us,
moderate sorrows. Let us not long violently after, or wish too eagerly
to rise in life.

_Water of Life Sermons_. 1869.

Poetry in the Slums. March 26.

"True poetry, like true charity, my laddie, begins at home. . . . Hech!
is there no the heaven above them there, and the hell beneath them? and
God frowning, and the devil grinning? No poetry there! Is no the verra
idea of the classic tragedy defined to be man conquered by circumstance?
canna ye see it there? And the verra idea of the modern tragedy, man
conquering circumstance? and I'll show ye that too--in many a garret
where no eye but the good God's enters to see the patience, and the
fortitude, and the self-sacrifice, and the love stronger than death,
that's shining in those dark places of the earth."

"Ah, poetry's grand--but fact is grander; God and Satan are grander. All
around ye, in every gin-shop and costermonger's cellar, are God and Satan
at death-grips; every garret is a haill Paradise Lost or Paradise
Regained."

_Alton Locke_, chap. viii. 1849.

Time and Eternity. March 27.

. . . Our life's floor
Is laid upon Eternity; no crack in it
But shows the underlying heaven.

_Saint's Tragedy_, Act iii. Scene ii.

Work. March 28.

Yes. Life is meant for work, and not for ease; to labour in danger and
in dread, to do a little good ere the night comes when no man can work,
instead of trying to realise for oneself a paradise; not even Bunyan's
shepherd-paradise, much less Fourier's casino-paradise, and perhaps,
least of all, because most selfish and isolated of all, our own
art-paradise, the apotheosis of loafing, as Claude calls it.

_Prose Idylls_. 1849.

Teaching of Pictures. March 29.

Pictures raise blessed thoughts in me. Why not in you, my toiling
brother? Those landscapes painted by loving, wise, old Claude two
hundred years ago, are still as fresh as ever. How still the meadows
are! How pure and free that vault of deep blue sky! No wonder that thy
worn heart, as thou lookest, sighs aloud, "Oh, that I had wings as a
dove, then would I flee away and be at rest." Ah! but gayer meadows and
bluer skies await thee _in the world to come_--that fairyland made
real--"the new heavens and the new earth" which God hath prepared for the
pure and the loving, the just, and the brave, who have conquered in this
sore fight of life.

_True Words for Brave Men_. 1849.

Voluntary Heroism. March 30.