POETRY

 

 

 

Not what we give, but what we share-
For the gift without the giver is bare;
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three-
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me.

James Russell Lowell

 

 

I never knew a night so black
Light fails to follow on its track.
I never knew a storm so gray
It failed to have its clearing day.
I never knew such bleak despair
That there was not a rift, somewhere.
I never knew as hour so dear
Love could not fill it full of cheer!

John Kendrick Bangs

 

 

The kindest and the happiest pair
Will find occasion to forbear;
And something, every day they live,
To pity, and perhaps, forgive.

William Cowper

 

 

SHADOW-SELVES

This learned I from a shadow for a tree,
That to and fro did sway against a wall;
Our shadow-selves, our influnce, may fall
Where we ourselves can nover be.

Anna E. Hamilton

 

 

PRAYER

Calm soul of all things! Make it mine
To feel, amid the city's jar,
That there abides a peace of thine,
Man did not make, and can not mar!

The will to neither strive nor cry,
The power to feel with others give!
Calm, calm me more! nor let me die
Before I have begun to live.

Matthew Arnold

 

 

TRUE REST

Rest is not quitting
The busy career;
Rest is the fitting
Of self to one's sphere.

'Tis the brook's motion
Clear without strife,
Fleeting to ocean,
After this life.

'Tis loving and serving,
The highest and best;
'Tis onward, unswerving,
And this is true rest.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

 

 

MEMORABLE PRAYERS

O God, grant us the serenity to accept
What we can not change;
The courage to change what can be changed;
And wisdom to know one from the other.

Reinhold Nieguhr

 

May the wisdom of God instruct me,
The eye of God watch over me,
The ear of God hear me,
The word of God give me sweet talk,
And the hand of God defend me.

St. Patrick

 

 

O Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day.
If I forget thee,
Do not thou forget me.

Lord Ashley

 

 

Teach us, good Lord, to serve thee as thou deservest:

to give and not to count the cost;
to fight and not to heed the wounds;
to toil and not to seek for rest;
to labor and not to ask for any reward
savy that of knowing that we do thy will.

St. Ignatius of Loyola

 

 

THE UNSEEN BRIDGE

There is a bridge whereof the span
Is hidden in the heart of man,
And reaches, without pile or rod,
Into the plenitude of God.

It carries all tht honestly
Is faith or hope or chairity
No other traffic will it bear:
This broad yet narrow Bridge of Prayer.

Gilbert Thomas

 

 

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