I see a girl, once lightest in the dance,
And maddest with the gayety of life,
Grow pale and pulseless, wasting day by day,
While death lies idly dreaming in her breast,
Blighting her breath, and poisoning her blood.
I see her frantic with a fearful thought
That haunts and horrifies her shrinking soul,
And bursts in sighs and sobs and feverish prayers;
And now, at last, the awful struggle ends,
A sweet smile sits upon her angel face,
And peace, with downy bosom, nestles close
Where her worn heart throbs faintly; closer still
As the death shadows gather; closer still,
As, on white wings, the outward-going soul
Flies to a home it never would have sought,
Had a great evil failed to point the way.
I see a youth whom God has crowned with power,
And cursed with poverty. With bravest heart
He struggles with his lot, through toilsome years,--
Kept to his task by daily want of bread,
And kept to virtue by his daily task,--
Till, gaining manhood in the manly strife,--
The fire that fills him smitten from a flint--
The strength that arms him wrested from a fiend--
He stands, at last, a master of himself,
And, in that grace, a master of his kind.

_David_.

Familiar visions these, but ever full