previous next

To Miss Henrietta Sargent.

1870.
I promised to send you the lines I wrote about George Thompson in 1835. Here they are. Perhaps they will recall to you the feelings with which you used to listen to him in those old stirring times.

I've heard thee when thy powerful words
Were like the cataract's roar,
Or like the ocean's mighty waves
Resounding on the shore.

But, even in reproof of sin,
Love brooded over all,
As the mild rainbow's heavenly arch
Rests on the waterfall.

I've heard thee in the hour of prayer,
When dangers were around;
Thy voice was like the royal harp,
That breathed a charmed sound.

The evil spirit felt its power,
And howling turned away;
And some, perchance, who “came to scoff,
Remained with thee to pray.”

I've seen thee, too, in playful mood,
When words of magic spell
Dropped from thy lips like fairy gems,
That sparkled as they fell. [207]

Still great and good in every change,
Magnificent and mild,
As if a seraph's godlike power
Dwelt in a little child.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
George Thompson (1)
Henrietta Sargent (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
1870 AD (1)
1835 AD (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: