Character and Conduct – 30 August – Dissension
ALAS! how light a cause may move
Dissension between hearts that love!
Hearts that the world in vain had tried,
And sorrow but more closely tied;
That stood the storm when waves were rough,
Yet in a sunny hour fall off,
Like ships that have gone down at sea,
When heaven was all tranquillity!
A something, light as air – a look,
A word unkind or wrongly taken –
Oh! love that tempests never shook,
A breath, a touch like this has shaken,
And ruder words will soon rush in
To spread the breach that words begin;
And eyes forget the gentle ray
They wore in courtship’s smiling day;
And voices lose the tone that shed
A tenderness round all they said ;
Till fast declining, one by one,
The sweetnesses of love are gone,
And hearts, so lately mingled, seem
Like broken clouds – or like the stream
That smiling left the mountain’s brow,
As though its waters ne’er could sever,
Yet, ere it reach the plain below,
Breaks into floods, that part for ever:
O you that have the charge of Love,
Keep him in rosy bondage bound!
Lalla Rookh, T. MOORE
oooOOOooo
These quotes are from ‘Character and Conduct’ A selection of helpful thoughts from various authors arranged for daily reading.
Collected by Constance M Whishaw and first published in 1905 as a follow up to her volume of Daily Readings for members of the Being and Doing Guild who asked for an additional volume
In her preface Whishaw writes:
‘This collection of noble thoughts expressed by men and women of past and present ages who have endeavoured to leave the world a little better than they found it.’
It is my hope in publishing them here readers may be inspired to imitate the example of the authors.
Suffolk Vicar 