First Lines

Week-Day Religion

 

By appearance in text

Not all chapters contain poetry, hence the gaps.

Chapter 1: What Is Your Life

A sacred burden is the life ye bear
Frances Anne Kemble
Lines addressed to the Young Gentleman leaving the Lenox Academy, Mass.
Only the five lines quoted are available on the Web.
 
Each drop uncounted in a storm of rain
Hartley Coleridge, son of S. T. Coleridge
Not in Vain
 
Our many deeds, the thoughts that we have thought,
 
The deeds we do, the words we say
John Keeble
source not found
 

Chapter 4: Help for Worried Week-Days

If only we strive to be pure and true,
 
Thou cam’st not to thy place by accident:
Archbishop Richard Chenevix Trench
Thou cam’st not to thy place by accident,
It is the very place God meant for thee;
And should’st thou there small room for action see,
Do not for this give room for discontent.
 
If only we strive to be pure and true,
 

Chapter 5: The Cure for Care

A step or two on winged feet,
 
God’s plans, like lilies pure and white, unfold:
Charles E. Orr
Sometime
 

Chapter 6: Glimpses at Life’s Windows

Our birth is but a sleep and forgetting;
William Wordsworth
Ode on Intimations of Immortality
From Recollections of Early Childhood
 
Delicate spirits pushed away
 
Heaven’s light for ever shines, earth’s shadows fly;
Shelly
Adonais.
Stanza 52
 

Chapter 7: The Marriage Altar, and After

In the long years liker must they grow:
Tennyson
The Princess
 
And she is gone, sweet human love is gone!
Robert Browning
Paracelsus
Part V: Paracelsus Attains  

Chapter 8: Religion in the Home

Sweet are the joys of home,
 

Chapter 9: The Ministry of Sorrow

Tis sorrow builds the shining ladder up
James Russell Lowell
On the Death of a Friend’s Child
 
Through the clouded glass
 
I turned and clasped her close with sudden strength,
Celia Thaxter
Sorrow
 
If we could push ajar the gates of life
May Riley Smith
Sometime
 

Chapter 10: As unto the Lord

What would God have this sorrow do for me?
 

Chapter 11: Humility and Responsibility

Only a thought; but the work it wrought
 
Hark, hark! A voice amid the quiet intense!
George MacDonald
Within and Without: A Dramatic Poem. (1893)
 
What are we set on earth for?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 

Chapter 12: Not to Be Ministered Unto

She sat and wept, and with her untressed hair
Hartley Coleridge
 

Chapter 14: Wayside Ministries

Like moonlight on a troubled sea
Thomas Moore
The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore
Part 22 of 33
 

Chapter 15: The Beauty of Quiet Lives

Then to his poor trade he turned
Robert Browning
 
What shall I do lest life in silence pass
 
Fairy pencilings, a quaint design
 

Chapter 16: Kindness That Comes Too Late

What use for the rope if it be not flung
Margaret Junkin Preston
Before Death  
 
How much would I care for it could I know
Margaret Junkin Preston
Before Death  

Chapter 18: On Loving Others

The ill timed truth we might have kept
Edward Rowland Sill
The Fool’s Prayer
 

Chapter 19: Thoughtfulness and Tact

Evil is wrought by want of thought
Thomas Hood

Chapter 20: Mutual Forbearance

Not in the clamour of the crowded street,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Poets
 

Chapter 21: Manly Men

Let my early dreams come true
 

Chapter 23: Personal Beauty

What is beauty? Not the show
Sir Aubrey de Vere Hunt
 

Chapter 24: Taking Cheerful Views

Chapter 25: Something about Amusements

Why should we think youth’s draught of joy
John Keble
Second Sunday after Epiphany
 

Chapter 26: On the Choice of Friends

Chapter 27: The Ethics of Home-Decoration

Each man’s chimney is his golden milestone
Longfellow
 

Chapter 28: Pictures in the Heart

We overstate the ills of life, and take
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Exaggeration
 

Chapter 29: Losses

Chapter 30: The Service of Consecration

Chapter 31: Beautiful Old Age

Softly, oh softly, the years have swept by thee,
 

Chapter 32: Unconscious Farewells

If thou dost bid they friend farewell
Mollie E. Moore Davis
Counsel
 

 

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