The Everlasting Youth Of Love
There is a life whose natural strength is not abated with the years; it grows stronger when other things fade. Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away; but love never faileth. It is the Nebo of old age, the height from which amid surrounding ruins the heart surveys its promised land. That height of certainty may be thine. If love be in thee, it will survive all things. Memory may fade, fancy may droop, judgment may waver, perception may languish, but the eye of the heart shall grow brighter toward the close. That which men have called “the valley” shall be to thee a mountain. Thou shalt face the setting sun, and shalt see in it a new rising. The clouds that environ the intellect shall break before the childhood of the spirit, and amid the snows of winter thy time for the singing of birds shall come. Thou shalt gaze upon the world’s dissolving views, and say, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? “
—George Matheson.
The Night Has A Thousand Eyes
The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies,
With the dying sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of the whole life dies,
When love is done.
—Francis W. Bourdillon.
Alternate Reading: Acts 13:1-12.