The Pessimist

"Luck is the tuning of our inmost thought          To chord with God's great plan.         That done, ah! know,     Thy silent wishes to results"

"I stand in the blaze of the candle rays,          While my merry maidens three     Arrange each tress, and loop my dress,          And render m"

"I held the golden vessel of my soul     And prayed that God would fill it from on high.     Day after day the importuning cry     Grew stronger"

"How happy they are, in all seeming,          How gay, or how smilingly proud,     How brightly their faces are beaming,          These people"

"Here morning in the ploughman's songs is met     Ere yet one footstep shows in all the sky,     And twilight in the east, a doubt as yet,     S"

"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"