Out on unfeeling man! Will he who drives the beggar from his gates, And to the moan of fellow-man shuts up Each avenue of feeling--will he deign To think that such as Thou deserve his aid? No! when the gust raves, and the floods descend, Or the frost pinches, Thou may'st, at dim eve, With forced and fearful love approach his home, What time, 'mid western mists, the broad, red sun, Sinking, calls out from heaven the earliest star; And the crisp blazing of the dry Yule-log Flickers upon the pictured walls, and lights By fits the unshutter'd lattice; but, in vain, Thy chirp repeated earnestly; the flap, Against the obdurate pane, of thy small wing;-- He hears thee not--he heeds not--but, at morn, The ice-enamoured schoolboy, early afoot, Finds thy small bulk beneath the alder stump, Thy bright eyes closed, and tiny talons clench'd, Stiff in the gripe of death. The floating plume Tells how the wind blows, with a certainty As great as doth the vessel's full-swoln sheets; So doth the winged seed; 'tis not alone In mighty things that we may truliest read The heart, but in its temper and its tone:-- Thus true Benevolence we ever find Forgiving, gentle, tremblingly alive To pity, and unweariedly intent On all the little, thousand charities, Which day by day calls forth. Oh! as we hope Forgiveness of our earthly trespasses,-- Of all our erring deeds and wayward thoughts,-- When Time's dread reckoning comes,--oh! as we hope Mercy, who need it much, let us, away From kindness never turning, mould our hearts To sympathy, and from all withering blight Preserve them, and all deadening influences:-- So 'twill be best for us. The All-seeing Eye, Which numbers each particular hair, and notes From heaven the sparrow's fall, shall pass not o'er Without approval deeds unmarked by man-- Deeds, which the right hand from the left conceals-- Nor overlook the well-timed clemency, That soothed and stilled the murmurs of distress.