Tho' losses and crosses
Be lessons right severe,
There's wit there ye'll get there
Ye'll find nae ither where.
Burns.
Rude is the prospect round you spread—
Rough is the path yoxi have to tread—
Avoid distrust and fear :
Use cheerfully the honest means
Which heaven for you, for all ordains,
With providential care :

Nor murmur at the wise decree
Which placed your lot in poverty,
For nature's wants are few;
If goodness only brings content,
What boots it whether wealth or want
Should prove our trial below.

For industry is all you need ;
The hand which earns your daily bread
Earns indej>endence too.
And is some gaudier gift denied?
'Tis done to check some foolish pride
Which on that gift may grow.

Let honour still where'er you stray.
The guardian spirit of your way,
Upon your course attend.
Howe'er the veering gale my blow,
Let fortune's tide or ebb or flow,
She's still a matchless friend.

Tempted by wealth, or tried by woe,
Do ever as you ought to do.
And peace your lot will bless ;
When from the golden rule you stray,
You've lost dear boy, you've lost the way
Which leads to happiness.

To make us blest is heaven's delight ;
But bliss is where the heart is right—
On this great truth depend—
While destiny here schools the mind,
The circumstances we shall find
Best suited to that end.

Praised by the vain, we too grow vain,
'Till humbled pride grows wise again
Beneath correction's rod ;
There finds that peace which is denied
To power, ambition, Avealth, and pride—
The humble dwell with God.

In error—some we happier call;
But heaven bestows their share on all
Of active joy or rest:
Great truth! by us ill understood,
That heaven alone can know the good.
And heaven alone the blest.

What know we of our earthly state .'
This—sfood is bliss, and conduct fate—
What of the world to come ?
That we are pilgrim wanderers here,
Fast journeying to a brighter sphere,
That hrighter sphere our home.