William R. Alger (1822 – 1905)
Unitarian minister and author whose writings were important to the development of comparative religious studies.
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In the nine heavens are eight Paradises;
Where is the ninth one? In the human breast.
Only the blessed dwell in th' Paradises,
But blessedness dwells in the human breast.
Fill up the goblet and reach to me some!
Drinking makes wise, but dry fasting makes glum.
With strength and patience all his grievous loads are borne,
And from the world's rose-bed he only asks a thorn.
Most men give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain.
When man seized the loadstone of science, the loadstar of superstition vanished in the clouds.
Beware the deadly fumes of that insane elation
Which rises from the cup of mad impiety,
And go, get drunk with that divine intoxication
Which is more sober far than all sobriety.
God's mills grind slow,
But they grind woe.
A thousand years a poor man watched
Before the gate of Paradise:
But while one little nap he snatched,
It oped and shut. Ah! was he wise?
An Arab, by his earnest gaze,
Has clothed a lovely maid with blushes;
A smile within his eyelids plays
And into words his longing gushes.
In the rest of Nirvana all sorrows surcease:
Only Buddha can guide to that city of Peace
Whose inhabitants have the eternal release.
Ten poor men sleep in peace on one straw heap, as Saadi sings,
But the immensest empire is too narrow for two kings.
Men often make up in wrath what they want in reason.
A gray eye is a sly eye,
And roguish is a brown one;
Turn full upon me thy eye,—
Ah, how its wavelets drown one!
A blue eye is a true eye;
Mysterious is a dark one,
Which flashes like a spark-sun!
A black eye is the best one.
The moon is a silver pin-head vast,
That holds the heaven's tent-hangings fast.
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