“NOTHING BUT BLANK.”
Lines in answer to a poetic lamentation in an album, that
"All was a blank, nothing but blank!”
HAVE you found life a "blank"? what! all nothing but "blank"?
I'm sorry, my friend, at your fate:
But perhaps in your ear, if you 're willing to hear,
The cause of your "blanks" I '11 relate.
Suppose you should go to the regions of snow,
To rear there the fruits of the sun;
In vain would you sow, not a seed there would grow,
Naught but "blanks" when your labors were done.
Suppose you should toil to win harvests and spoil
From Afric's hot deserts of sand;
Would you wonder, I trow, if the shares of your plow
Were bootless worn out on such land?
In the lott'ry of life, with its turmoil and strife,
After pleasure, and riches, and rank,
'T is no wonder to find, that an earth-grov’ling mind,
Has found every ticket a "blank.”
Let me ask you to look into Solomon's book,
At the lesson he teaches so plain;
That though all else is "blank," wisdom, riches, and rank,
There are still richest prizes to gain:
For "the fear of the Lord," as revealed in His Word,
Is "Beginning of Wisdom" below;
When this you have tried, though all."blanks" be beside,
A prize beyond rubies you'll know.
I once groaned like you, while proving how true
That all without God was a "blank.;”
Now I sing with delight, both by day and by night,
Since these living waters I drank.
Oh, attend to His voice, and your heart shall rejoice,
It will meet all your troubles so rife;
“Ye hungry ones, come; at My table there's room,
And partake of the banquet of Life.”
Then lift up your eyes, to a home in the skies,
All else with corruption is rank;
And then you '11 agree, my dear poet, with me,
His favor's a prize, not a "blank.”