Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/381

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The Trustful.
379

ashamed to waste strength or stratagem upon defenceless infancy.

True, these trusting natures suffer much in life's combat. Disappointment deals them crushing blows; they find many of their idols made of clay; many a seeming oak, against which they lean, proves a broken reed; many a flower, cherished in their bosoms, exhales poison. They shrink, appalled, from the harsh lessons of Experience, who teaches them how few in the world resemble themselves; yet their very trustfulness is its own compensation.

It is the province of poets to condense truths in music that haunts the mind with its ringing changes. Among these haunting truths, wedded. to melodious verse, are Fanny Kemble's lines:

"Better trust all, and be deceived,
And weep that trust and that deceiving,
Than doubt one heart that if believed
Had blest one's life with true believing.

Oh, in this mocking world, too fast
The doubting fiend o'ertakes our youth,
Better be cheated to the last,
Than lose the blessed hope of truth."