Small Beginnings

A traveler on a dosty road strcwed acoras on tho leo, And one took root and sprouted up, and grew luto a tree. Love sought its shade at evening time, to breathe its early vows. And age was pleased in beats of dood to bast beneath its booghs; The dormouse loved its dangling twigs, the birds sweet music bore; It stood a glory ia its place, a bleeaing evermore. A littlo spring had lost its way amid Uw grata and fiTii, A passing stranger seooped weU where weary men might torn; He walled it in, and hang with c&re a Uvdle at the brink; He thought not of the deed he dkl, bat Jodged that toil mlght drink. He pareed again, and lol the weU, by summere never dried. Had cooled ten thoasand parchlng tongnes, and saved a life beside. A dreamer dropped a random thonght; 'twas old, and yet 'twas new; A simple fancy of Uie brain, bat strong in being truc. It shone upon a genial mind, and lol its light became A lamp of life, a beacon ray, a monitory ñame. The thought was sraalL, its issue grtsat, a watchfire on the hill; It sheds its radiance far a-down, and cheers the valley stiU! A nameless man, amid a crowd that thronged the daily mart, Let fall a word of Hope and Love, unstudied, from the heart; A whisper on the tumult thrown - a transUory breath- It raised a brother from the dost, it saTed a soul from death; O germ! O fountl O word of lovel O thonght at random cast! Ye were but little at the first, bnt mighty at the lost.