Daily Thoughts selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife

Excerpt

January.

Welcome, wild North-easter!
   Shame it is to see
Odes to every zephyr:
   Ne’er a verse to thee.
. . . . .
Tired we are of summer,
   Tired of gaudy glare,
Showers soft and steaming,
   Hot and breathless air.
Tired of listless dreaming
   Through the lazy day:
Jovial wind of winter
   Turn us out to play!
Sweep the golden reed-beds;
   Crisp the lazy dyke;
Hunger into madness
   Every plunging pike.
Fill the lake with wild-fowl;
   Fill the marsh with snipe;
While on dreary moorlands
   Lonely curlew pipe.
Through the black fir forest
   Thunder harsh and dry,
Shattering down the snow-flakes
   Off the curdled sky.
. . . . .
Come; and strong within us
   Stir the Viking’s blood;
Bracing brain and sinew:
   Blow, thou wind of God!

Ode to North-east Wind.

New Year’s Day.  January 1.

Gather you, gather you, angels of God—
   Freedom and Mercy and Truth;
Come! for the earth is grown coward and old;
   Come down and renew us her youth.
Wisdom, Self-sacrifice, Daring, and Love,
   Haste to the battlefield, stoop from above,
      To the day of the Lord at hand!

The Day of the Lord.  1847.

Now, and at no other time: in this same nineteenth century lies our work.  Let us thank God that we are here now, and joyfully try to understand where we are, and what our work is here.  As for all superstitions about “the good old times,” and fancies that they belonged to God, while this age belongs only to man, blind chance, and the evil one, let us cast them from us as the suggestions of an evil lying spirit, as the natural parents of laziness, pedantry, fanaticism, and unbelief.  And therefore let us not fear to ask the meaning of this present day, and of all its different voices—the pressing, noisy, complex present, where our workfield lies, the most intricate of all states of society, and of all schools of literature yet known.

Introductory Lecture, Queen’s College.
1848.

Forward.  January 3.

Let us forward.  God leads us.  Though blind, shall we be afraid to follow?  I do not see my way: I do not care to: but I know that He sees His way, and that I see Him.

Letters and Memories.  1848.

Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
Do noble things, not dream them all day long;
And so make life, and death, and that For Ever
One grand sweet song.

A Farewell.  1856.

Live in the present that you may be ready for the future.

MS.

Duty and Sentiment.  January 5.

God demands not sentiment but justice.  The Bible knows nothing of “the religious sentiments and emotions” whereof we hear so much talk nowadays.  It speaks of Duty.  “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought to love one another.”

National Sermons.  1851.

If thou art living a righteous and useful life, doing thy duty orderly and cheerfully where God has put thee, then thou in thy humble place art humbly copying the everlasting harmony and melody which is in heaven; the everlasting harmony and melody by which God made the world and all that therein is—and behold it was very good—in the day when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy over the new-created earth, which God had made to be a pattern of His own perfection.

Good News of God Sermons.  1859.

The Keys of Death and Hell.  January 7.

Fear not.  Christ has the keys of death and hell.  He has been through them and is alive for evermore.  Christ is the first, and was loving and just and glorious and almighty before there was any death or hell.  And Christ is the last, and will be loving and just and glorious and almighty as ever, in that great day when all enemies shall be under His feet, and death shall be destroyed, and death and hell shall be cast into the lake of fire....