Inspired by the Family

The family!! — a longing, noble in life, and a social sense, sublime,
in which responsibility is a matter that blends with nature,
and lays a stone in the building of the useful society —
It is a bold venturing forth, looking out upon the life of the individual
with the warm visions — of the family —
— gazing upon it.
And longing merits it, that there may remain, in the long reach of its roots,
out of his senses and his thoughts, a living image, stamped from
his spirit, abiding in the folds of the years, a trace outlasting the thing itself.
And it opens out upon a firmness of bond and a fastness of
endurance that fulfills its range, by what it has been given of capability in the self,
of nobility in the soul, and of striving in the battleground of life.
So from the dream that wraps thought in fruitfulness and safety,
and from the soul flooded with tranquility in a bountiful
conscience,
and from the felicity that life achieves amid its clamor —
... to this image,
gleaming... on the brow of time, encircled by a frame of
radiance that springs up in the conscience of man
— by inspiration —