False Fame and True

While men, our faults perceiving not, would move our fame to raise,
How oft our natures weakly yield to flattery and praise,
Oh! what in us should e’er excite our vanity and pride!
Or cause us not in lowliness, vain thoughts of self to hide?PSAS 78.4

Let deeds of charity and love in all our life abound;
Philanthropy fails not to go, where’er a sufferer’s found,
To seek the poor, degraded, low, the wicked and debased,
Though his own name by slander’s tongue, be ever thus defaced.PSAS 79.1

These are the jewels he would gain, this course would fain pursue;
That he is not like them, he asks, to whom is glory due?
Who made us thus to differ here? who gives the strength and power
To hold the victory over self, in dark temptation’s hour?PSAS 79.2

Let him who think she stands take heed; this is the word to all;
The strongest may be overcome, and through temptation fall.
Do we in higher circles move? are higher placed by birth?
No such distinction will be known, when moldering in the earth.PSAS 79.3

But deeds of kind benevolence will live when we are dead;
The poor will think how they were clothed, and shared our daily bread;
The once abandoned who’ve reformed beneath our fostering care,
Will bless the day they ever lived our sympathies to share.PSAS 79.4

Such the remembrance I would have, alive or in my grave,
To have been the humble instrument some sinking soul to save.PSAS 79.5

For this I turn from pleasure’s scenes, to weep with those that weep;
To strive their sufferings to assuage, their confidence to keep.PSAS 80.1

Though on them glows the copper tint, though African their race,
What matters these distinctions of their nation, lot, or place?
For oh! the highest joy of earth is comfort to impart
To those who lie ‘neath fortune’s frowns, with sad and suffering heart.PSAS 80.2

Though hidden from the public view, unseen your acts of love,
If heart and hand be clean and pure, their record lives above.
Let me thus seek my neighbor’s good, thus helpless sufferers raise;
Be this the glory of my fame; be deeds of love my praise.PSAS 80.3