Better Things
Better to smell a violet
Than sip the careless wine;
Better to list one music tone
Than watch the jewel’s shine.
Better to have the love of one
Than smiles like morning dew;
Better to have a living seed
Than flowers of every hue.
Better to feel a love within
Than be lovely to the sight;
Better a homely tenderness
Than beauty’s wild delight.
Better to love than be beloved,
Though lonely all the day;
Better the fountain in the heart
Than the fountain by the way.
Better a death when work is done
Than earth’s most favored birth;
Better a child in God’s great house
Than the king of all the earth.
—Leigh Hunt.
Be Worthy Of Immortality
It were better to live an immortal life and be robbed of immortality hereafter by some supernal power, than to live the mortal, fleshly, animal life, and live it endlessly. Who would not rather have a right to immortality than to be immortal without a right to be?
—Lyman Abbott.
Alternate Reading: Colossians 1: 3-12.