Page:Poems Sigourney 1827.pdf/65

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The key she guards, with wary eye, Where knowledge hides her store, To conscience gives the unfading die, Which glows when life is o'er.

The wise, the virtuous love to wait Within her silent bower, The thoughtless shun, the fickle hate, The guilty dread her power.

When death's dark curtain veils the eyes, Resplendent glows her ray, And when the unrobed spirit flies She shares its unknown way.

Through the drear valley hung with gloom, She bears her guarded scroll, And spreads it at the bar of doom While justice weighs the soul.

Dauntless she treads the troubled sphere Of undefined despair, And they who stain'd her record here Must feel her vengeance there.

If Mercy to a glorious land The pardon'd soul invite, She hovers round that perfect band Who dwell in cloudless light.

And oft her tablet's varied trace Of mortal care and pain, From angel harps to God shall raise The loudest, sweetest strain.