A fascinating little late 19th century vellum volume, hand-titled, "Sursum Cor, " or, "Lift up your heart!" and then, in English, "Light - More Light." Text surrounding a crown and a small, perfectly constructed heart, all in sepia ink.

The rear board bears the same crown, at the head, a cross at the bottom. The two emblems surrounding "nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea-change, into something rich & strange." From Shakespeare's The Tempest. 

The album with a tipped in original composition, presumably framing the contents, "Keep well and prosper'd, believe in all good. Banish fear of evil in this world & the next from your mind; & confide strongly in the goodness of the sacred." 

The album is then filled, nearly every page, with original compositions, extracts from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the Prophet Malachi, the Book of Job, Shakespeare's All's Well that Ends Well, George Herbert, The Lord's Prayer, Thomas 'Kempis, Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, Algernon Charles Swinburne, an original on the consistency of change as reflected in the seasons, Francis Thompson's In No Strange Land, Henry Vaughan, Ralph Waldo Emerson, etc, .

The quotations are introduced with, "The following pages are named Flies in Amber, for they are dedicated to the preserving of passing quips, trivial fancies of a pretty or a jocund nature, allusions or queer wordings, clever twists, and passing utterances, together with prized quotations, etc., 

A fair number of apparently original compositions, some with corrections by the author, certainly one and the same as the compiler. They tend to be in the vain of Rossetti, the transcendentalists, the romantics, pre-raphaelites, etc., The first included here is particularly accomplished, though the original compositions are of a mixed quality throughout. At least two separate hands, though all of the original matter appears to be from a single pen.

And what of all the love that's thrown
To feet that only spurn it?
And what of tears that burn
When souls seek Truth to learn it?
And who deplores the unthanked pain
That tries, in vain, to earn it?

Well may we ask, but what if God
Bends lower from His Heaven
And with His staff and with His rod
Takes to Himself this leaven
And with it Kneads the Bread of Life
That feeds those that have striven?

And these who strive, who stand alone,
Ridding their souls of fear
I heard these speak that what is done
Hath not its ending here . . . 
Listen! they say, God counts each one
Seed, life, well, love, pain, tear.

God keep you ever his sun to feel,
God bless you when at his feet you kneel,
Here will I wait, till thou again art here, 
Again art here
And if thou tarry long, 
I will come to you,
My dear,
Come to you my dear.

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How wasteful Mother Nature is
With all her untold riches;
Her store of wealth so boundless is
She casts it in the ditches 
And all the roadside - golden store
Her carelessness enriches

What happens to the thousand seeds
That grow upon the hollies?
What happens to the acorn breeds?
One of Dame Nature's follies?
What of all the world of love
Small girls spend on their dollies?

And who shall hear the unborn song
That dies in tender egg shells?
When boys, so mercilessly strong
Unthinking, toll their death knells,
And who shall know the crystal store
Of undiscovered pure wells? 

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Winter plucked the last rose
And put it in his icy bosom
I wonder who keeps count
of them all, he said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rain today and rain tomorrow
Will it always rain?
Soft insistent sound of sorrow 
Pattering on the pane.

How the drops are splashing sadly,
On the green Earth's face,
Falling softly, falling madly,
Not a breathing space.

I bethink me of the pleasure
Of a sunny June,
Rain in Summer is a measure
Chiming out of tune.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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They chatter of their broken hearts;
The soiling of their dreams:
There is no silence in their lives, 
There are no hidden themes, 
They draw their curtains lest the moon
Should craze them with her beams.

In spring they walk with careless feet
Where other people go:
Talking of nature, all the time
They have no time to know
How on black boughs the cherry bloom
Is red against the sky
Where, in the wind, like sailing ships
The quite clouds blow by. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The wind blows on the heath,
And the same stars shine
The same earth underneath
As when she was mine

I once was her fever
Until in the gloam
She departed forever
From my breast that was warm

And now the wind is colder
The stars all seem dime
And my mother earth grown older
And no sound in the stream.