O, words may be loving and mellow in tone,
Sweet as the dew on the flowers of Hermon,
Gently imparting a blessing their own,
Precious with promise, as Olivet’s sermon.
Words may be careless, and cruel and coarse—
Be tauntingly hurled, or so bitterly spoken,
Resistless as lightning’s destroying force,
They scar with their scathing the heart they have broken.
Words may have edge that is keener than steel—
May pierce with their points like the swift-flying arrow;
They hurt with these stings while the victim will feel,
Then tear through the heart like a torturing harrow.
Words may be venomed with malice and spite,
May wither with scorn, with contempt and derision—
Be dreaded like adders when coiling to bite
Or hiss out their poison in whispered suspicion.
Aye, words may be vile as a basilisk’s breath—
A falsehood the germ—an ovum of evil,
Impregnate with calumny’s virus innate,
Then heated and hovered by envy and hate;
Thus “brooded by serpents,” like the monster medieval,
Come forth with his powers of blasting with death.
But words that are warmed in the sunlight of love
Will soothe with their feeling a brother’s affliction;
’Tis the Spirit from heaven that comes like a dove,
So gently descending in sweet benediction.
’Tis blessed receiving what kindness imparts,
How trifling so ever the token,
Thrice blessed, the giving of solace to hearts
That words of injustice have blighted and broken.
There’s comfort and balm for life’s various smarts
In words of true sympathy, tenderly spoken.