Album of the heart ~ October of 1873

Power and wealth and fame

Are but as weeds upon Life's troubled tide;

Give me but these, a spirit's tempest-tried

A brow unshrinking, and a soul of flame,

The joy of conscious worth, 

It's courage and it's pride!

This entry in Flora's Album of the Heart was by one of her school teachers, Mrs. Ida Sutherland. With some research I found the lines were excerpted from a poem by Robert T. Conrad called the Pride of Worth, cited in an article in Graham's Monthly Magazine, Volume 25, Philadelphia, June 1844, No. 6.

Robert T. Conrad

 

He was a man of many facets: attorney, judge, editor, poet, and playwright. He was elected the first mayor of Philadelphia in 1844. In 1852 he published a volume entitled Aylmere, or the Bondman of Kent, and other Poems, the principal poems being “The Sons of the Wilderness,” a meditative poem on the wrongs and misfortunes of the North American Indians. 

Doors are to be opened, lands are to be explored; destinations are but second fiddle to the journey. Talk to your elders and celebrate your history, you never know what you'll find along the way.