Classic Poem

Conscience, and what is conscience? Is it not that silent but powerful
monitor within that weighs our every motive? is it not the small still
voice that whispers its approval when we have acted right, but bursts
like the crashing thunder peal or the terrific earthquake, when we
have acted wrong? She stands with extended finger a silent though
faithful friend, and points us onward in the plain path of duty. We
have only to follow her dictates, and all will be well. But many gaudy
flowers are blooming here and there beside the path, to tempt the
thoughtless one to step aside and pluck; but though they are beautiful
to the eye, and their fragrance borne to us by the breeze, seems to
woo us temptingly, yet, concealed within their leaves is a deadly
scorpion or poisonous asp, whose sting is instant death, or some,
perhaps, contain a more slow and sluggish poison, that creeps into the
mind, and instilling its venom by slow degrees, corrupts the whole.
Conscience has well been called the tell tale of our breasts.

How does it harrow up the mind at the still hours of midnight, when
all nature sleeps around, and depict crimes that no eye has witnessed
but God and their perpetrators; how does the murderer toss from side
to side beneath her lash, and see his victim for the thousandth time
in the agonies of death; over and over again, she acts the bloody
scene, and, while he turns restless and feverish upon his pillow,
still holds the picture bleeding fresh to fancy's wearied gaze, and as
in Macbeth, presents the dagger, while "on its blade and bludgeon are
drops of blood that were not so before." Crimes of dye not so deep,
are conjured up to harrow up the breast and rack the brain, and render
the victim of a disapproving conscience a miserable wretch indeed.

Truly she is placed within us as a friend, warning us of danger and
pressaging good. If we would listen to her dictates, we must be happy,
for she never argues wrong. And superlatively happy are they who can
lay calmly down on the bed of death cheered by her approving smiles,
for a "death bed is a detector of the heart;" here tired dissimulation
drops the mark that through life's grimace has kept up the scene.