CHARITY.

Yet we are able only to survey

Dawning of beams and promises of day.

Heaven's fuller affluence mocks our dazzled sight,
Too great its swiftness and too strong its light.
But soon the mediate clouds shall be dispelled;
The sun shall soon be face to face beheld,
In all his robes, with all his glory on,
Seated sublime on his meridian throne.

Then constant Faith and holy Hope shall die,
One lost in certainty, and one in joy;
Whilst thou, more happy power, fair Charity,
Triumphant sister, greatest of the three,
Thy office and thy nature still the same,
Lasting thy lamp and unconsumed thy flame,
Shalt still survive-

Shall stand before the host of heaven confest,
For ever blessing and for ever blest.

THOMAS PARNELL. 1679-1717.

A Right Piece on Death.

Y the blue taper's trembling light,

No more I waste the wakeful night,
Intent with endless view to pore
The schoolmen and the sages o'er:
Their books from wisdom widely stray,
Or point at best the longest way.
I'll seek a readier path, and go

Where wisdom's surely taught below.

How deep yon azure dyes the sky!

Where orbs of gold unnumbered lie,
While through their ranks in silver pride
The nether crescent seems to glide.
The slumbering breeze forgets to breathe,
The lake is smooth and clear beneath,
Where once again the spangled show
Descends to meet our eyes below.
The grounds which on the right aspire,
In dimness from the view retire;
The left presents a place of graves,
Whose wall the silent water laves.
That steeple guides thy doubtful sight
Among the livid gleams of night.
There pass with melancholy state
By all the solemn heaps of fate,
And think, as softly sad you tread
Above the venerable dead,

Time was, like thee, they life possest,
And time shall be, that thou shalt rest.

Those graves with bending osier bound,
That nameless heave the crumbled ground,
Quick to the glancing thought disclose
Where toil and poverty repose.

The flat smooth stones that bear a name,
The chisel's slender help to fame
(Which, ere our set of friends decay,
Their frequent steps may wear away),

A middle race of mortals own,

Men half ambitious-all unknown.

The marble tombs that rise on high,
Whose dead in vaulted arches lie,

Whose pillars swell with sculptured stones,
Arms, angels, epitaphs, and bones,
These, all the poor remains of state,
Adorn the rich or praise the great,
Who, while on earth in fame they live,
Are senseless of the fame they give.
Ha! while I gaze, pale Cynthia fades,

The bursting earth unveils the shades!

All slow, and wan, and wrapped with shrouds, They rise in visionary crowds,

And all with sober accent cry,

"Think, mortal, what it is to die."

Now from yon black and funeral yew, That bathes the charnel-house with dew,

Methinks I hear a voice begin :

(Ye ravens, cease your croaking din!

Ye tolling clocks, no time resound.

O'er the long lake and midnight ground!)

It sends a peal of hollow groans,

Thus speaking from among the bones:

A NIGHT PIECE ON DEATH.

"When men my scythe and darts supply, How great a king of fears am I !

They view me like the last of things;

They make, and then they draw, my strings.
Fools! if you less provoked your fears,
No more my spectre form appears.
Death's but a path that must be trod,
If man would ever pass to GOD;

A port of calms, a state of ease
From the rough rage of swelling seas."

H

ALEXANDER POPE. 1688-1744.

Hope in a Future State.

EAVEN from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prescribed, their present state:
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know;
Or who could suffer being here below?

The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,

Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,

And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
Oh, blindness to the future! kindly given,
That each may fill the circle marked by Heaven,
Who sees with equal eye, as GOD of all,

A hero perish or a sparrow fall,

Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world.