TO A YOUNG FRIEND. III TO A YOUNG FRIEND ON ENTERING THE MINISTRY. HIGH thoughts at first, and visions high Are ours, of easy victory; The word we bear seems so divine, So framed for Adam's guilty line, That none, unto ourselves we say, Of all his sinning suffering race But soon a sadder mood comes round; Go weeping, that men will not cease To strive with Heaven-they inly mourn, That suffering men will not be blest, That weary men refuse to rest, And wanderers to return. Well is it if has not ensued Another, yet unworthier, mood, When all unfaithful thoughts have way, To seek with toil and fruitless strife Then if Spring-odours on the wind. That it were wiser done, to give For her; or in the student's bower Or if we dare not thus draw back, Yet oh! to shun the crowded track And the rude throng of men ! to dwell Feeding all longings that aspire Like incense heavenward, and with care Faith's solitary pyre. Oh! let not us this thought allow- And for the rest, in weariness, In disappointment, or distress, When strength decays, or hope grows dim, We ever may recur to Him, Who has the golden oil divine, Wherewith to feed our failing urns, Who watches every lamp that burns Before His sacred shrine. ADVICE TO A YOUNG FRIEND. 113 ADVICE TO A YOUNG FRIEND. To catch dame Fortune's golden smile, And gather gear by every wile The fear o' hell's a hangman's whip, The great Creator to revere, Must sure become the creature ; An Atheist's laugh's a poor exchange When ranting round in Pleasure's ring, P Or if she gie a random sting, CANNING ON THE DEATH OF HIS ELDEST SON. THOUGH short thy span, God's unimpeached decrees, And, since this world was not the world for thee, Oh! marked from birth and nurtured for the skies! Simple as unweaned infancy, and pure! Pure from all stain (save that of human clay, SHE dwelt among the untrodden ways A maid where there were none to praise, A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye; Fair as a star when only one Is shining in the sky. She lived unknown, and few could know But she is in her grave, and oh, The difference to me! |