ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

Then since this world is vain,

And volatile, and fleet,

Why should I lay up earthly joys,

Where rust corrupts, and moth destroys,

And cares and sorrows eat?

Why fly from ill

With anxious skill,

When soon this hand will freeze, this throbbing heart be still?

Come, Disappointment, come!

Thou art not stern to me;
Sad monitress! I own thy sway,
A votary sad in early day,

To thee I bend my knee:
From sun to sun

My race will run,

I only bow, and say, "My God, thy will be done!"

ON HEARING THE CLOCK STRIKE TWELVE AT NIGHT, DECEMBER 31st.

KNELL of departed years,

Thy voice is sweet to me:
It wakes no sad foreboding fears,
Calls forth no sympathetic tears,

Time's restless course to see;
From hallow'd ground

I hear the sound

Diffusing through the air a holy calm around.

Thou art the voice of Love:
To chide each doubt away;
And as thy murmur faintly dies,
Visions of past enjoyment rise
In long and bright array :
I hail the sign

That love divine

Will o'er my future path in cloudless mercy shine.

Thou art the voice of Hope:

.

The music of the spheres

A song of blessings yet to come,
A herald from my future home,
My soul delighted hears:

By sin deceived,

By nature grieved,

Still am I nearer rest than when I first believed.

Thou art the voice of Life:

A sound which seems to say,

"O prisoner in this gloomy vale,

Thy flesh shall faint, thy heart shall fail;

Yet fairer scenes thy spirit hail,

That cannot pass away:

Here grief and pain

Thy steps detain;

There in the image of the Lord shalt thou with Jesus reign."

THE WORLD AND THE GOSPEL.

THE world with "stones," instead of "bread,”
Our hungry souls has often fed:

It promised health-in one short hour
Perish'd the fair, but fragile flower;
It promised riches-in a day

They made them wings, and fled away;
It promised friends-all "sought their own,"
And left my widow'd heart alone.

Lord! with the barren service spent,
To thee my suppliant knee I bent;
And found in thee a Father's grace,
His hand, his heart, his faithfulness,
The voice of peace, the smile of love,
The "bread" which feeds thy saints above;
And tasted, in this world of wo,

A joy its children never know.

PATERNAL CARE OF THE DEITY.

THE insect, that with puny wing

Just shoots along one summer ray;
The floweret which the breath of spring
Wakes into life for half a day;
The smallest mote, the slenderest hair-
All feel our common Father's care.

Even from the glories of his throne
He bends, to view this wandering ball;
Sees all, as if that all were one;
Loves one, as if that one were all;
Rolls the swift planets in their spheres,
And counts the sinner's lonely tears.

MILTON'S SONNET ON HIS BLINDNESS.

WHEN I consider how my light is spent,

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent, which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest he return and chide. "Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?" I fondly ask: but Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; his state Is kingly thousands at his bidding speed,

And post o'er land and ocean, without rest; They also serve who only stand and wait."

THE CHRISTIAN IN THE PROSPECT OF DEATH.

O MOST delightful hour by man
Experienced here below,

The hour that terminates his span,

His folly and his wo!

Worlds should not bribe me back to tread

Again life's dreary waste,

To see again my day o'erspread

With all the gloomy past.

My home henceforth is in the skies,
Earth, seas, and sun, adieu!
All heaven unfolded to my eyes,
I have no sight for you.

So speaks the Christian, firm possess'd
Of Faith's supporting rod;

Then breathes his soul into its rest,

The bosom of his God.

BLESSED BE THY NAME FOR EVER.

BLESSED be thy name for ever,

Thou of life the guard and giver;

Thou canst guard thy creatures sleeping,

Heal the heart long broke with weeping.
God of stillness and of motion,

Of the desert and the ocean,

Of the mountain, rock, and river,
Blessed be thy name for ever.

Thou who slumberest not, nor sleepest,
Bless'd are they thou kindly keepest;
God of evening's parting ray,

Of midnight's gloom, and dawning day,
That rises from the azure sea
Like breathings of eternity.
God of life, that fade shall never,
Blessed be thy name for ever.

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »