Or sin by tempting; or, not daring that,

By wishing, though they never told her what. Thus mightst thou have slain more souls, hadst thou not crossed

Thyself, and, to triumph, thine army lost.

Yet, though these ways be lost, thou hast left one, Which is, immoderate grief that she is gone. But we may 'scape that sin, yet weep as much : Our tears are due because we are not such.

Some tears that knot of friends her death must

cost,

Because the chain is broke, but no link lost.

IMPROVEMENT.

WHO makes the past a pattern for next year,
Turns no new leaf, but still the same things

reads;

Seen things he sees again, heard things doth hear, And makes his life but like a pair of beads.

A palace, when 'tis that, which it should be, Leaves growing, and stands such, or else decays; But he which dwells there, is not so; for he

Strives to urge upward, and his fortune raise.

So had your body her morning, hath her noon,

And shall not better; her next change is night: But her fair larger guest, to whom sun and moon Are sparks, and short-lived, claims another right.

The noble soul by age grows lustier,

Her appetite, and her digestion mend;

We must not starve. nor hope to pamper her
With women's milk and pap unto the end.

The soul, whose country is heaven, and God her Father,

Into this world, corruption's sink, is sent; Yet, so much in her travail she doth gather, That she returns home, wiser than she went.

PSALM CXXXVII.

By Euphrates' flowery side
We did bide,

From dear Juda fair absented,
Tearing the air with our cries;

And our eyes

With their streams his stream augmented.

When, poor Sion's doleful state,
Desolate;

Sacked, burned, and enthralled,
And the temple spoiled, which we
Ne'er should see,

To our mirthless minds we called:

Our mute harps, untuned, unstrung,
Up we hung

On green willows near beside us,
Where, we sitting all forlorn,

Thus, in scorn,

Our proud spoilers 'gan deride us :

Come, sad captives, leave your moans,
And your groans

Under Sion's ruins bury;
Tune your harps, and sing us lays
In the praise

Of your God, and let's be merry.

Can, ah! can we leave our moans, And our groans

Under Sion's ruins bury?

Can we in this land sing lays
In the praise

Of our God, and here be merry?

No, dear Sion, if I yet
Do forget

Thine affliction miserable;
Let my nimble joints become
Stiff and numb,

To touch warbling harp unable.

Let my tongue lose singing skill,
Let it still

To my parched roof be glued,
If in either harp or voice

I rejoice,

Till thy joys shall be renewed.

Lord, curse Edom's traitorous kind, Bear in mind

In our ruins how they revell'd:

Sack, kill, burn! they cried out still, Sack, burn, kill!

Down with all, let all be levell❜d.

And thou, Babel, when the tide
Of thy pride,

Now a flowing, grows to turning;
Victor now, shall then be thrall,
And shall fall

To as low an ebb of mourning;

Happy he who shall thee waste,
As thou hast

Us, without all mercy, wasted,
And shall make thee taste and see

What

poor we

By thy means have seen and tasted.

Happy, who thy tender bairns,
From the arms

Of their wailing mothers tearing,
'Gainst the walls shall dash their bones,
Ruthless stones

With their brains and blood besmearing.

PROGRESS OF THE SOUL.

ON THE DEATH OF MRS. ELIZABETH DRURY.

NOTHING could make me sooner to confess
That this world had an everlastingness,
Than to consider, that a year is run,

Since both this lower world's and the sun's sun,
The lustre and the vigour of this all,

Did set; 'twere blasphemy to say, did fall.
But as a ship which hath struck sail, doth run
By force of that force which before it won;
Or as sometimes in a beheaded man,

Though at those two red seas, which freely ran,
One from the trunk, another from the head,
His soul he sail'd to her eternal bed,

F

His
eyes will twinkle, and his tongue will roll,
As though he beckoned, and called back his soul;
He grasps his hands, and he pulls up his feet,
And seems to reach, and to step forth to meet
His soul, when all these motions which we saw
Are but as ice which crackles at a thaw;
Or as a lute, which in moist weather rings
Her knell alone, by cracking of her strings:
So struggles this dead world, now she is gone;
For there is motion in corruption.

As some days are, at the creation, named

Before the sun, the which framed days was framed : So after this sun's set, some show appears,

And orderly vicissitude of years.

Yet a new deluge, and of Lethe flood,
Hath drowned us all, all have forgot all good,
Forgetting her, the main reserve of all;
Yet in this deluge, gross and general,
Thou seest me strive for life; my life shall be
To be hereafter praised for praising thee.
These hymns, thy issue, may increase so long,
As till God's great venite change the song.
Thirst for that time, O my insatiate soul,
And serve thy thirst, with God's safe-feeling bowl!
Be thirsty still, and drink still till thou go
To the only health; to be hydroptic so,
Forget this rotten world; and unto thee
Let thine own times as an old story be.
The world is but a cascass; thou art fed
By it, but as a worm that carcass bred;

And why shouldst thou, poor worm, consider

more

When this world will grow better than before,
Than those thy fellow-worms do think upon
That carcass's last resurrection?