It comes in glances of deep love
Through tender, watchful eyes,
It comes in glimpses from above
Of God's own sympathies.

It comes, it comes, full light to pour On ransomed spirits blest,

In strength, in stillness evermore, 'The weary are at rest.'

CHAPTER IV.

VERSES

WRITTEN BY THOMAS, SECOND LORD LILFORD, FROM 1810 TO 1824.

PARAPHRASE OF HORACE, Book I. Ode 34.

LOST in mad reason's billowy maze,

Too wise for prayer, too proud for praise,

I made the heaven my sport ;

Now my gay streamers' pride is low,
And with reverted course I go

To seek devotion's port.

For, hark! the pealing thunder breaks,
And earth and inmost ocean shakes,

And Nature owns her God.

Shall, then, the creature of an hour

Defy the all-controlling power,

Nor tremble at the rod ?

See, the broad mountains crumbling smoke,

As when from Sinai's top He spoke,

And valleys rise on high.

Pause then awhile, and learn, O man,

Thy grandeur's nothingness to scan ;-
Oh, learn humility!

PARAPHRASE OF HORACE, Book IV. part of Ode 7.

Speaks not the year to heedless men?
Read we not here our life's decay?
Yet not the breath of genial spring

Shall this cold dust to life restore,

When Fate the wise and good shall bring
Where wise and good have sunk before.
Why then with careful thought amass
Thy treasure's perishable store?
Seize the fleet moments as they pass,
And joys in gay profusion pour.
Vain will thy birth, thy virtue vain,
And vain thy wit's persuasion prove

To break the adamantine chain,

Th' inexorable judge to move.

Such were the Pagan poets' hopeless lays,
So thick the sage's philosophic gloom,
And such the phantom-dreaming mortals raise,
To haunt the darkness of our nature's tomb.
Shall we from nature read no brighter page?
No purer spirit draw from genial air?
From thoughtless youth decline to helpless age,
And find our best enjoyment in despair?
Ah, no! untaught by faith, we live in fear,
Nor mark what nature's change doth daily

show;

The bloom must fade or e'er the fruit appear, The seed must perish ere the plant can grow.

HORACE, Book III. Ode 24.

True, thou art richer than Arabia's mine,
And seas retire to give thy palace space;
Yet, where these gilded summits loftiest shine,
Fate claims with stern pre-eminence her place.
Stronger than stone her adamantine clasp,
Nor skill evades, nor terror 'scapes her grasp.

Better than thine the roaming Scythian's life, Whose wand'ring home the loaded wagon

draws,

Whose boundless acres know nor want nor strife, Who, following nature, break not virtue's laws. No murderous furies arm the stepdame's hand, No smooth seducer breaks the nuptial band.

The child's best portion is the parent's worth,
And chastity, that spurns the adulterous stain,
Untutored virtues, but of genuine birth,

Rude morals that the touch of vice disdain.
No venial lapse those rigid laws allow,
But expiate by death the broken vow.

Lives there a Roman whose indignant soul
Groans o'er the horror of intestine rage?
Seeks he to live emblazoned on the roll

Of deathless patriots in our history's page? (Though thankless now the task), let his firm

hand

Curb the bold license of our bleeding land.