'Tis sweet, as year by year we lose Friends out of sight, in faith to muse How grows in Paradise our store. Then pass, ye mourners, cheerly on, Then cheerly to your work again Over the grave their Lord have met. CHURCHING OF WOMEN. Is there, in bowers of endless spring, One known from all the seraph band More exquisitely bland! Here let him speed: to-day this hallow'd air Is fragrant with a mother's first and fondest prayer. Only let Heaven her fire impart, No richer incense breathes on earth: "A spouse with all a daughter's heart," Fresh from the perilous birth, To the great Father lifts her pale glad eye, Like a reviving flower when storms are hush'd on high. O what a treasure of sweet thought Is here! what hope and joy and love All in one tender bosom brought, For the all-gracious Dove To brood o'er silently, and form for heaven Each passionate wish and dream to dear affection given. Her fluttering heart, too keenly blest, Slight tremblings only of her veil declarea We are too weak, when Thou dost bless, To bear the joy-help, Virgin-born! By thine own mother's first caress, That wak'd thy natal morn! Help, by the unexpressive smile, that made A heaven on earth around the couch where Thou wast laid! a When the woman comes to this office, the rubric (as it was altered at the last review, directs that she be decently apparelled, i. e. as the custom and order was formerly, with a white covering or veil. Wheatley on the Common Prayer, c. xiii. sect. i. 3. COMMINATION. THE prayers are o'er: why slumberest thou so long, Thou voice of sacred song? Why swell'st thou not, like breeze from mountain cave, High o'er the echoing nave, The white-rob'd priest, as otherwhile, to guide, A mourner's tale of shame and sad decay Keeps back our glorious sacrifice to-day : The widow'd spouse of Christ: with ashes crown'd, She lingers in the porch for grief and fear, Keeping her penance drear.— O is it nought to you? that idly gay, Or coldly proud, ye turn away? But if her warning tears in vain be spent, Lo, to her alter'd eye the Law's stern fires are lent. Each awful curse, that on Mount Ebal rang, Peals with a direr clang Out of that silver trump, whose tones of old Forgiveness only told. And who can blame the mother's fond affright", Her infant sees, and springs with hurried hand But surer than all words the silent spell When to her bird, too early scap'd the nest, Smiling he turns and spreads his little wing, So yearns our mother o'er each truant son, Wayward and spoil'd she knows ye: the keen blast That brac'd her youth, is past : The rod of discipline, the robe of shame― She bears them in your name: b Alluding to a beautiful anecdote in the Greek Anthology, tom. ii. 180. ed. Jacobs. See Pleasures of Memory, p. 133. |