Then stole apart to weep and die,
Nor knew an angel form was nigh
To show soft waters gushing by
And dewy shadows mild.
Thou wilt-for thou art Israel's God,
And thine unwearied arm
Is ready yet, with Moses' rod,
The bidden rill to charm
Out of the dry unfathomed deep
Of sands, that lie in lifeless sleep,
Save when the scowling whirlwinds heap
Their waves in rude alarm.
There moments of wild wrath are thine-
Thine, too, the drearier hour
When o'er the horizon's silent line
Fond hopeless fancies cower,
And on the traveller's listless way,
Rises and sets the unchanging day,
No cloud in heaven to slake its ray,
On earth no sheltering bower.
Thou wilt be there, and not forsake,
To turn the bitter pool
Into a bright and breezy lake,
The throbbing brow to cool:
Till left awhile with thee alone,
The wilful heart be fain to own
That He by whom our bright hours shone
Our darkness best may rule.
The scent of water far away
Upon the breeze is flung;
The desert pelican to-day
Securely leaves her young :
Reproving thankless man, who fears
To journey on a few lone years,
Where on the sand Thy step appears,
Thy crown in sight is hung.
Thou who did'st sit on Jacob's well
The weary hour of noon,
The languid pulses Thou canst tell,
The nerveless spirit tune;
Thou from whose cross in anguish burst
The cry that owned thy dying thirst,
To Thee we turn, our last and first,
Our sun and soothing moon.
From darkness here, and weariness,
We ask not full repose;
Only be thou at hand to bless
Our trial hour of woes.
Is not the pilgrim's toil o'erpaid
By the clear rill and palmy shade?
And see we not, up earth's dark glade,
The gate of heaven unclose?
HAT is truth? the fickle Roman
Asked, nor waited for reply;
Question of momentous omen!
Shall I also pass it by?
No, my Lord!-I'll turn me to it,
Anxious all its depths to sound;
Let me humbly, closely, view it,
Till I have the answer found.
What is truth? The only token
Lent to guide our blinded race,
Is the word which God hath spoken
By the heralds of his grace.
Thence we learn how helpless strangers,
Guilty rebels such as we,
May escape ten thousand dangers,
Burst our fetters, and be free.
What is truth? That man is mortal,
Wretched, feeble, and depraved;
Dying still at mercy's portal,
Yet unwilling to be saved :
Oft to safety's path invited,
Prone from it to wander far;
In the blaze of noon benighted,
With himself and God at war.
What is truth? That He who made us,
He who all our weakness knows,
Stooped himself from heaven to aid us,
Bear our guilt, and feel our woes.
Like the lamb the peasant slaughters,
See him unresisting led;
'Midst the tears of Judah's daughters
Mocked, and numbered with the dead!
Yes, my soul! thy lost condition
Brought the gentle Saviour low;
Hast thou felt one hour's contrition
For those sins which placed him so?
Dost thou bear the love thou owest
For such proof of love divine?
Meek I answer, Lord thou knowest
That this heart is wholly thine!
Long, indeed, too long, I wandered
From the path thy children tread;
Long my time and substance squandered,
Seeking that which was not bread.
Now though flesh may disallow it,
Now though sense no glory see,
In thy strength, my God, I vow it,
Ne'er again to turn from thee!
MUTABILITY OF EARTHLY THINGS.
HAT exhibitions various hath the world
Witnessed of mutability in all
That we account most durable below!
Change is the diet on which all subsist,
Created changeable, and change at last
Destroys them.
Skies uncertain, now the heat
Transmitting cloudless, and the solar beam
Now quenching in a boundless sea of clouds;
Calm and alternate storm, moisture, and drought,
Invigorate by turns the springs of life,
In all that live-plant, animal, and man—
And in conclusion mar them.
Fine passing thought, e'en in their coarsest works, Delight in agitation, yet sustain
The force that agitates not unimpaired;
But, worn by frequent impulse, to the cause
Of their best tone their dissolution owe.
ETWEEN two worlds, life hovers like a star, 'Twixt night and morn, upon the horizon's verge :
How little do we know that which we are!
How little what we may be! The eternal surge
Of time and tide rolls on, and bears afar
Our bubbles; as the old burst, new emerge,
Lashed from the foam of ages, while the graves
Of empires heave but like some passing waves.
HAT is this mystery of Human Life?
In rude or civilized society,
Alike, a pilgrim's progress through this world
To that which is to come, by the same stages;
With infinite diversity of fortune
To each distinct adventurer by the way!
Life is the transmigration of a soul
Through various bodies, various states of being:
New manners, passions, tastes, pursuits, in each;
In nothing, save in consciousness, the same.
Infancy, adolescence, manhood, age,
Are alway moving onward, alway losing
Themselves in one another, lost at length,
Like undulations on the strand of death.
The sage of threescore years and ten looks back,--
With many a pang of lingering tenderness,
And many a shuddering conscience-fit,-
He hath been, is not, cannot be again:
Nor trembles less with fear and hope to think
What he is now, but cannot long continue,
And what he must be through uncounted ages. -
The Child;—we know no more of happy childhood
Than happy childhood knows of wretched eld;
And all our dreams of its felicity
Are incoherent as its own crude visions:
We but begin to live from that fine point
Which memory dwells on, with the morning star,
The earliest note we heard the cuckoo sing,
Or the first daisy that we ever plucked,
When thoughts themselves were stars, and birds,
and flowers,
Pure brilliance, simplest music, wild perfume.
Thenceforward, mark the metamorphoses!
The Boy, the Girl, when all was joy, hope, promise;
Yet who would be a Boy, a Girl again,
|