I will say that thou art bound I will say thou givest scope That thy shadow brings together Friends long lost in sunny weather, With an hundred offices Beautiful and blest as these. Softly takest thou the crown From my haughty temples down; Place it on thine own pale brow, Pleasure wears one-why not thou? Let the blossoms glitter there And, howe'er thou hid'st the name, HUMILIBUS DAT GRATIAN.-Peacham, about 1600. THE mountains huge, that seem to check the sky, And all the world with greatness over-peer, With heath or moss for most part barren lie; When valleys low doth kindly Phœbus cheer, And with his heat in hedge and grove begets The virgin primrose or sweet violets. So God oft times denies unto the great The gifts of nature, or his heavenly grace, And those that high in honor's chair are set Do feel their wants; when men of meaner place, Although they lack the others' golden spring, Perhaps are blest above the richest king. ON THE DEATH OF A FRIEND. - Milnes. I'm not where I was yesterday, I have lost a thought, that many a year To my inmost mind, by night or day, I have lost a hope, that many a year Looked far on a gleaming way, When the walls of life were closing round, For long, too long, in distant climes A frail and casual intercourse And felt no void, for my heart was full And now I was close to my native shores, His spirit was in that homeward wind, For what were to me my native shores, But that they held the scene Where my youth's most genial flowers had blown, And affection's root had been? I thought, how should I see him first, How should our hands first meet; Within his room, upon the stair, At the corner of the street? I thought, where should I hear him first, And thus I went up to his door, O, what is life but a sum of love, Weeds be for those that are left behind, And now how mighty a sum of love No, I'm not what I was yesterday, TO A VIRTUOUS YOUNG LADY.-Milton. LADY, that in the prime of earliest youth And hope that reaps not shame. Therefore be sure Thou, when the bridegroom with his feastful friends Passes to bliss at the mid hour of night, Hast gained thy entrance, virgin wise and pure. TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.- Keble. "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive MATTHEW Xviii. 21. him?" WHAT liberty so glad and gay, The dreary sounds of crowded earth, The snow-clad peaks of rosy light Two ways alone his roving eye O blessed restraint! more blesséd range! Too soon the happy child His nook of homely thought will change For life's seducing wild: Too soon his altered day-dreams show While of his narrowing heart each year Heaven less and less will fill, Less keenly through his grosser ear The tones of mercy thrill. It must be so; else wherefore falls While from his pardoning cross he calls, “O, spare, as I have spared? |