What though our burden be not light, Blest are the moments, doubly blest, Why should we crave a hallowed spot? A church in every grove that spreads Look up to heaven! the industrious sun He cannot halt nor go astray, Lord! since his rising in the east, What yet remains of this day's course. Help with thy grace through life's short day, And glorify for us the west, When we shall sink to final rest. THOUGHT ON THE SEASONS. FLATTERED with promise of escape Spring takes, O sprightly May! thy shape, Less fair is Summer riding high Less fair than when a lenient sky When earth repays with golden sheaves And ripening fruits, and forest leaves, What pensive beauty Autumn shows, Of Winter rushing in to close Such be our Spring, our Summer such; With hoary Winter, and life touch With heaven-born hope her end! APOSTROPHE TO THE DEITY. THOU, dread source, Prime, self-existing cause and end of all That in the scale of being fill their place; Set and sustained;-Thou, who didst wrap the cloud Might'st hold, on earth, communion undisturbed; For consciousness the motions of thy will; Glorious! because the shadow of thy might, In youth were mine; when, stationed on the top With joy exalted to beatitude; The measure of my soul was filled with bliss, With pomp, with glory, with magnificence! THE TO THE prayers I make will then be sweet indeed, My unassisted heart is barren clay, That of its native self can nothing feed; Of good and pious works Thou art the seed, That quickens only where Thou sayest it may: No man can find it: Father! Thou must lead: Do Thou then breathe these thoughts into my mind, By which such virtue may in me be bred, That in thy holy footsteps I may tread; The fetters of my tongue do Thou unbind, That I may have the power to sing of Thee! And sound thy praises everlastingly. JEHOVAH THE PROVIDER. AUTHOR of being; life-sustaining King! Lo! Want's dependant eye from Thee implores Give to her prayers the renovating Spring, The fruits which Autumn from a thousand stores Her God, and all her vales exulting sing. Bends to the ploughman's galling yoke in vain; Without thy blessing on the varied year, Can the swarth reaper grasp the golden grain? Without thy blessing, all is black and drear; With it, the joys of Eden bloom again. LATIMER AND RIDLEY. How fast the Marian death-list is unrolled! Of faith, stand coupled for a common flight! And thus they foil their enemy's despite. Are glorified, while this once mitred pair SCATTERING, like birds escaped the fowler's net, Some seek with timely flight a foreign strand, By dauntless Luther freed, could they forget Their country's woes. But scarcely have they met, Free to pour forth their common thankfulness, With speculative notions rashly sown, Whence thickly-sprouting growth of poisonous weeds; Their forms are broken staves; their passions, steeds That master them. How enviably blest Is he who can, by help of grace, enthrone The peace of God within his single breast! NEW CHURCHES. BUT liberty and triumphs on the main, Forbear to shape due channels which the flood I hear their sabbath-bells' harmonious chime Float on the breeze-the heavenliest of all sounds THE KIRK OF ULPHA. THE KIRK OF ULPHA to the Pilgrim's eye Of a black cloud diffused o'er half the sky: Or as a fruitful palm-tree towering high O'er the parched waste, beside an Arab's tent; Or the Indian tree, whose branches downward bent, Take root again, a boundless canopy. |